Barcelona is, for better and for worse, a postcard again

The title of this chronicle could be said to be copyrighted. It is the one that the Italian filmmaker Christian Nicoletta has added to an interesting documentary, ‘live in a postcard‘, that this week was screened in Barceloneta as a prelude to a later round table on the impact of tourism in that neighborhood and that, eyewitnesses say, it was seismic, let’s say a 6 on the scale of the Assembly Richter. Nicoletta, present, could not believe it. That was Wednesday. This Saturday, the city showed a tourist aspect that could be said to be already pre-pandemic. 17% of the city’s hotels are still closed, but those open face Easter with forecasts of 85% occupancy, a remarkable high if one takes into account that half the world, the Asian, for example, still does not travel. The postcard, for better and for worse, has returned.

La Sagrada Família (let this serve as a thermometer of the situation) was at mid-morning, as in the good times for the patronage that manages the works, literally surrounded by heads looking at the sky. They have also returned, to the astonishment of the native population, the long queues for ‘brunch’, as if their faithful distrusted the local diet. That Rambla that asked the average Barcelonan for help to help it cross the pandemic desert is once again offering giant cocktails of various colors on its terraces, all of them almost luminescent.

Macedonian provenances

Barcelona, ​​that is the official thesis, is at the forefront of the most desirable international destinations in these uncertain times due to health and war. Noticeable. The visitors’ salad, however, is not that of the last wave. Hotels and tourist apartments are now filled, above all, by Europeans, with a irish special barrageSpaniards from the rest of the autonomous communities and, gladly, as befits, Americans.

That is the postcard, a misleading term, Nicoletta, because on postcards they usually show something that does not exist, beautifully empty landscapes, Casa Batlló, for example, without those fences to organize the queues that eat up half the sidewalk and for which nobody, curiously , protest. In ‘Living in a postcard’, a documentary screened within the framework of the Human Rights Film Festival of Catalonia, it is shown how different European tourist destinations fared before and during the pandemic. She appears there, of course, Venice, which Dante forgot to include in his fourth circle of hell. Also Barcelonawhich gives as an example of a happy anomalyas a place where the authorities, little for some, a lot for others, have decided to act. London It has its section in the documentary for the tourist fair in which the distribution of the cake seems to be decided. An idyllic norwegian fjord is the dissonant note of the documentary. The starting point of all this, however, is Cinque Terrethe incomparable portion of the Italian coast that bathes the Ligurian Sea where the director is a native, a postcard that several months a year is more like a theme park with no capacity limita place capable of pretending that Tossa de Mar is in summer even as Ava Gardner toured it when in 1951 she shot ‘Pandora and the Flying Dutchman’ on its beaches, a romantic fishing village.

documentary available

Related news

The documentary, if you like, is available on the RTVE website and from Monday it will be available on the website of ‘impactfilmfest‘. It is the latest release on this subject. It portrays Cinque Terre with and without tourists. It does the same with Venice, although that was a recurring photograph of confinement in the media. From Barcelona, ​​it is remembered what the climate was (not the weather) in some neighborhoods of the city before the pandemic stopped practically everything.

In his own way, in short, this Saturday April 9, 2022prelude to a Holy Week that could be like that of 2019, can be taken as date of return to tourist normality, yes, with a singularity. The usual let out before entering will be, according to the authorities of the sector, less orderly than on previous occasions. Barcelonans who can afford it will travel, but the destinations seem to be closer. That is why hotel occupancy during the Holy Week holidays will be almost 100% in some areas of Catalonia.

ttn-24