La Boqueria could have walls and an entrance with five-euro payment turnstiles

BarcelonaLa Boqueria is thinking about its future to once again become a benchmark market for the people of Barcelona, ​​and not just for tourists. "It's normal for visitors to come in because La Rambla is a natural passageway for those arriving in Barcelona by sea or land," says Màxim López, manager of the Municipal Institute of Markets and Commerce, Restaurants, and Food at Barcelona City Council. If we think of markets as an evolution of the sales that were (and are) carried out in open squares, La Boqueria is something in between: it has no walls or entrance doors. So one of the proposals on the table, according to López, and which the Merchants' Board must approve by assembly, is the possibility of "closing it with walls and entrance doors, regulated by turnstiles that could be opened upon payment of a fixed amount," he explains. This payment could be as little as five euros. "Everything is on the table because La Boqueria needs to recover its essence to remain a benchmark," says Màxim López.

At midday on a weekday, La Boqueria bustles with people going up and down the street: the central aisle, headed by delicatessens, probably the ones that sell the most Iberian ham from Barcelona; the side aisles, with iconic bars, long-standing family-run stalls, and many new ones, selling almost exclusively bread rolls brimming with fried foods, which in recent months have been protected by glass. Previously, the bread rolls were displayed without any paragliders, so it was quite common to see someone approaching to contemplate the cooked food to photograph it with their cell phone or while eating chopped fruit. Those who stayed until the afternoon at the market found that those bread rolls were stored in boxes, kept in the basement of the stall, or moved to other areas.

At one of the market's iconic stalls, a vendor who prefers to remain anonymous confesses that he has lost his enthusiasm for working at La Boqueria. "I find it very funny that they say they want to recover the essence of the market when, because of them, it has been lost," he says. And he gives clear examples of what he means: "Barcelona City Council has allowed the market stalls to be sold for four million euros, like the one that cost the transfer of Pinocchio; for five and even six million euros. And I ask: "What Barcelona resident can afford to pay that much?" he says. Given the high sales and transfer figures, they can access capital from groups that "currently control 40% of the Boqueria market with a uniform offering, that is, prepared food, which is why it's the same everywhere," the chef maintains.

Concentration and uniformization

The figures for stall concentration cannot be reflected in the percentages shared by the Municipal Market Institute regarding ownership. La Boqueria is the largest market in Barcelona, ​​with approximately 180 stalls, of which 60% belong to self-employed individuals and 37.56% to limited companies. But the concentration is a reality. A source linked to the management of La Boqueria claims that the group that acquired the Pinocho bar is the one with the most stalls, more than a dozen, including the three Central bars, fishmongers, delicatessens, bacalao restaurants, and more.

As the stallholder at one of the traditional establishments continues to explain, there has been no control over the sale of prepared food. "We pass all the health checks, but they don't. No one knows where that fried food comes from or how it's stored, just as no one has checked that they weren't selling fresh food, which is the whole point of a market," he states. Therefore, in the new reform, which must be approved and will not be implemented until it is approved by the Merchants' Board, stalls will be required to sell fresh produce. "This point amuses me even more, because they should already be doing it, but there's another fact: until this regulation is approved and until the reforms are made, we stallholders will be paying for them, while everyone else can do whatever they want," the vendor emphasizes. Therefore, more years are in store for everyone to continue doing what they've been doing up until now.

For his part, the manager of the Municipal Market Institute, Máximo López, maintains that the stalls are auctioned at a minimum price of 750 euros per square meter, and always for a twenty-five-year concession period. "This is the standard starting price for the auction, which is open to competition," he says. Regarding transfers, the parties reach private agreements. "I have no record of any transfer costing up to 4, 5, or 6 million euros," says Máximo López, who does know that there has been a million.

The stall owner disagrees with these figures and maintains that "these are groups that have become powerful," which dominate almost half of the market. "They've turned it into a low-class theme park, and that's what really pisses me off, because what's happening is very sad, and it's been due to the management that's been done," he laments. This management, the stall owner continues, "is what has allowed the Petràs stall to close. How do they expect to recover the essence of the market when they've destroyed an entire market institution, like Setas Petràs?" In this sense, Xavier Petràs, as he declared to ARA We eat He assures us that he will not sell his stall, despite having closed it, but will reopen it and adapt it to sell other products, in addition to the fresh produce he has been making all his life. The Petràs siblings, Xavier and Mercè, explained that they fought daily with tour operators and tourists who showed up at their stall and touched all the products without buying a single one or eating off the fresh produce. And all this is not to mention how Xavier Petràs heard everything they said about him, as if he were a figure in a museum, and not a vendor who needs to be stopped from staring and blocking his stall because he's there to sell.

Continuing with the question of prepared food, the Boqueria vendor says he's seen tourists who buy prepared food throw it away. "Then they'll go back to their country and explain that they ate so badly, and that's hurting me because I don't want the rumor to spread about the market that the food is so bad," he says.

Finally, Máximo López believes that the current state of La Boquería has been reached due to its great success. "It's a market where you can find up to 20,000 different products, where chefs from all over came to buy, and it was a shopping destination for nearby residents and the metropolitan area in general." It's also true that the nearby residents "have lower income levels than the average in other neighborhoods in the city," but La Boquería was a place where residents from other neighborhoods went. Meanwhile, journalist Marc Casanovas, author of the book A gastronomic opera. The life and death of Ramon Cabau, the soul of La Boqueria. (Ara Llibres), reinforces the thesis of the interviewed stallholder: "La Boqueria is an exoplanet outside the municipal market system, which is governed by exceptional laws. Today there are twenty empty stalls, and if any adventurous person wants to buy a concession for a hundred years, they will have to pay six and a half million euros, a staggering figure that does nothing to regulate the concentration."