"My generation is nostalgic for a past without so much technology"

There is a night in the life of actress and screenwriter Adriana Fuertes that she would love to turn into a film. It was summer and the inhabitants of Santa Margarita de Montbui had been excitedly talking for days about the visit they would receive from comedian Eugenio for the town's main festival. "I was little and I didn't really know who he was, but I have very clear memories of that night, of the people's joy and the sense of community, and of the smell of tobacco and grilled sardines. Back then we didn't need large infrastructures, the neighbors brought wooden chairs from home and in a moment a small theater had been set up. I remember the adults laughing at Eugenio's jokes, and the children playing in the background, and the pasodobles and the karaoke afterwards, where we sang Eva María se fue, buscando el sol en la playa".

"We were at a time when image didn't have as much value, there wasn't as much self-perception and as much vigilance about how we would be seen, I think we were more authentic. It comes up in many conversations around me: we are nostalgic for a past without so much technology," explains Fuertes. The afrofeminist creator says she greatly misses "this sense of freedom in relating to each other and building community, without the need to be constantly perfect for others." "All the people I remember from that night, all the Dolors and all the Pacos, I see them now and they haven't changed, they are like characters from Big Fish, immutable. They were people who didn't need to be original to exist and that's cool," reflects the creator.

As she grew up, Fuertes' summers changed, especially when she moved from the town to Barcelona, although she has always maintained the most important thing: "My need to build community".

Now, she shares her summers with the young neighbors of the Gothic Quarter, with whom she spends hours and hours in the cool of the rooftops. "One summer we took a course on fresh summer dinners at Pati Llimona and then we invented a kind of graduation where we invited all the neighbors to try different tartares, salmon, tuna, and meat, it was very cool".

"My summers in Barcelona are on friends' rooftops: we meet at their homes because we spend less than in bars, it's precarious," says Fuertes, who, despite this, claims: "I am in love with the city and I love seeing its grandeur from a rooftop". 

But not everything is romanticizable, assures the screenwriter, who for some years has suffered from overtourism in the neighborhood: “I admit that I have thrown water and some eggs at tourists making noise at four in the morning”.