Rope, well known in Baro Towerhe hardly remembers having seen lights of Christmas hanging in the neighborhood, at a steep end of Barcelona. “20 or 25 years ago we found some and put them up, but there were only three. We had never had anything else until now,” clarifies Rope, a participant in the celebration with which this Friday the 13 arches of light forged by the neighbors were lit to illuminate the streets. The event has been quite an event, massive and bustling, for a neighborhood with less than 3,000 inhabitants: the occasion deserved it, because it is the first time that the Christmas decoration illuminates that corner of Nou Barris.
The absence of lighting hurt like a disparagement in Torre Baró, located in Collserola. “We are a neighborhood of workers and emigrants. It has always been very vindictive”, remembers Rope. Hence, to join the normality of dressing up for Christmas, the neighborhood has done it in its own way: adults and children have met for just over two months to draw some figures that, drawn with strips of small light bulbsrefer to the fights who have forged the particular identity of the place, in constant pulse since the Franco regime to overcome the deficiencies that they have disconnected him from the rest of the city.
“It’s as if part of our lives are set in the lights,” describes Rafaela Macarro. She has collaborated creating the arches, taking the photos that the neighbors have contributed as a pattern. One of the light boxes reproduces a snapshot of the women of the neighborhood. Another is a copy of some protesters who raise a slogan that is unavoidable in all manifestation in the area: ‘Torre Baró exists and resists’. “It is the one we always carry when we have had to cut the road,” Rafaela illustrates. Here we have always blocked the streets, the Meridiana or the highway to get things. We already did it when we didn’t have light neither sewerage. There are still many things missing and we have to continue fighting.
There is no lack of the profile of a wild pig, like those that sometimes swarm around these places. There is also an illuminated figure that is a portrait of Rope. Or a self-portrait, rather: he himself has modeled the silhouette which recreates him sitting on a bench, proof that he is an intrinsic part of this neighborhood hanging over the city. “I always sit there to watch the kids playing in the street. A neighbor saw me and took a photo of me. ‘We’ll use it for Christmas lights,’ she told me.” No sooner said than done.
A movie feat
Above all protests that Torre Baró has fought, the epic kidnapping of a bus on line 47 in 1978 stands out. The episode will soon reach the cinema, starring Eduard Fernández, who plays Manuel Vital, driver and resident of the place, who wanted to prove to his bosses that public transport was capable of going up the slopes of Collserola and alleviating the isolation that its inhabitants accused. Obviously, the feat deserves its own ornament luminous. It has been installed on one of the streets where the bus descended after passing through the neighborhood.
They also recreate the paellas with which the neighborhood has come together. Pepi Ábalos’s parents appear there. “They are no longer here and he is a pride see them,” he admits. “My parents were one of those who went down to block the road,” he continues. When I was little, they put me in the front row of demonstrations to have a bus, electricity, a market… Now we still have problems with the bus and lack of coverage. But we feel a love towards the neighborhood that no longer exists elsewhere. We belong to Barcelona and we pay taxes like in Pedralbes, but we are one of the most forgotten. “There are children here who did not understand that there were no lights on the streets.”
“It’s about time we had them. “We are also Barcelona,” Rafaela postulates. “We were disappointed that we never had any street lights. And since there wasn’t any, people filled the windows and the balconies “of lights as if it were Las Vegas,” he compares.
From 12 to 80 years
“Christmas lights are normally connected to shops. But, of course, in the neighborhood we don’t have any businesses,” says Valeria Ortiz, president of the Torre Baró Neighborhood Association. “With the lack of street light, we neighbors became very exaggerated in decorating our houses. Now it has been three years since we neighbors got together and decorated a small pine tree and a railing… Now it has been very touching. “We have been able to bring together people of different nationalities, from 80 to 12 years old, to set up the lights.”
Related news
The idea arose in a assembly of neighbors, a year and a half ago. “It is a neighborhood with a lot of history working and demanding. It was important that it be portrayed and it is a way for the neighbors to make the lights their own,” says Joan Ortega, social integrator in Torre Baró.
The City Council has facilitated the financing through Pla de Barris and the Raval Km0 collective, it has collaborated in the design of lighting. “It was one demand history and, creating figures about the historical memory and identity of the neighborhood, the stake in the neighborhood,” highlights Patricia Polo, project manager for the Pla de Barris in the northern area. In Vallbona and Meridian Cityadjacent to Torre Baró, are already asking that, next year, the same Christmas lighting be extended to their streets.