Since ancient times, the sparrows have turned the trees of the Rambla into their place of refuge and rest, not only at night. I suspect that they were attracted as soon as that important road axis was generously treed; And in the walled city there was no other complex as dense and attractive. But it did not happen from the first day, but when the shade trees finally took root strongly and definitively; This continues to this day, and may it last, since at various times there were repeated temptations to cut them down.
It was preferable that this species populated the bower, rather than pigeons: they would have spoiled the entire place with their excrement.
The citizens soon became accustomed to their presence, and did not give them much importance; not even poets, more attracted and inspired by flowers. I believe that the presence of the birders also favored it, because when they set up and dismantled their stalls (their fixed huts were not planted until 1968) they left traces of food on the ground.
“An hour later I am in the heat of the Rambla. (…) Between the bed of the trees, where a million sparrows screech and chat, the human river flows, in an uncontained movement.” He had to be, therefore, a foreigner, who sang them; and in this case it was one of the greats: Rubén Darío, with one of his passionate Barcelona proses.
The discretion that characterizes sparrows makes them go unnoticed. A reader made me discover that they also populate a Plaza Catalunya so dominated by pigeons; He summoned me at five in the afternoon; As soon as he approached, they recognized him and came to peck at what he offered them daily.
It was during the endless pandemic that we glimpsed them for the first time and at any time when they were attracted to streets that were never so deserted and never so quiet.
The master photographer Català-Roca told me that when he tried to capture them in their tree stands on the Rambla, he recognized that they appeared at dusk, which forced him to incorporate the help of the flash. Being so reluctant to use such a device, since it distorted the atmosphere that it offered at that moment under natural light, he had no choice but to capture them at a slightly earlier hour and with less presence.
