About Marc Piquer

Journalist

Bengalis, Armenians and Hondurans, the other immigrants

Abdullah al Mamun (Shafiq), owner of the Galiza tavern and organising secretary of the Bangladesh Cultural and Humanitarian Association, photographed in a fellow countryman’s establishment, on the border between the Raval and Sant Antoni neighbourhoods.
Photo: Dani Codina

Except for the Chinese and the Italians, the volume of immigrants in Barcelona has stabilized, and many people —largely as a result of the recession and the rise in the cost of living— have decided to move to another town or to return home. Under these circumstances, other nationalities that had not been as well-represented have become more visible, like the Bengalis, the Armenians or Hondurans.

“I remember that in the beginning, there were 35 of us. Now there are 4,000.” In 1985, when Nabinul Haque came to Barcelona at the age of 22 and began to serve coffees at the old Cinema Catalunya —where El Triangle shopping centre is today— he had already spent six years working in France and Germany. Three more decades have had to pass for thousands of Bengalis from Dacca (his home town), Chittagong (in the East) and Sylhet (in the rural Northeast) to decide to follow his example: set out for Barcelona and, once established with guarantees of being able to stay, bring their wife and children. His son, who was apprenticing to make cocktails in Miami, is the one that encouraged him to sell the supermarket he had on El Paral·lel and open up the restaurant-lounge Ébano nearby, serving a fusion of Indian and Mediterranean food. Other compatriots have also sought to adapt to the culinary preferences of the local population, like Abdullah al Mamun (Shafiq), owner of the Galiza tavern, whose menu doesn’t include either danbauk —rice with curry and chicken— or red lentils (masoor dal).

Abdullah serves as organizing secretary of the Cultural and Humane Association of Bangladesh, which seeks to strengthen ties with Catalonia. One Sunday in April he puts this into practice at the Plaça dels Àngels, where he celebrates Pohela Boishakh— his new year. Hundreds of natives come together to sing, dance and offer neighbours and passers-by traditional products. No less colourful are the activities organized by the Association of Women from Bangladesh in Catalonia, which provides an opportunity to get to know some traditional holidays like Pitha Utshob, the welcoming of winter, or the commemoration of independence on March 26 (Shadhinôta Dibôs). For Mehetal Haque, president of the organization and a native of Nabinul, these are opportunities to show that they aren’t “as closed-off as it seems.”

The desire to integrate into Catalan society isn’t in conflict with the defence of their own culture, which is why on Fridays and Saturdays, Bengali is taught to children and young people at the Sant Antoni Piarist school. This ancient language, the sixth most spoken in the world, plays an important role in the history books. On February 21, 1952, thousands of people protested in the capital, Dacca, in favour of the language rights of the people, and Pakistan —which controlled the territory from the time of the partition of India and had imposed Urdu as the only official language— responded with a massacre. On that day, declared International Mother Language Day by UNESCO, the Bangladeshis of Barcelona take to the streets once again to remember, to leave an offering at the monument placed in front of the MACBA, and to sing Amar sonar bangla (the national anthem, with lyrics by poet Rabindranath Tagore) all together to the sound of harmoniums.

You don’t need to know how to read in Bengali to recognize its alphabet. By looking at the signs over businesses, we can determine where most Bengalis live. I recommend taking Carrer de la Cera to the area of El Pedró in El Raval: there’s Bazaar Aalif, Bangla Spice Bar, the Malik and Naba Express groceries (yes, the sign says “products from the Philippines and Thailand”)… A business on Carrer de la Botella sends money and recharges mobile phones, and other convenience stores in the area are open until the early morning hours. The Sunni Muslims from Bangladesh head to Shah Jalal Jame Mosque on Carrer de la Riereta on a daily basis, and many of the men wear the typical headgear (tupi). If they go at all, their wives (who pray separately) go on Sundays, with their entire bodies covered with a traditional shalwar kameez garment. All other times, and in contrast to the Pakistanis, they all wear western clothing.

On busier streets like the Ronda de Sant Pau, business is aimed more at tourists. At La Alhambra, El Diamante and Kalab Ghar, Turkish specialties and paellas are served. On La Rambla del Raval, although it may seem surprising, Istanbul Kebab, Fragua Grill, Toscana Italian restaurant and La Reina del Raval are owned by Bengalis. However, the best reviews are for Tandoori Nights on Carrer de les Carretes, maybe because the Indian food there is quite a bit more familiar to the Bengali cooks than dürüms or potato omelette.

