Those who responded yesterday to the call of the artist Fito Conesa in the Oval Room of the Palau Nacional witnessed a prodigious event: the sleeping giant for half a century woke up during the minutes that the Oval sound installation lasted. (Close ). Over the course of months, Conesa has blown into the pipes of the damaged organ that presides over the room (it has a total of 11,117) and has been recording the sound obtained.
The result is a score in two acts that reverberated in the guts of those present, producing an overwhelming effect, unprecedented since 1974, when the organ stopped sounding sick with decrepitude. The instrument was accompanied by the voice of Maria Arnal, an artist always willing to explore the terra incognita that lies between art and technology.
In the manner of the fictitious doctor Frankenstein, who breathed life into inert matter in his laboratory in Ingolstad, the resurrectionist Conesa installed himself in the entrails of the beast – the organ is a hidden structure of three floors linked by stairs – to recreate the sound of this definitely unique instrument: it is a civil organ located in a public square (the Oval Hall of the MNAC) that for years was one of the main attractions of the city. In the past, people filled the Paseo de Maria Cristina on Sundays to listen to the music that came out of the tubes over the loudspeaker.
Left to its own devices due to sheer neglect, the organ awaits better times. There is an exciting project to recover it that evokes the deeds of modernism, because it combines crafts, art, technology and an educational vocation. It has the problem that it costs several million euros, but a city like Barcelona should find a way to carry it out with public-private collaboration. The centenary of the 1929 International Exhibition (and of the instrument itself) looms on the horizon as the perfect excuse.
Turning the restoration of the organ into a great citizen project would serve the greater cause of redefining Barcelona as a cultural, scientific and technological capital, always under the umbrella of innovation and entrepreneurship. The how and when should be central issues of the electoral campaign. The recovery of the instrument, the essential and urgent expansion of the MNAC, the urban articulation of the Montjuïc of culture, ideas, science and sport, in connection with other poles of the future –such as the Ciutadella del Coneixement or the axis of Glòries and 22@– deserve a good debate.
Reconsidering Montjuïc seriously will always be a reason for disagreement, since doing so implies addressing controversial issues such as security, traffic, the management of the Olympic facilities, budgetary priorities or the possibility of gaining green space at the expense of equipment now in disuse. But arguing about a mountain and a date (2029) that can serve to catalyze ideas and projects will always be more stimulating than continuing to debate whether or not one agrees that some streets of the Eixample become green axes.
Obstructing vehicle traffic in the urban center is an irreversible process in which most of the world's advanced cities are immersed. It can be done with more or less consensus or with more or less success in redistributing traffic and deciding the design, but not doing it is not an option: the long and hot summer of 2022 or the upcoming drought are just reminders of a climatic catastrophe that little by little, throughout the world, is awakening consciences.
In the same way that the ingenuity and tenacity of some artists have served to remind us that Barcelona treasures an organ that is unique in the world, reconquering Montjuïc with an ambitious look can boost Barcelona's self-esteem. There's still time. There are six years left for the symbolic date of 2029, the same ones that elapsed between the Olympic nomination and the opening of the Games on the magical mountain of Montjuïc.
