Three young people from the Carmel neighborhood have a vermouth and an aperitif in folding chairs around a beach table on the sidewalk of Marià Lavèrnia street, a few meters from the blessed Turó de la Rovira viewpoint. "Luckily the urban guards have not told us anything, that it would only be missing...". Meanwhile, the corresponding flood of tourists every weekend heads up the steep slope. "No, they don't have parties anymore, and there aren't so many messes anymore," these neighbors continue. "But, come on, the bunkers stayed, little by little they kicked us out of there." "And they say that the solution is to fence them off, the bunkers. Why do they have to put fences on our own house?" "Of course I feel bad, right there my grandfather built a shack, and right here my father built this house." "And with the nonsense of that movie by Mario Casas that made them fashionable ten years ago, we were left out." “They took a part of our neighborhood.”
It is not simply a problem of public order, even of mobility, in fact not strictly of civility either... but of the progressive wear and tear of that intangible heritage that mitigates globalization, which makes up the identities of the neighbourhoods. “We have been warning about this for many years, because Barcelona City Council has been promoting what it calls the decentralization of tourism for a long time, but without addressing the needs of the neighborhood,” laments Montse Montero, from the Carmel neighborhood association. Al Carmel was not prepared for this. And in the end it all got out of hand. We go from avalanche to avalanche. These days they stopped the illegal parties, well, very well. But a much stronger municipal plan is needed to rescue the bunkers from this overcrowding that did nothing but expel us from a place that was very much ours, which is no longer ours... I can't go there anymore. It's just that the last time I went I felt terrible. They are taking away our identity, our history, our neighborhood”.
And, meanwhile, the visitors continue to climb, all the while, with their cans of drinks and their bags of chips, crowding the line buses at times, forming a tremendous human anthill, very willing to take an obligatory, essential and fundamental selfie. , also following through their mobile devices the indications and recommendations that in a lot of languages run through social networks... Guiri, get out, see a graffiti on the asphalt, one of many. Because one can no longer spend a few days in Barcelona without stopping at the Carmel bunkers. Like throwing a coin into that fountain in Rome... Some residents are so upset that they defaced some of the indicative signs that lead to the place, such as the one at the exit of the inclined elevator that shortens the very steep path. The signal war is, however, more bloody in the nearby Vallcarca neighbourhood. There some sabotage the signals and others repair them. The ills of the Gòtic, Barceloneta, and Sagrada Família neighborhoods are also now commonplace in the mountains. The city does not resolve its outstanding issues. Hence, the neighborhood movement on this side of the city is revitalizing at times. The latest exhibition is the Consell Veïnal del Turó de la Rovira, the recent and spontaneous union of the residents of Mühlberg, Gran Vista, Doctor Bové, Marià Labèrnia, Labèrnia and Turó de la Rovira streets.
“All this began with Xavier Trias as mayor, who began with that of promoting and decentralizing tourism in Barcelona –Fran Bernal, one of his representatives from this new entity, and also from another more veteran association, the Parque Mixto Turó residents, spoke. de la Rovira–, and then, during the last two terms, Mayor Ada Colau and her partner Jaume Collboni insisted on that idea without doing anything to mitigate its consequences. The restrictions on the tourist industry in the center of the city increased the pressure on the rest of the neighbourhoods. Together they are selling us to this business, like the rest of Barcelona. If they don't reduce the number of visitors, all they do will be band-aids. With the aggravating circumstance that on top of that we are a neighborhood with an urban involvement of more than half a century, with around 300 homes pending the pillory, to finish turning at any time into a great theme park for visitors. That is why we also demand disaffection, so that they do not take us out of the way. Are the neighbors bothering us? Is that why they are letting everything degrade? we are a whole neighborhood in a situation of vulnerability.”
Who here hasn't heard a little story from their grandfather or great-grandfather, from when that Italian air force bombarded the whole of Barcelona viciously? these bunkers are still here much more than a privileged viewpoint. And the shacks that people later built right here are also a source of neighborhood pride. Because those shantytowns also represent a neighborhood united in the face of adversity, a neighborhood on the fringes where people lived from doors to the outside, because only in this way could they survive, always going together, helping to take care of the children, sharing pots. Maybe it's an idealized memory. It used to happen. Here, to the bunkers, for years, many thieves from all over the city also flocked to calmly strip stolen motorcycles. But it is also the memory that many people still treasure on these streets and paths. Hence so much discomfort. Here they are very proud of what they were.
The City Council is trying to remove the bunkers from the tourist guides, ensuring that neither an advertisement nor another film called for youth success is recorded here again, designing new policies that attract a visitor more interested in the historical legacy of the place last the fencing off the area... But the municipal measures will take a long time to counteract the suggestive publications in Italian on Tik Tok that explain the most convenient way to get there, that promise you an evening like no other, that invite you to post your selfie as soon as possible ...
