From Bodega Fermín to 'smash burger'

Fermín could not go to summer camp because of some inopportune mumps. He was devastated. It was his greatest wish. He spent his holidays at his grandparents' house, in Peñíscola, where in 1961 the film El Cid, starring Charlton Heston, was filmed. Now, fully recovered, he has settled back into his parents' home in La Barceloneta. He is tanned, blonder, with curly hair, without the shaved sides he had been wearing lately. The beginning of a mane, like his friend Ferran, who changed schools this year, has been wearing for some time.

As soon as he entered the street, he saw that the sign for Bodega Fermín, which is right under his house, had been put back up. When he left for vacation they had taken it down, but it seems the City Council has pardoned it and it is once again shining on the facade. Neither he nor his family have anything to do with the winery, but Fermín couldn't be more motivated by the fact that the winery bears his name; his name on the facade of the building where he lives, what a great thing!

Pardons like this make you wonder what the criteria really are when taking such a step. Without a doubt, the recent trend of highlighting bars and wineries that already existed, as well as establishments created anew to imitate that 70s and 80s image, including dishes as popular as tripe, fricandó, macaroni, meatballs, or gildas (we are very creative). The aesthetic of the sign is copied so that people think the place is genuine, when in reality it has only been there for a few months. The name is also a bet along these lines. Either as a new establishment or by highlighting the old one. Bar Bocata, Los Tortillez, Bar Canyí, Bodega Josefa, Bar Mundial, Ultramarinos Marín. Or even resorting to the term "colmado" accompanying any name to reinforce this old identity. Perhaps 20 years ago this pardon would not have happened, and this is where the paradox is seen: Fermín's sign was not saved by a real desire to protect the neighborhood, but by the luck of coinciding with this fever for nostalgia for what is kitsch. If it had been from another, less fashionable decade, it would have gone straight to the dump.

Saving Fermín is a victory, indisputably, but the rescue arrives late and pushed by an aesthetic trend rather than a criterion of neighborhood protection. Because while we join the party of nostalgia for a single sign, the relentless advance of gentrification continues to transform the rest of the neighborhood through other formats. The daily reality of Barcelona translates into a clonic aesthetic where LED screens, standardized menus, and bright white light boxes coexist. Many of these little boxes protrude perpendicularly from the wall, like the banners that were hung in many shops in the 2000s, when one did not want to be as popular as now but rather more elegant. The City Council pardons an isolated symbol, but allows this entire amalgam to homogenize the real landscape of the neighborhood under a varnish of false authenticity.