Queviures Múrria, full of more than a centenary of the Eixample, has hung a sign in English on its door. Five euros are requested to cross the door if what is intended is only to enter to browse, take four photos and leave without even saying hello. It is a poster with more dissuasive purposes than collection, explains Joan Múrria, the owner. It seems to work. Since the store reopened six months ago after some improvement works and fitted four tables for lunch, what some other charming establishments in the city have already suffered has begun to happen more frequently: tourists enter as if it were just another monument to Barcelona.
“If someone comes, say hello in whatever language it is and ask for permission to take a photo, of course they will have it, it would be less, but that was not the norm& rdquor;says Murria. It has become uncomfortable for customers, both shopping and lunching, to suddenly be portrayed as just another exoticism in the city. They do it in that grocery store on Roger de Llúria street and also in some of the traditional wineries (there are witnesses, in Marín de Milà i Fontanals, for example), now reborn to have a vermouth and some tapas on a barrel, with the aggravating factor in those cases in which the tourists who enter do so even after the footsteps of a guide.
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“People who come to eat at the Múrria want something relaxing& rdquor;, explains the owner to put the poster in context, which, by boat soon, can surprise. He knows that this will not be a source of income. It’s just some sort of reverse psychology game or something.
The establishment turns 119 this year and Joan Múrria has been its visible head for 54 years, long enough to have been the reason for all kinds of congratulations (there is no album of emblematic venues in which he is not present), but also trouble. A year ago, without going very far, well, he was monumentally upset when some fool came up with the idea of spray painting the front of the store, not only the blind, something easy to correct, but also the hundred-year-old sign modernist that makes this an iconic corner.