Gothic literature became popular in the late 18th century and spread nightmares among readers for much of the 19th century, with well-known examples such as Frankenstein (1818), by Mary W. Shelley, Wuthering Heights (1847), by Emily Brontë, The strange case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), by Robert Louis Stevenson and Dracula (1897), by Bram Stoker. Two centuries later, Núria Gómez Gabriel (Barcelona, 1987) and Ingrid Guardiola (Girona, 1980), writers, university lecturers and art curators, have set out to revive Gothic "anachronistically and queer to speak of those feminine emanations of a supernatural, morbid, mysterious, tremendous, and even abject character, which have resisted opprobrium, defamation, or extreme violence". The protagonists of the essay they have written on the subject four-handed, Gothic feminism (H&O Editorial, 2026), are writers like Virginie Despentes, Mariana Enriquez, Dolors Miquel, Mónica Ojeda and Samanta Schweblin, but also filmmakers like Sofia Coppola and Julia Ducornau and artists like Louise Bourgeois, Paula Rego and Remedios Varo.

It is a pity – not for us alone, but for the whole world – that we do not have more of a taste for our Gothic painting. Romanesque is certainly more accessible to us because of the influence it had on the avant-garde of the 20th century, Catalan painting which, due to temporal proximity, we value more. But what a pleasure we miss by not celebrating painters like Bernat Martorell or Lluís Borrassà to the same extent!

Up to 47 shuttered businesses - nine of which have a "to let" sign - in a street with about seventy premises. This is the image of the pandemic offered by Carrer Ferran, the main street that connects Rambla de Barcelona with Plaça de Sant Jaume, and whose rate of economic recovery, lacking the usual tourist dominance, has fallen far behind the city's average, which already operates at 87%. The centre is lagging behind at a different speed, with a level of recovery of about 60% - and this is noticeable in a flagrant way in a Carrer Ferran devoid of the usual bustle of visitors, with only a minority of shops resisting. "The trouble is that this has ceased being a neighbourhood and the shops have been focusing on tourists," laments Angela Calvet, from the artisan leather goods store Calpa, after surveying the state of the street.