Sons of the diaspora

If there is one place that has been abused by history, it is shrunken Armenia, invaded by Romans, Byzantines, Persians, Ottomans and Russians. Cut off from access to the sea and with an impoverished economy, its inhabitants have participated in one of the greatest diasporas of the modern era. It has been calculated that 8 million Armenians live outside of Armenia; in Barcelona, there are a few thousand. Here, many have found a breath of fresh air, where they can get back on their feet economically and prosper professionally. This is the case of Babken Karaxjan, who can often be seen on the benches of Via Júlia, playing cards with some of his countrymen. These are people who arrived at the end of the ‘90s and who have experienced hard times, taking on harsh jobs or, in some cases, even sleeping on the street. With later legislative reforms, many were able to get papers; their situation improved, and they were able to bring their families over.

The brothers Frunz and Tigran Manukyan run a photography and information store on the Verdum promenade.
Photo: Dani Codina

Martik Matinyan, who is 46 years old and has two university degrees, lived for a time in St. Petersburg and didn’t even consider returning home: “a country surrounded by Muslim countries where food has to be brought in by airplane had nowhere to go but down”, he declares. He liked Barcelona and Barça, and he decided to try his luck as a construction businessman; he did fairly well until the recession came. Now he’s in charge of a laser paintball space, and when he can he helps out his compatriots. He encouraged brothers Frunz and Tigran Manukyan to reopen a photography store on Passeig de Verdum, which is lately more about computers. Across the street Hayastan Olympic wrestling opened up; there, the European champion of Greco-Roman wrestling Movses Karapetyan and his son teach a sport that is just as popular as chess in the Caucasian republic.

Before any other nation, in 301 Armenia declared Christianity its official religion, and founded its own church. Although the Armenians living in Barcelona identify with this religion, they don’t practice it frequently, and only a handful attend the mass held once a month for them at the parish Church of Mare de Déu dels Àngels. Some other important dates are September 21 —Independence Day— where the Armenian Cultural Association of Barcelona organizes recreational activities, and especially April 24, when the genocide committed by the Turks in 1915 is commemorated with gatherings downtown and offerings laid at the stone cross (khachkar) erected in 2009 on Avinguda de l’Estadi, on Montjuïc.

In the Porta neighbourhood in the Nou Barris district, Erik Melik-Stepanyan runs the Ararat, an establishment specialising in Armenian food products
Photo: Dani Codina

That tragedy is a “wound that hasn’t yet healed”, according to Sarkis Hakobyan, from the Armenia in Catalonia Association, located in Santa Coloma. “It survives within our homes, where we pass it on to our children so that they understand the importance of preserving their identity.” Erik Melik-Stepanyan’s parents scold him and his sister Elina if they hear them speaking in Spanish. “We understand them”, she admits, “because if we don’t speak Armenian, the coming generations won’t know it.” Erik is twenty years old and he runs a business in the Porta neighbourhood. Called Ararat, its shelves are full of wines and Armenian sauces, as well as canned, vinegary vegetables used to make tolma —ground mutton wrapped in grape or cabbage leaves— and khash, a soup whose main ingredient is cooked cows’ feet. Not far away, an Armenian mother and daughter from Tjumen (Russia) run a store in the Vilapicina neighbourhood, URSS-CCCP, which carries products from Nagorno-Karabakh —where they are originally from— along with candies, beer and cognac from Erevan.

Fleeing from an unsafe environment

“Not everything they say about over there is true”, Jorge Irias tells me soon after we introduce ourselves. “But almost”, he adds. Jorge is in charge of the massive festival organized at the end of the summer in the Poble Espanyol, attended by thousands of catrachos (Hondurans), who come together to celebrate their Independence Day. Much less well-attended but just as significant is the procession held every February 3 in Poble-sec in honour of the Virgin of Suyapa. A religious image leaves the headquarters of the Social Cultural Association of Culinary Art of Honduras and Friends in Catalonia on Carrer Murillo, and from there it is carried in a liturgical procession that ends up at El Sortidor Civic Centre. At this same civic centre, on Saturday over a hundred Honduran women and precisely four men gather to learn Catalan. This is the immigrant community that signs up most for the courses organized by the Centre de Normalització Lingüística.

