Letters to the Editor

The Sagrada Familia neighborhood, abandoned by God

Can you imagine if your neighborhood, town, or residential area were visited every day of the year by all the fans who fill the Montjuïc Olympic Stadium—55,000 people? Well, that's what's happening, nonstop, in the Sagrada Família neighborhood for several years, and with an increasing trend.

The latest official figures indicate that the Sagrada Família temple is visited by 20 million people each year. Last year, 4.8 million of these tourists entered the basilica. The rest remained outside, admiring the façades. The number of tourists is growing by 3% annually. In 2024, a new all-time record was broken, and the Sagrada Família raised €134 million. Not a single euro of that fortune was used to improve the neighborhood's conditions, although years ago an agreement was signed with Barcelona City Council to reinvest part of these business profits in the surrounding area. And the City Council has spent many years doing virtually nothing to resolve the numerous problems of all kinds caused by this overload. In the Sagrada Família neighborhood, we haven't noticed the Endreça Plan. Some buses break the rules and unload tourists on streets closest to Gaudí's temple, disrupting traffic in Valencia, Lepanto, and Mallorca and adding more smoke and noise to the surrounding shops. Wouldn't a place visited every day by a packed Montjuïc stadium deserve a city guard to enforce the ordinances? The current City Council—and previous ones—has pledged to ensure the maintenance of local and neighborhood commerce: fake newsThe entrances and platforms of the metro station on Line 5 are as narrow as they were half a century ago. The risk of falling on the tracks is high.

The City Council ignores the repeated complaints of the residents' association. It has simply announced that next year it will renovate one of the temple's squares, designed solely to accommodate more tourists. If we were as pious as Gaudí, we could say that Collboni has left the Sagrada Família neighborhood in a state of disrepair.

Andreu Farràs

Barcelona

To the good professionals who don't need to be heroes

On June 15th, shortly after 8:00 a.m., a pair of small blood clots roaming uncontrollably through my brain put me in the worst situation I'd ever suffered in a long and tense life filled with stories, scares, and the occasional accident. This writing is intended as a way of thanking and praising all the good professionals thanks to whom I'll be able to enjoy a second chance that certainly wasn't planned. It wasn't necessary to be heroes; simply—and this is no small feat—to believe in their profession and why they practice it to the best of their knowledge, so that a bad moment wouldn't be the last in our lives. Dozens of professionals joined forces in an empathetic chain with the sole goal of acting as quickly and effectively as possible to save a life. By placing their decisions in the hands of other professionals, all together, they achieved the heroic feat of reassuring my immediate family, the second victory of the day. The ambulance team arrived at my home in Torrefarrera within minutes, and from there, doctors, nurses, technicians, surgeons, caregivers, physiotherapists, rehabilitation specialists, and interns set off. In record time, they transported me from my home to the Arnau de Vilanova Hospital and from there, by helicopter, to Vall d'Hebron, where they ultimately made the vital decisions that, in just a few days, have made it possible for me to write this collective thank you today. I can't name names because I don't know most of them, but to all of them, as a family, we will dedicate every June 15th we have left to enjoy together.

Ignacio Calvo Rivas

Torrefarrera