Anna Pacheco, Félix G. Modroño and Jorge Dioni address from chronicle, novel and essay how touristification affects cities and how, despite this, they can maintain their personality. The meeting organized by the Collegiate Association of Writers of Catalonia, with sponsorship from Cedro, was moderated by the critic and journalist José de Montfort.
Text: Susana Picos
The movement of tourists up and down the streets of cities is a common sight in large capitals and in the main tourist destinations in the world. What was initially embraced with happiness and hope – in Spain, in the sixties, “Spain is different” was said as a motto to attract tourists, who were synonymous with wealth – is now a serious problem as it becomes tourism. massive that changes the idiosyncrasy of cities and affects the lives of their inhabitants.
Telling and reflecting on this reality is what the authors gathered at this meeting have done; each one from a different style. Jorge Dioniauthor of the essay The unrest of the cities (Arpa), analyzes the role of the city and its risk of depersonalization, Anna Pachecoauthor of the chronicle I was here and I remembered you (Anagrama), tells how he infiltrates several luxury hotels to uncover their business philosophy and the problems their workers face, and Felix G. Modroñoauthor of the novel The city of silver skin (Destino), third and final part of his trilogy that he dedicates to the city of Bilbao.
Jorge Dioni explains the city as a meeting point for different people who live together: “The city and language are the two most important inventions because they allow us to relate to other people, with whom perhaps we had nothing in common and perhaps did not want to relate.” and as Félix G. Modroño states: “All of us who live in a city belong to the city itself, in one way or another, although we believe we are special, deep down we have many things in common. Even though we don’t know each other, we walk through the same places, we see the same sunsets, we eat the same things, we have the same customs, we experience the same historical events.”
But what happens when our city has to accommodate a population that is constantly moving and its economy changes? he asks. Montfort. “I saw a headline in an Asturian newspaper that said “The new industry in Asturias is to like.” To like is a verb that is for the person who sees it, for another. The GDP may be the same, but in the end it is not. The clearest case is the Balearic Islands, even if they are quality tourists, the GDP decreases. There is a psychological change because we adapt to the outside. Even traditions can change. There are two paradigmatic cases. The typical dish in Spain was puchero and it has changed to paella. The stew is not attractive and in summer you don’t feel like eating stew. In Asturias, for example, the beans are replaced by the Cachopo,” explains Dioni.
Modroño tells the experience of Bilbao and how his commitment to architecture has changed the city model: “Bilbao had 18,000 inhabitants at the end of the 19th century and, suddenly, a massive emigration turned it, in less than 40 years, into a city of 200,000. Then it experienced another transformation with the civil war. And finally, it moves from an industrial city to a city of services and wants to please. The driving force behind this change is due to the metro and, especially, the Guggenheim”. He goes on to tell how part of the citizens did not agree with this model. “It was not thought that a building would attract tourism. The financial amount that was allocated was for many, including cultural groups, a waste because it was considered that it had to be invested in other things.” “When I was 13 years old, I went to Bilbao with my father (I was from Portugalete) and we saw a man with a camera. We followed it, it seemed very picturesque to us. He was a tourist. When I was recently interviewed in front of the Guggenheim, it was almost impossible to find a place, it was full of tourists, and I remembered this anecdote. We are surrounded and invaded by tourism and we are also tourists, which is the tremendous thing. Bilbao is a city of services that has nothing to do with that of 40 years ago and much less with that of 100 years ago, but at the same time it fights to maintain its idiosyncrasy, its way of being, and therein lies the importance of those in love with these cities. We are responsible for ensuring that our cities adapt to new times but without losing their character.”
Can we affirm that the Bilbao tourism model, of Barcelona or Amsterdam is a successful model? It is difficult, because as Anna Pacheco says: “Many times these city sales spaces are operated as if it were a board, as if no people lived there. It is said that this place is going to be sold in a certain way and then life happens or it doesn’t. “They are projects of expectations versus reality.” “We have seen it in many neighborhoods and districts, where an attempt has been made to use part of the land inherited from industrialization, such as in the Poble Nou neighborhood of Barcelona, with a disastrous result. Firstly, due to the increase in rents for the people who live there and on the other hand, for being a disappointing model. The paradigmatic case is neighborhood 22@ which promised to be the Catalan Silicon Valley, but has nothing to do with it. Firstly, the companies that moved installed the most residual part of their own corporations, with low-paid personnel. It has become an unlivable district for the people. Local businesses were affected by a governance that said that if your business was not related to technology or innovation it had no place, which has resulted in if you want to go to a greengrocer or a bakery you have to walk several blocks.
During the talk, several problems related to mass tourism in cities were discussed, but one of the most serious is the one that has directly to do with housing and the expulsion of its inhabitants from the urban center. Jorge Dioni says that “in the city of Barcelona, in 80% of homes there are no minors and in the city of Madrid Only 15% of the budget is allocated to grassroots sports, for residents. “People leave, but they can’t go very far for work.”
Returning to the title of the meeting: how to narrate cities? Everyone concludes that the best way to tell what is happening is fiction. As Jorge Dioni states: “We explain reality with fictions. What we should do is narrate the cities, but we do not finish narrating reality.”
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