Of the eight thousand Hondurans registered in Barcelona, 72.6% are women. Much more well-educated, they are the first to want to leave the unhealthy environment of Honduras, where there are high levels of school absenteeism and gangs and drug cartels do as they please, kidnapping, extorting and murdering. In 2016 there were 5,150 murders (4,680 of the victims were men), and the departments of Cortés and Atlántida —where Jorge is from— took the cake. He came over in 1984, in the middle of pre-Olympic fever, when the main problem in Honduras was the Contra (the counterrevolutionary Nicaraguan guerrilla, based in the neighbouring country). “I was an accountant”, he remembers, “I had never touched a brick.” Three decades later, he continues waterproofing rooves and renovating kitchens, bathrooms and façades. “Since I’ve been in Barcelona”, he explains, “three hundred families have come over.” Thanks to word of mouth, this community has continued to grow, becoming the most numerous immigrant community in seven of the thirteen neighbourhoods in the District of Nou Barris. It is also the community that presents the most requests for refugee status, which are generally granted within six months.

The Honduran Wilson Hernández and his Ecuadorian wife run a supermarket with a large offer in Latin-American products in the Verdum neighbourhood.
Photo: Dani Codina

In a coffee shop on Carrer Almansa in the Verdum neighbourhood where they sell espumillas (a traditional dessert from Honduras) I met Gabriela Padilla, just 26 years old, who cleans apartments because in Tegucigalpa, where she left her mother and son, it was impossible for her to find work. “I don’t have enough to bring them over”, she confesses. A little way up the street, Wilson Hernández and his Ecuadorian wife have a grocery with plenty of Honduran products: from camotes (a type of sweet potato) and patastillos (a tuber similar to the potato), to semitas (a sweet treat), tabletas de coco, blended frijoles, powdered corn and pineapple vinegar. He once worked at a textile company in San Pedro Sula (the industrial capital) and got tired of being robbed on Fridays, on payday.

At the bar of Zona Hondureña, in the Prosperitat neighbourhood, Gerson Miguel Hernández, who survives doing all manner of odd jobs, acknowledges that he’ll have to think twice before returning to his country. “When you’re told that one friend or another has been killed, it makes you not want to go back.” The owner of the restaurant, Adelmo Trejo, was about to lose his life three times. “And you know why? All because of a mobile phone” (he calls it a celular, as they’re known in Honduras). He tells me about it while his wife, Carla Cortés, prepares baleadas, catrachitas and carne asada for the diners who drink a tamarind refreshment while they wait.

According to Jorge, many Central Americans try to get into the United States, but get deported by the planeload. When this happens, Europe is the only alternative. They are Hondurans from Tegucigalpa, from industrial San Pedro Sula, Olancho… Some are blonde and light-skinned (from Santa Bárbara), dark-skinned Garifunas (from La Ceiba), Lencas (from Lempira) or Miskitos (from Cabo Gracias a Dios). And each and every one of them shares a single objective with the rest of the immigrants who have helped to transform our city: to make Barcelona their own.

The exotic enriches us all

By Marc Piquer.

Barcelona has fewer inhabitants than Paris but a similar number of immigrants, hailing from every continent. The city and its surrounds have been very good hosts: this evolution has enriched us all.

A fascinating and little-known corner of Paris is Little Jaffna, crammed full of Sri Lankan businesses. Going down the Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis is priceless. But the cultural shock that years ago caused me to take the metro in the French capital or stroll through La Goutte d’Or was mitigated during my most recent visit to the Sinhala quartier. The reason: Barcelona, with fewer inhabitants than Paris and a similar number of immigrants. My city has changed a lot and quickly (it has gone from having 1.9% foreigners registered as residents in 1996 to more than 17% in 2013), creating a mosaic of different ethnicities that is not only limited to a couple of neighbourhoods. In some, though, a tendency to group together is evident. In others where it is not, it could be soon.

The names Rawal and Ravalkistan clearly show which new population predominates in the old Xino. Pakistanis from the Punjab and Kashmir have made it theirs, and they are so many that lots have had to look further afield: Besòs, the neighbouring Poble-sec and Trinitat Vella. The ones that are not unlocking mobiles on Carrer de Sant Pau give four-euro haircuts on Carrer de les Carretes, sit contemplatively on a bench in the Rambla del Raval, or work behind the counter of halal butchers. In Tejidos Orientales (Hospital, 88), they sell saris and salwar kameezes. A bit further up, the Kami Bismillah has a little empire, and a notably excellent kebab shop (Joaquín Costa, 22). There is also an out-of-work locale for phoning home from, and one of the many cake shops displaying gulab jaman and portions of barfi in its windows. There are Pakistani restaurants like the historic Shalimar (Carme, 71) that hide their true origins and declare to all and sundry that they serve “Indian food”. This is not true in the case of the deservedly famous Zeeshan Kebabish (Marquès de Barberà, 26), whose dishes include specialities from Karachi and Lahore: haleem, nihari and karhi pakora. For dessert they bring me ras malai and a mango milkshake served in a glass that looks like it came out of the Ark. “When the people come in, they are at home,” Javed Munir, the owner, tells me. And I believe it: everyone has a happy face and a satisfied belly.

