This Sunday, all the eyes of those who were walking through Plaza Catalunya and the nearby area of Paseo de Gràcia were directed to the heights. From the first hour of the day a double tape that at a great height It linked the Telefónica and Generali towers through the air. They are 350 meters away that Nathan Paulin He began to walk calmly when it was around 8:00 p.m., leaving from the building located in Plaza Catalunya. This ‘crack’ of the ‘highline’, the slackline at high altitude, trusts in his enormous talent and experience. He has been practicing since he was 17 years old.almost half of his life.
His performance transformed the landscape of the center of the Catalan capital. She was impressive to see him walking in the void At 70 meter high. “What captivates me about walking on a rope is the concentration it demands. It’s like meditating,” this lover of mountain sports had declared to El Periódico a few days before. His feet clung to a two-centimeter-wide nylon webbing to which your safety harness is also attached.
“What captivates me about walking on a rope is the concentration it demands. It’s like meditating”
The poetic and air show of the Grec Festival is a popular opening that has served to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Paseo de Gràcia. The famous avenue that was closed to traffic between four and six in the morning to be able to install the Paulin tape in the center of Barcelona. And the circulation was also cut in the center of the city in the afternoon so that the public could contemplate the show.
Round trip
Paulin traversed the sky twice, back and forth, traveling 700 meters before the hallucinated gaze of the people while his thoughts could be heard. They came through loudspeakers, translated and dubbed into Catalan by an actor, along with a musical composition.
The tightrope walker considers that the objective of ‘Les traceurs’, that is the name of the poetic proposal that he has made with the stage direction of Rachid Ouramdane and that has already been seen in other places, is not only to entertain. It aspires to make people dream and reflect on the capacity of the human being. After all, who has not found themselves on a tightrope at some time, balancing to make ends meet, to maintain their determined course or his convictions? There are many metaphors applicable to that void in which Paulin moves.
Open your eyes and change your attitude towards the discipline you practice, a sport born in the mountains of Yosemite (USA) in the 80s which is prohibited in many places, is another of its objectives. As he himself has confessed, “the most complicated thing is not to walk on the tape but to obtain the permits to be able to do it”.
no special suit
Unlike superheroes like Spiderman, Batman or Superman, Paulin does not need a suit or cape. She is barefoot and dressed in simple jeans and a striped T-shirt. She doesn’t even use a chest for balance. She goes empty-handed. She doesn’t need anything else. Her concentration, her physical form and her belief in himself are enough for him. She feels so comfortable in the void that she even sat down to meditate and stretched on the treadmill to the surprise of those who followed her hallucinated. “What the hell!” said a boy. “Ai, ai, ai”, said an older lady with her soul in suspense. “How exciting!” said another person who was watching from a little crowded Plaza Catalunya.
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The wide area closed to traffic in the area made it possible to comfortably follow the poetic action of Paulin who had completed the tour twice in just over 35 minutes. When he first arrived at the Generali Tower, people began to applaud rhythmicallyThe same thing happened when he reached the end of the journey at the Telefónica Tower, where he sat for a while, on top of the building, admiring Barcelona from a bird’s eye view. Those who saw it live will not forget it. It was an experience.
Paulin, by the way, is not the first tightrope walker to cross the skies of Barcelona. On November 11, 1934, a tightrope walker used the cable from which hung an advertisement for the latest Hollywood premiere, ‘Tarzan y su compañera’ to fly through the skies across Calle Pelayo through the air.