Option A, the most common: go to this or that Mercè stage in search of this, that or that number that is enthusiastically described in the hand program. Option B, a novelty in this edition: that Mercè comes to look for you when you have simply gone out for a walk. Well, the main festival, that is, option B, has been experienced this 2023, timidly but deliciously, in the reborn Consell de Cent street, without announced schedules and almost without prior notice. It has been a trial. It was intended, under the heading ‘Oasi Mercè Arts de Carrer’, that those who did not yet know about the redevelopment of this street did so with the excuse of the main festival, and also vice versa, that those who were just going for a walk through the city came across La Mercè. The organization will draw conclusions from now on, because the ‘Superilla Eixample’ has just left, as it were, the assembly line and its benefits are still unclear.
Suddenly, through the wall of a building, right on the corner with Borrell, the dancer Berta Baliu descended and Some of the first passers-by looked up with stunned expressions. As if infected, everyone who passed by did it immediately.. Berta, in reality, did not descend, she danced on the wall. Vertical dance is called that discipline.
After half an hour, a giant horse from the Antigua and Barbuda gang rode down the middle of the road. Behind her tail, a guitarist, mounted on the same structure that made that giant puppet advance, livened up the gallop with some chords. She had a certain air of that guitarist who leads the chase in the latest version of ‘Mad Max’. The idea would have been that behind the horse someone from the theater company would collect signatures to file a lawsuit and ask that Consell de Cent return to its previous design. Nobody did it, but, no matter what, Gijs van Bon’s artists took to the street after the horse, and at Mercè 2023 they have arrived with an articulated arm that provides colored sand so that children can draw whatever they like on the pavement.
All of this has happened without the street being closed to traffic at any time, which was very little when it came to motor vehicles. With a little patience and understanding on both sides everything has been resolved.
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The experiment of bringing the Mercè to Consell de Cent has been timid because it only covered the section between Rocafort and Borrell streets. Can grow up. Or not. There is a precedent to take into account the uniqueness of this space.
This 2023, the Dreta de l’Eixample festival could not be held, as was tradition, on Girona street. The excuse was unanswerable. The street was in the process of metamorphosis into a ‘superilla’. It was held in Bruc. The logical question, then, was whether the festival will return to Girona in 2024. It is not known. The architecture of the green axes is perfect for the walkeven for the coexistence of transporters and pedestrians, but not for the installation of beach bars and convenience storesn. This was made clear during the celebration of Sant Jordi, the first launch of Consell de Cent in its central section, which at the end of April was practically finished. It is these antecedents that invite us not to assume that this surprising Mercè will return in 2024.