Mar Camps: "The peoples do not need saviours nor to be saved"

Barcelona"This book is born out of a bleat, but we don't want to dwell on lament either," says writer and journalist Mar Camps (Palamós, 1991) in the first pages of Don't come to the village to rest (Edicions de la Ela Geminada, 2026). After seeing and experiencing firsthand how the villages of Empordà were subordinated to tourism and the proliferation of second homes, Camps decided to pour everything surrounding this issue into a short essay, less than 150 pages, sharp and full of insights. "I wanted to deliver a punch to the table to say that what is sold from the city about villages doesn't fit what I perceive," explains Camps. The book focuses mainly on the municipalities of the Ter River Plain (Bordils, Celrà, Cervià de Ter, Flaçà, Juià, Madremanya, Sant Joan de Mollet, Sant Jordi Desvalls, Sant Martí Vell, Viladasens, and Medinyà) to provide a radiography of their transformation in recent years. However, the reflections and ideas she pours into it are extensible to many other places in Catalonia.

As a starting point, Camps analyzes the phenomenon of gentrification seen from the perspective of villages. "People are expelled from cities, but they are also expelled from villages. If you denounce gentrification in the city, you are considered progressive, left-wing. On the other hand, if you do it from the village, you are considered conservative, a bit right-wing," says the writer, who currently coordinates the magazine La Llera del Ter together with Lia Pou. In Empordà, there are more than 18,000 houses that are second homes and more than 18,000 tourist accommodations, Camps counts to illustrate the housing problem in this area. She also notes that the laws promoted in recent years to regulate rent prices and tourist flats do not include the Empordà villages she has analyzed, because they are not part of the tense zones of Catalonia. With houses worth, on average, one and a half million euros, accessing them is impossible for a good part of the young local population, who end up leaving.

"At the moment when tourism prevents people from living in their spaces, where they have grown up, this does not help to enrich the place. Local businesses close, associative and cultural life is lost, services disappear. In Empordà, furthermore, the socioeconomic level is very low. Tourism is not linked to a better quality of life. As Oriol Nel·lo said, it is not just about saving Empordà but also about saving the people of Empordà," assures Camps. The transformation becomes evident, as he notes in the essay, with the loss of historic shops in the old town centers of the villages and the deterioration of these spaces. "In these villages where life has been dying, with many houses that are second homes, meeting spaces are fundamental, because otherwise associativism cannot take root. In all the old town centers there should be a social room and a place for young people. There are many villages that have a reading point, and that revitalizes things enormously," argues Camps.

The essay attacks the romantic idea of villages conveyed from the cities and which, according to Camps, does not align with reality. "This romanticization is harmful. I imagine people projecting how their life in the village would be in an absolutely generic and uniform way. Then they arrive and realize that that village has unique characteristics and that they must adapt to them. But there are people who want to customize the villages, who are in a great hurry to mold the reality of the place when they don't even understand it," he emphasizes. He develops this in the book through concrete examples: from the complaints of newcomers and attempts to silence the ringing of the bells to the privatization of public paths. "There are people who cut down trees or poison them because they block their view. It is a tangible lack of respect," laments Camps.

Against the idea of saving a village

"Towns are self-sufficient. They don't need saviors or to be saved. But there are still those who insist on "rescuing them" without anyone asking them to," writes Camps. With this statement, he recovers one of the most significant episodes of the idea that some peoples need salvation: the purchase of 18 houses and three farmhouses in Sant Martí Vell at the hands of the jeweler Elsa Peretti. "It's the example of someone with urban success, with social and cultural capital and economic resources, who buys a village and spreads their story. She changed the names of the farmhouses, something that cannot be done, and not only that, but she also gave them Spanish names," highlights the writer.

The book is largely structured through quotes and fragments from Empordà writers such as Josep Pla, Damià Bardera, Antoni Puigverd, Miquel Martín Sierra, Adrià Pujol and J.N. Santaeulàlia. They are direct and clear texts, in which the idea of the transformation of villages and the loss of a world resonates. "I want to think that the quotes give, a little, a panorama of the place. There are better-known authors and others who write in our local magazine – Camps points out –. I like to explain the world this way".