The awakening of La Rambla

After a year of pandemic drowsiness, La Rambla begins its slow awakening to recover its image as Barcelona's iconic postcard. Outside cafés offering a coffee and a jar of juice for €7, there are many empty chairs and there are still few customers interested in a cup with a multicoloured Gaudí decoration or a Barça shirt. Still, traders are confident that with the new regulations to enter Spain, they can begin to put an end to a long hiatus of inactivity and losses.

The Spanish government's relaxation of access measures coincides with rapid vaccination, which has meant that there are already three million Catalans who have received at least one dose, representing 45% of the population over 16 years of age. And they have already begun to immunise those aged 40 to 49 years with the Janssen monodose vaccine, which will greatly expand immunological coverage in the face of the danger posed by the contagious Delta variant - the scientific name for the Indian variant. The evolution of the epidemiological data also helps to maintain optimism because, although transmission remains stable, protection of the most vulnerable groups is noticeable and hospitals are under less pressure than a few weeks ago.

Despite the fact that this has been the first weekend in which foreign visitors - French, above all - have disembarked in a more obvious way where before covid crowds of tourists strolled, now you can contemplate La Rambla and stop at any point along the way without the risk of being engulfed. "Until I see this full of tourists I won't believe it," says Agustín Castro, of the Martos kiosk, next to Colom. Having been on the Rambla for 40 years, he admits that the day "is dead" and that it will be hard to resurrect the prepandemic rhythm, partly because there are a handful of businesses who have not withstood the crisis and have closed down. Others have recovered their usual opening times, but have kept workers on furlough awaiting what may happen in the next few days. The first cruise ships are not expected until the end of June; they will also greatly benefit businesses.

Maite Collado - who has spent 32 years working on La Rambla- still believes its revival will take time. As a sign of the exceptionality of the situation, she explains that in her souvenir stand they have gone from selling pins and postcards to masks for covid. On the side section, Parminder Singh distracts himself by looking at his phone "because no one comes in". Barcelona t-shirts fill the shelves and, like other merchants, he admits that not even the arrival of tourists will make business owners buy more stock. "The warehouses are full of everything we didn't sell last year," he says. "I need tourists, they make up 90-95% of my income," cries Jordi Castro, in front of the kiosk Tallers, who does not plan on bringing his workers out of furlough.

There are still few tourists lugging suitcases. Where before English or French was heard, it is now Catalan and Castilian, spoken by residents and visitors from outside the city. The Garcia-Riera family have come from Manresa taking advantage of the fact that "there is free parking and you can enter the city in an old car". However, they are not sure about staying on La Rambla for lunch. Laughing, they say they fear being ripped off, yet they are aware that "these are the last days before the tourists regain ground". A waitress admits that the more tourists are around, the more expensive the price of drinks has become, but secretly there is "a price for the locals".

These days the Barcelona City Council and the association Friends of the Rambla are launching the campaign Baixa a la Rambla, an initiative for locals ro reclaim the space. "We would like the place of tourists to be occupied by locals," says Fermín Villar, president of the organisation, who regrets that in the 15 months of forced interruption "nothing has been done" to impose quality controls on businesses and prevent the Rambla from being "the Tijuana of Europe".