"Can you imagine a mural by Miquel Barceló advertising Ametller Origen?"

BarcelonaWriter Carlota Gurt, dressed as a little boxing devil, stands planted on a stool. She rings a little bell to stop the tourists and passersby and explains to us that she will give 6 lectures of 6 minutes each in 6 spots in the Gothic Quarter. "Is it a coincidence that it's the devil's number?". Obviously not. Gurt puts her literary talent at the service of the bread-and-butter jobs she has to do, but also her critical capacity; it all goes in the same package. The route she will offer us this Wednesday is part of the Artistic Showcases cycle, a project promoted by the magazine Hänsel* and Gretel* to spread art throughout the shops (the decent shops that remain) in this ultra-touristed area.

She has titled it The Fallacy, which refers to an erroneous idea, because what she will do is explain to us why "merchants are not Satan's cousins as we have been led to believe, from Balzac to Thomas Mann, from the Bible to Disney", but rather they have been, historically, discoverers, patrons, and allies of some of the best artists in history. As Santiago Rusiñol said in The Tale of Mr. Esteve, "neither are artists saints nor are merchants obtuse, insensitive people blinded by greed". That there are now those who sell thongs and penis magnets on Carrer Ferran is just a slip-up that history will not record (but the press will).

The first stop is at the Sala Parés, on Carrer Petritxol, where a small crowd forms that is not there to buy hot chocolate. Gurt explains to us, for example, that the first gallery in Spain promoted exhibitions of modernist poster art, a discipline that allowed personalities like Alexandre de Riquer (a professional mercenary, as a widower with nine children) to make a living and that brought art down to the street level. Without going any further, the contest to design the advertising for Anís del Mono was won by Ramon Casas and it can still be seen on the facade of Colmado Múrria. "Can you imagine a Miquel Barceló mural advertising Ametller Origen or Banksy on the shutter of the last haberdashery in Barcelona?".

A pair of municipal police officers follows the author's journey, and it is worthy of a sitcom, because I doubt whether they are protecting her or monitoring her. Apparently, it is in case there are traffic problems. In the entourage comes the writer Melcior Comes, as well as the instigators of the event, Llucià Homs and Fèlix Riera, and passersby. In Plaça Sant Felip Neri there are school children, and in Plaça de la Cucurulla there are the perennial ice cream eaters. Here the devil takes the opportunity to highlight the special ugliness of this intersection, surrendered "to the tastes of the tourism to which we submit ourselves abjectly," he says before pointing out the foul signage of every shop with the loudspeaker on, which makes me suffer. It is clear that Gurt has a monologue on tour because she has acting skills and memory, and she makes it pleasant and entertaining. I see a market for it, if they schedule it once a month.

Facts I didn't know. The cutlery shop in Plaça del Pi is located on the ground floor of the former guild of resellers, that is, of the merchants, who paid for the baroque sgraffito on the facade, considered the oldest in the city, from the 18th century. 15th-century Flanders was key to creating an art market and emancipating artists from commissions and their financiers. And the best part: in 1878 Gaudí designed a display case for the Comella glove shop that was even shown at the Paris Expo. There it won a prize and, above all, it attracted the attention of an astonished Eusebi Güell, and we assume that this is how the great genius was born... who today pours hordes of tourists onto Passeig de Gràcia. The effects of art are also unpredictable. That is why the tour ends at the Llibreria Sant Jordi, an architectural work of art converted into an irreductible cultural space in a lobotomized environment, and it does so with a conclusion from Carlota Gurt that explains the inseparable symbiosis between art and commerce: "If the merchants are the devil, the artists are Satan".