Readings, identity, and luxury stores

The other day, one weekday afternoon, I passed through one of the most touristy areas of the center of Barcelona. I was heading to Casa Amatller to participate in a book club I had been invited to. The activity is organized by Cases Singulars, the entity that manages the schedule in various heritage sites in Barcelona, such as private houses, libraries, and palaces.

Casa Museu Amatller is a neighbor of the well-known Casa Batlló and is where the industrialist Antoni Amatller – of Chocolates Amatller – and his daughter Teresa lived. The original 1900 furniture and their art collections are preserved there.

Before arriving, I took a stroll through that part of Passeig de Gràcia and Consell de Cent. The area was packed, as usual, and the crowd strolled around, dazed, arms laden with bags from luxury stores, their gaze raised to contemplate the buildings. On Consell de Cent, a Black man was playing the saxophone, sitting on a bench, and the soundtrack created a cinematic atmosphere. The temperature was pleasant, the trees (or perhaps the air fresheners from the shops) released a fresh and sweet scent. At first glance, everything was beautiful, but after only a few minutes, you realized you were walking through a kind of theme park or movie set. The shop windows gleamed, and the prices discreetly placed in a corner made you give up on the mere act of entering "to take a look." The bars and cafes advertised brunch, lunch, snacks, Aperol Spritzand the inevitable tapas. They didn't invite me to go in for a coffee that I would have to pay a fortune for either.

I thought about all the times I've visited foreign tourist cities, Paris, Rome, Florence, Prague, London, and, from the bus, or walking among the crowds, I wondered what it must be like to live in that city, to live your daily life in those streets that I admired. Now we are them. Barcelonans and the rest of Catalans, when we walk through Barcelona, are the locals, trying to go about our lives, ignoring the crowds who only visit the city for a few days.

We are the Romans who, instead of getting excited in front of the Colosseum, try to avoid it to get from one place to another. We are the Parisians who don't go near the Eiffel Tower unless it's out of necessity. It has happened to us and there's no going back.

With these thoughts in mind, I later shared a good time with about twenty-five people who had read one of my novels. Hidden in Antoni Amatller's old photography studio, we talked about literature, the passage of time, and family, like a small oasis that reconnected me with language and culture, with the seemingly simple but increasingly unattainable feeling of being who we are.

When it ended, one of the members of the book club gave me a book. It is called The Grandfather's Secrets and it was written by him, Josep Alonso, because his children and grandchildren asked him to write down the memory of a rather unique life. Six hundred and thirty-three pages and a watercolor made by himself to illustrate the cover.

Things like this help us know who we are, between luxury brands and Aperol Spritz's orangey glasses.