Of triumphant dreams and senile scholarships

In The Jews, miracle, one of Berlanga's best films, there is a small town that thrives on the activity of a spa. It is a decrepit, obsolete establishment that requires expensive and urgent renovations. The authorities face the following dilemma: if they don't do the renovations, the tourists won't come; but if the tourists don't come, they won't be able to do the renovations. Etc. Someone then has an idea: simulate a supernatural apparition. The great Pepe Isbert falls in charge of playing the role of the apocryphal saint. His apparitions—always on Thursdays—are increasingly sophisticated: colored lights, fireworks, music. Does all this sound familiar? Around the year 2000, the city of Barcelona needed to renovate its particular post-Olympic spa. There are people who live off the rent, but we go further: we live off the old rent of Gothic and Modernism. However, just as in The Jews, miracle, we had to find a way to square the circle. Around 2000, we needed a miraculous appearance. It had been in the works since 1996 and finally arrived in 2004 with the Forum of Cultures and its saints of intercultural dialogue, sustainability, and, above all, the blurring of one's own identity. A quarter of a century ago, the city streets once again felt that light, pleasant breeze that money creates when it circulates in abundance. Three things were happening that are worth remembering: the urban development projects of 22@ and the Forum area, the consolidation of the city as a mass tourist destination, and the imminent euro.

It had been only eight years since the Olympic thing had transformed the city into a huge set that was intended to sweep away the old strata of urban putrefaction accumulated since the developmentalismBack then, Barcelona smelled of industrial paint and nervous money, and the sweat of athletes mingled with the expensive perfume of divas. To the sound of solemn hymns, credit cards of the time betrayed euphoria and traces of cocaine. It was as if the city had been graced with a second chance. in extremisFrom the sketches that fantasized about the great public works related first to the Olympics and then to the Fòrum, to the humid September of 2025, a lot has happened. Nothing smells new anymore, and what was once groundbreaking design or arrogant urban planning—those bars with impossible stools, those brutalist reinforced concrete plazas, that paradoxically baroque minimalism—now has the aftertaste of a sexagenarian with a wig, a dyed mustache, and a problematic prostate. A sort of unwritten decree established that the city's destiny was the monoculture of tourism, accompanied by embarrassing vagueness about the age of knowledge and other postmodern metanarratives. This mood has spread beyond the Besòs and Llobregat regions. Barcelona's peculiar reinvention has fatally affected the rest of Catalonia, relegated to the lackluster role of the city's backyard of wonders. It is practically impossible for a young, middle-class couple to enjoy a home of the same size and in the same neighborhood as their parents'. A decade ago, they went to Sant Cugat or Cerdanyola. Today, they simply flee aimlessly, many miles from their place of origin. Or, to put it institutionally and euphemistically, "they are betting on the fourth crown." In the Barcelona masterfully portrayed by Melchor Comes in The man who sold the world Fake Venetian canals have been built, and many people wear masks on the streets. I find it very realistic.