Today's Barcelona was born from a boom-boom. Hiroshima my loveThe demolition of the walls in the 19th century. Without a nuclear explosion, there is no love. As a Barcelonian said in 1854: Barcelona explodes and we fall in love… with a new Barcelona. Without the first great explosion, there wouldn't be the other two major upheavals: the War-Dictatorship, which is the transition from a free city to an occupied one. And the final explosion: the Olympic atomic dog, Cobi. A grand finale that leads us to the Barcelona of today, ripped open and with pieces damaged by the city's skin. And the umbilical cord?
Passeig de Gràcia. It unites the old mother with the children. New and adopted: Eixample, Gràcia, Sarrià… Barcelona was a coitus interruptus. Locked away. And away was that road towards the mountains, pure Far West with grassy clouds strolling by. Passeig de Gràcia is the escalator of the city we know. Barcelona is Barcelonian. Perhaps it has been the clearest reflection of the Barcelona that has passed on the keys to the last few centuries. Let's heed Robert Robert's advice. He flew out of the city walls and wrote this in 1865:
"Let them say what they want, there's nothing like Passeig de Gràcia! Passeig de Gràcia. Every foreigner is asked: 'Have you seen Passeig de Gràcia yet?' The liveliness of Passeig de Gràcia in summer begins at daybreak. They carry their breakfast wrapped in a blue checkered handkerchief. At the same time, people come down with them to sell chickens, bundles of garlic and onions, peppers and tomatoes, eggplants and eggs and fruit. [...]. On Sundays the scene is even livelier. There are families of artisans who, earning little money, unable to indulge in any amusements, resign themselves to their lot if every Sunday they can go to Passeig de Gràcia for hot chocolate..."
Xicra de cacao is: Passeig de Gràcia. Story of a familyBy Roger Bastida (Comanegra). Fiction of reality. Passeig de Gràcia from 1854 to 1952 as a great umbilical cord connecting three lineages: the aristocratic Castelljussà family, who saw in the construction of the city walls and the explosion of the Passeig their own demise and that of the world of yesterday; the bourgeois Massanas, now wealthy, who saw the Passeig as their showcase of social explosion; and the Farrés family, artisans from the surrounding countryside who glimpsed the Barcelona dream with a crackling sound on the Passeig. All Catalans. And yes, the immigrants were also Catalans. And so much more… The author finishes the book in 1990, the year of his birth and before the Cobi bombing. Questions on the cord.
Has the city of umbilical interclassism burst? Is the Passeig the stage for Barcelona's next boom? If it was once a mirror of everyone's feelings, is it now only a mirror for a few? What would the walled aristocrats say today? And the dazzled bourgeoisie? And the back-dead artisans? Would these social classes unite and become one against today's booming Barcelona? Can the city die of love? And can Barcelona belong to those who don't love it?
