There was a time when a clown was the highest paid artist in Europe. His name was Adrien Wettach, he was Swiss, he was born in 1880 and he was known to all as Grock. Although infinitesimal, you will see that that celebrity, through a delicious anecdote, is related to this edition of La Mercè in which the great novelty of the day was the premiere of the Parc de l’Aqüeducte as the new stage for the festival. What a great success. The purpose was bring La Mercè to the neighborhoods of Ciutat Meridiana, Vallbona and Torre Baró and, in an even more difficult circus, also bring residents from the rest of the city’s neighborhoods there. There were and some recognized that it was the first time they had set foot on that battered corner of Barcelona that the pushy Generalitat, when it finally decided to have a metro, made it almost out of Lego. The organization of a Mercè has decided to land there in style and, to do so, has opted for one of its star dishes, by Jaume Mateu ‘Tortell Poltrona’, none other than Pallassos sense Bordersnot only an NGO, but almost an NGO of NGOs, as will later be told along with Grock.
The third day of the festival (before anyone wonders why the case is not mentioned in this overview) was reached first thing in the morning after an early morning of looting, destruction and even a death in a couple of very specific points of the city in which a few hours before there had been music from the BAM program. The municipal opposition has said the predictable, that the city is a sindio, that the parties are not safe, that families would do well not to leave homethat a strong hand is missing and, perhaps, something else has been added along the same lines.
Junts even seems to have suggested that they should be suspended or something similar, and what the public milling around the stages would have missed would have been a lot. One could even say that much more than it seems.
That park is part of the political strategy of the Neighborhood Plan a political line that was born in the Generalitat of Pasqual Maragall and that, when it was disdained later, became municipal. It is easily summarized. The plan consisted of nothing more, which is no small thing, than investing in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods in the country before they crossed the point of no return, as happened to Ca n’Anglada (Terrassa) in 1999. In a certain way, that ejidiano case, which degenerated into a wave of racism, was the origin, in its own way, of the Barrios Plan. There are two options in situations like this, either solve the problems or problematize the solutions.. Well that.
It has filled Tortell Potrona at the foot of the Ciutat Meridiana aqueduct that in the 19th century supplied water to part of Barcelona and, according to personal testimonies collected here, there and everywhere, that has been the general rule until now of La Mercè .
The decentralization of the festival has done the afternoons and evenings of the Ciutadella a sea of good (“full, but not overcrowded, the public very dedicated, and queues, yes, to regain strength with a ‘crêpe’) and in the grounds of the Grec they say that a deliciously Roman night was livedwith Vinicio Capossela on stage and an unexpected choir of hundreds of voices, because the Italian community of Barcelona, as is known, of the international ones the second in demographic weight, came in droves and, since it was there, sang.
The messages from the Trinitat are also enthusiastic. “The Ethiopians of the Kine Circus have a brutal energy. Nice show hour. The members of ‘Sweet home on wheels’ are hilarious. There were small-format shows in places that weren’t used in other years, much greener and more pleasant, and, at the height of it, a very crazy company, ‘Aquacoustique’, has offered a concert in ‘sea’ mayor inside the lake”.
But it is worth rewinding and returning to Ciutat Meridiana. Clowns. It is not well calculated when being a clown became an insult. Pancracio Celdran Gomarizits always useful for these cases ‘The Big Book of Insults’, what a great treatise, has found some trace in the 19th century and in the pen of Espronceda, but it seems that the use of the expression with the purpose of offending is something more typical of a time here. He told the ill-fated Pepe Rubianes in one of his numbers that the teacher called him precisely that, clown!, when he kicked him out of class.
That polysemy of the word seemed ridiculous in the Parc de l’Aqüeducte as soon as one approached to read the posters that summarized the work of Pallassos sense Frontetes since its foundation. 500 performances in Burkina Faso, 1,050 between Lebanon, Palestine, Kurdistan, Jordan, Israel, Syria and Iraq, 1,100 in the Balkans, 380 in Colombia, 187 already in Ukraine or across its borders since the Russian invasion. On countless occasions the theater is a refugee camp, the public, displaced and, as we were going at the beginning, viewers have ever been colleagues of Doctors Without Borders, who also need laughter therapy to cope with what they live on the front line. Sometimes they break down and cry when they see the clowns. Laughter is a very rare emotional mechanism. I said, They are the NGO of NGOs.
And now, the anecdote. La Mercè, as is logical to imagine, has some colossal stagecraft. It is possible due to the work of dozens of municipal employees and other outsiders. It is a choral work that requires great stewardship and, if it is necessary for the Councilor for Culture, Jordi Martí, to act as messenger, then it is done, period.
What happened is that Tortell Poltrona phoned Martí weeks ago because he was running out of time to prepare La Mercè de Ciutat Meridiana, in which he had involved the neighborhood schools, area merchants and everyone who passed by out there, and I needed a couple of signatures on some contracts fast.
–Geez!, Jaume, I’m sorry, but you catch me in Pristina.
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–What do you say! Forget about signatures! Stop what you’re doing and go find me a traditional Kosovar Albanian hat, one of the white ones, and bring me.
Anyone tells him no with the passion with which he asked. That hat was the one that Grock used in one of his shows and every clown company worth its salt should have that kind of head covering for one of their characters. In the Tortellian Circ Cric of course they have several, but with the passage of time they have to be retired and Pristina is not a place that can be reached from Barcelona by metro, nor is it Lego.