There was a before covid-19, there was an during, and there is an after scare and confinement that has completely changed the everyday postcards from Barcelona. In local matters, it has gone from the frenzied and crowded city in its epicenters, to the unusual almost apocalyptic desertion of its streets, until reaching a present of Barcelonans out of lethargy and reconquest of its streets. Double, since until just a few days ago they could not leave their municipality, at the same time that nobody could reach it by mere visit. Neighborhood tourism has become a forced practice, but also a joyful one.
The streets beat again (sometimes in a rush and losing sight of the rigors of the pandemic) and its neighborhoods and icons offer a new universe to discover, without queues, because real tourists are still far away, and with incentives, because culture now costs (temporarily) less money. Entities, city council, Barcelona Tourism … invite you to become a visitor in your own city. Be it of its attractions or corners previously ignored due to lack of time.
The first to think that the Renaissance after the shaking of the virus it could be an opportunity were the Friends of the Rambla. The most international road in the city as well as most neglected by Barcelonans already made an appeal, at the end of April and on the lips of its president, Fermín Villar, for citizens to dare to recover their Rambla, now eager for passers-by , with the essential hook of its cultural offer. But also of its terraces (to sit down to enjoy “the dance corner room”), its gastronomy (recently endeavored in menus for citizens and not for passing crowds) or its historical corners. He also called his shops and services to get their batteries to like that neighbor he expelled, with care and prices. Has the attempt been successful?
Incentives for La Rambla
Villar says that the Rambla is languid, has not yet been able to relieve its rivers of giris by curious Barcelonans. Logical, because they are untrained in the area and there are still many businesses (from souvenir shops to fashion stores, or restaurants) with the blinds down, perhaps waiting for a tourist with shorts who takes months to return. It also invites to rediscover a Boqueria that “looks more than ever as a traditional market”, with fewer open stops than normal, but much more genre to take to the shopping cart, and not to the traveler’s mouth. And calls out to enter the quota of pedestrianized streets on the weekends, something that many merchants, on the other hand, have not liked, in the case of Via Laietana, by complicating access by shopping car to Born or Gòtic. Announces that very soon, hand in hand with the consistory, they will offer family, leisure and cultural packages, that promote immersion.
Nearby, the Plaza de Catalunya and the Rambla de Catalunya, to give examples of central routes, recover pulse daily. Increasingly, although still reduced due to the effect of telework that reduces walking routes. And while operators mourn for the lost foreign buyer and their credit cards, local walkers discover fewer queues. Both to buy a whim, and to enter a Museum. In the eight municipalities open this week it is still early to evaluate, indicate municipal sources. Mayor Colau called to rediscover them on Tuesday. With half-price tickets or free time slots, there is no excuse to improve the sad local fee: just 14% of museum visitors are indigenous.
Promotion in due time
Marián Muro, director of Barcelona tourism, explains to this newspaper that the action plan that the consortium will promote until December will go through different phases, depending on the situation and the traveler’s confidence that allow the promotion have a return. At the moment, he assumes that the view is focused on the traveler from the peninsula or who can reach Barcelona by car (parking facilities and internal displacements will be given by public transport, he says), for which they are preparing a claim: a marketplace ( online store) from its website. This will make it easier for the visitor to know which hotels are open, their prices, the offer of restaurants or culture, promotions and other aspects that incite the destination. And knowing that the tourist process will still be slow, he proposes it for short breaks to Barcelona from the rest of the regions, whether to stay or just enjoy a day in the big city. And especially, for the neighbor who has not stepped in the Picasso Museum for years, does not come to the Park Güell or have dinner in the center.
Deserted hotels
Precisely the Guell park These days it has become a local Eden. Visitors are not counted and it has free admission, but it is striking to see it without passing travelers. How to get around the Sagrada Família without having to avoid queues. In many other cases, the resident simply wandered and wanderedPerhaps in areas that are new to him and that he had never stepped on even though he had traveled to the other side of the world.
The hoteliers they are clear that the tourist lacks months to return. With just 40 open among more than 430, it is estimated that only 25% reopen in summer and the majority await in the fall, says the director of the Gremi d’Hotels, Manel Casals. They believe that the closest traveler, after a long confinement, will now seek an escape from the sea or the mountains. “The international tourist needs to regain confidence,” he predicts, with an eye toward full recovery for the upcoming Mobile in early 2021 and the certainty that some accommodations will disappear along the way.
The Gospel of La Rambla
Briefly, here are the Gospels on the Rambla, just in case it is true that an unintended side effect of the Covid-19 pandemic is that, hallelujah, Barcelonans return to it and rise again. Before counting on which cross and when he died, a couple of notes on how far that tree-lined walk is the thermometer of the city.
First. La Rambla has existed since Pere III el Cerimoniós decided to expand the walled area to the west of the Raval neighborhood. Until then, that undeveloped space was only the outer border of the city. Without intending to, the Fifth Avenue of the Middle Ages had just been born that way.
Second. La Rambla did not acquire the status of a referential street in the city until 1714. Felipe V’s decision to buck the Ribera neighborhood, literally amputate it, made social life move as far as possible from the fearsome military fortress that was installed in Ciutadella. The place was the Rambla, a walk to see and be seen, but that, in a city already given to excesses. What you could see on the Rambla was, one word, everything.
Of this iconic walk it is said for a time that this part It is no longer what it was. That will have been said dozens of times throughout its history. It may be different this time. What was unprecedented is that the people of Barcelona turned their backs on him. Posted to look for a date for that heartbreak, a very symbolic of that crucifixion previously mentioned would be September 2010. It was then that the half-dozen beach bars that replaced the old shops for birds and other pets, sentenced by the city council, opened their doors because they did not adjust to the new animalistic times of the city. It happened during Jordi Hereu’s term as mayor, who does not hide and accepts that it was a mistake. The conversion of the old birdhouses into beach bars of the new tourist times was a full-blown Trojan horse. After 10 years, a tiny virus, what things are, can reverse the situation. – CARLES COLS
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