Wastelands exist in order to allow us to interrogate the dead without going the full Dante, something which was still feasible when I first visited Barcelona around 9 years ago. Unfortunately instead of simply embezzling the entire revenues of the property boom–preferible artistically and probably feasible abacistically–Barcelona Council bought into the great legacy of fascistic mega-planning, from the mega-pigsty Eixample of Osona farmer’s son Cerdà (i home de bé, no pot ser), ironised in Eduardo Mendoza La ciudad de los prodigios, via Gaudí et al’s physical invention of the Barri Gótic and the post-war improvements of Construcciones Ventura S.A. (José María Gironella’s Condenados a vivir is on the bathroom shelf) and Mayor Porcioles to the communist restorationist Historical Memory project, which in Barcelona in broad terms has consisted in the invention of a nationalist-socialist millenium along lines parallel to those taken a few years earlier by Ricardo de la Cierva.
The result is an architectural modeller’s dream of clean lines and shoddy building practice which makes it increasingly difficult to delve in ground that has not been prepared for that purpose–history as a Truman Show treasure hunt. And the PSC oligarchy–in charge ever since most people can remember and until the elections on May 22–has not been content to inflict this lobotomised Disneyvision on areas frequented by itself and by the English-speaking projectile vomiters of the world, but has generously sought to improve the lives of the common people by killing off their chickens and putting their owners in concrete chicken-hutches, and the kickback’s in the envelope.
And so here is mayoral hopeful Montserrat Tura having herself vanity-snapped and bullshitting about neighbourhood policy in a part of Horta called La Clota, which her party has spent the last 20 years trying to concrete over (the first major destruction came higher up the riera for the Olympics) in the face of resistance from most of the locals, and which the current modified plan will still turn into 50% high-rise:
I could go into some detail re the shitty cynicism of Montse Tura and the Barcelona PSC in general, but you’re probably better off reading a local blog, La Clota Informa.
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Tura wants to “projectar al món” something, but that world sends “projectile vomiters” to Barcelona. Alas, aberrations like her will never learn.
Vivid memories I have of her barking at the press on a visit to the Carmel hole, I understand because the pack was getting too close to the then mayor Maragall, who, according to an experienced local camerman who had not been at the scene but swore to me that by watching the footage he recognised the symptoms from earlier encounters, was drunk.
I pray Tura wins the elections and the railway tunnel works make Sagrada Família crumble to the ground and below.
PS: Bon Pastor is another blatant example of institutionalised fascism and/or corruption.
I once arrived at the junction of Gran Via & Rambla de Cataloonia a few minutes after a scooterista had misjudged the lights and more or less decapitated him or herself on them. Tura had got out of her limo and was trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again even though there was little point as far as the victim was concerned.
I always thought that the Carmel scene was because the press wanted to know why the politicos had got lost if they cared about the neighbourhood so much. But the other explanation works too, and they’re not mutually exclusive.
Yup, I go with both explanations.
Say, Tura actually tried to help save a life herself?
What’s wrong with planning? A more interventionist local authority might have kept the pine trees clean of furry beasts that bite ranters.
@3: I think she has medical training or something.
@4: If there had still be houses up on the summit, the inhabitants would have used the pines for firewood and planted olives. At worst I’d have been bitten by their dog.
wiki sez “Llicenciada en medicina i cirurgia”. wowsies. she had to.
@4: Ranters woulda complained about the fumigation. We never stop.
Except, maybe if instead the planners send the whole consistori to ecologically hand-pick the furries from the trees while applying a strict no-ladder policy. (I think there are languages that have sayings about shots fired and two animals getting killed by each single one…)
The comforting thing about the tradition that the world will be consumed by fire after six thousand years is that our enemies will accompany us.
Braised alive it is, then.