Venice, mirror of Barcelona?

It seems to me that what happens in Venice will happen to the rest of the world. Look, for example, at the spritz, that orange drink –Aperol (for non-Venetians)– or red –Campari or Select (for Venetians)–. From a local custom, it has become a global phenomenon that, at times, becomes disgusting, especially if you see some tourists who, while having dinner, drink one without thinking that the spritz is only taken as an aperitif.

Or the unease towards tourists, which, as my friend Enric Bou writes in his latest book, Venice, city of losses, already manifested with Henry James: first, he defined them as barbarians.

Or let's think about the super-block concept brought to Barcelona by Mayor Colau, so loved by Italians, the left-wing ones. Yes, because Venice is an immense pedestrian super-block, for centuries and without the need for a Colau. Where the vaporetti move at a speed comparable to that authorized for cars wanting to enter thesuper-blocks and where property prices rise with incivility, curiously proportional to the transformation of streets into pedestrian zones: the fewer cars, the more incivility.

Venice is a large old town, uncomfortable like all old towns, because you cannot reach it by private transport. You have to carry your shopping with a carretto, a fundamental tool for all Venetians, and carry it up to a flat without a lift, after having crossed bridges, and perhaps in an area where the acqua alta still reaches.

Who would want to live in such a complicated place? Much better Mestre, on the mainland, where houses are cheap and if you want to go for a barbecue with friends you don't have to take a vaporetto, bus, train, and car and go loaded like a mule.

The truth is that many, many friends of mine, ex-Venetians, would not live in Venice for anything in the world.

Let's think about the Old Town of Barcelona. A Barcelonian with two fingers of forehead would never live there: the stench (like in Venice), the incivility (like in Venice), the discomfort (like in Venice), the lack of local shops (like in Venice..., but it's not true) mean that only immigrants and expats have made Ciutat Vella not an uninhabited territory.

Do you think that in Ciutat Vella 55% of the residents are foreigners, when in the 90s there were only 541 (I'm looking for their names). Without these people from outside it would be like El Monegros! In Venice there are no immigrants: they all stay in Mestre, which is more economical and in recent years has replaced the local population thanks to the interests of the powerful shipbuilding industry Fincantieri, which needs cheap labor coming from Bangladesh (by the way, in Italy we don't say paki, we say bangla). If Venice, therefore, is a large old town where foreigners are lacking, can we say that the alternatives are these? Either expats or a sort of Venetian Raval?

The reality is that expats would only come to Venice if we had the climate of Barcelona. If Barcelona's climate were not what it is, the expats would move within a couple of days.

Let's rule it out, then. Shall we then make an agreement with the Fincantieri company and provide accommodation in the city for citizens from Bangladesh who have colonized Mestre? It could work, but it would lose some magic. Gondoliers from Bangladesh? Sarde in saor with curry? Never! Besides, it would be postponing the problem, because in a few years the people from Bangladesh would become Venetians and would want to move to Mestre because they wouldn't want to go with carretto trampling on bridges.

I'll tell you something. The futurists were right, with this program: eliminate the gondolas, fill in the smaller canals, build metal bridges and factories, turn Venice into a military power.

If Venice is a paradigm, put dynamite in the foundations of all Gaudí's buildings, bomb the beaches of Barcelona and above all eliminate Barça and leave only Espanyol.

Well, I'll leave you, I have to check-in some tourists arriving today.