Engeni Gay

À la ville de...

40,00 €

2019

Format 32x24 cm

96 pages

Spanish English

978-4-09-12403-9

Présentation

"À la ville de... Barcelona" was the phrase pronounced by Juan Antonio Samaranch at 1:32 p.m. on October 17, 1986. Barcelona became the 1992 Olympic host city.
I remember being at school and how this news made us all jump for joy, even though I was only 8 years old. The image of Pascual Maragall, mayor of Barcelona, raising his arms in the air as a symbol of victory will go down in history.
A collective illusion took over the city, many things were going to change: the city was reunited with the sea, the ring roads were built, the Olympic Village and a long list of infrastructures that would make Barcelona a better city. And above all, the city was opening up to the world.
In a perfectly studied marketing campaign, including springboard jumps, Barcelona topped the lists of preferred cities to visit and want to settle in. Slogans such as "Barcelona, look beautiful" and "Barcelona, the best store in the world" gradually turned the city into a beautiful showcase where it is becoming increasingly difficult to live.
Barcelona has lost population since 1992, while in Catalonia it has increased by 23%. The price of housing has grown 5 times more than inflation. 30 million tourists visit us every year. The word gentrification has entered our everyday vocabulary and every day there are more and more people forced to leave their neighborhood and the city.

"À la ville de..." poses the slow transition from the joy of a better city to this showcase city that is expelling its inhabitants. It does so through a journey from the periphery to the center, in which natural spaces are disappearing and the images become more and more claustrophobic.