Raval Sud is full of surprises. Without a sound, another community, this time from Bangladesh, has recently moved in. Bengalis have opened greengrocers in Cera and Sant Antoni Abat streets, Spanish bars have remained and there is a mosque, Baba Jalal Shah (Riereta, 16). This and other Muslim places of worship fill up during Friday prayers and on Ramadan, and are easily accessed, provided certain standards are met. There is also the Sikh temple Gurudwara Gurdarshan Sahib (Hospital, 97), where they receive me with a sweet dish (kara parshad) and a poster announcing that you are welcome if “you have not been consuming alcohol, tobacco, drugs and animal flesh” and if “you are not carrying any of these substances in your pockets”. Each April, this is the place the baptism festival’s vaishaki procession begins and ends, which leaves behind it an immense carpet of rose petals.

FilCo, Filipino territory

On Sundays, you should visit the parish of Sant Agustí. In the cathedral of the poor you can hear the morning and evening masses given in Tagalog. On this day, the square is inundated with parishioners who, once they have received the Eucharist, go back to their home turf, known as the Triangle de Ponent (Ronda de Sant Antoni/Joaquim Costa/Riera Alta), rechristened by the Filipinos with the odd name of FilCo. More than four thousand of them live there. Some of these Pacific island natives shop at Filipino Foods (Peu de la Creu, 17) and the Pinoy Fiesta take-away, just in front. Others go to pawnshops, and the youngest demonstrate their skills on the Valldonzella basketball court. Half a dozen taverns cook typical dishes: crispy pata, adobo and pancit. El Tropical (Paloma, 19) is the oldest. A little bit further on, a bakery from 1848, La Valenciana (Paloma, 18), five years ago decided to sell pandesal, monay pinoy and pan de coco, despite the owners being from Xella.

The Philippines were the home to the first Chinese immigrants to Barcelona, whom the city housed in the Pequín shanty towns that have since disappeared. Today around 16 thousand, the majority from Qingtian, live among us. They run charmless bars, bazars and beauty centres; in the surrounds of Carrer de Trafalgar, they compete with the Catalan textile wholesalers, and at night wealthy individuals play mahjong in clandestine saloons. In Bon Pastor and Montigalà (Badalona), there are large estates where Gypsy families sell things at rock bottom prices. And in Fondo (Santa Coloma) and Fort Pienc, small subsistence businesses have been created: driving schools, legal offices, travel agencies and estate agencies. Chinatown in Eixample is getting bigger and bigger: the streets of Alí Bei, Nàpols and Roger de Flor are full of shops with signs bearing Chinese characters: shoe shops, florists, Korean fashion boutiques, photo studios and supermarkets. In Yang Kuang (Passeig de Sant Joan, 12) it is difficult to choose between so many noodles, vegetables, sauces and frozen products. There I find jellyfish, sesame popcorn, dehydrated lychees and pots of mango in syrup. And the Panda Decoración ironmongers (Passeig de Sant Joan, 10) is the dream of every handyman. At all hours of the day and night, the restaurant Chen Ji (Alí Bei, 65) is packed with Asians and locals alike: I can confirm that they make magnificent guo tie dumplings.

Colombians make their presence felt in the Eixample

The Eixample is not in everyone’s reach, but while they can, the Colombians have decided to make an impact. Many have moved into one of the most important tourist neighbourhoods, Sagrada Família, and many others flock there with empty stomachs. A must is a visit to Colombia Pan (Rosselló, 396), the bakery of a Catalan who fell in love with the South American country and where it is customary to breakfast on pandebono, brazos de reina stuffed with the sweet, caramelised arequipe or slice of torta negra. Two hours later there are clients who, incomprehensibly, are hungry again, and will order a gargantuan bandeja paisa in one of the Colombian restaurants that proliferate near the church. The Fonda Paisa on the ground floor of Casa Planells (Diagonal, 332) is, surely, the most authentic. “We eat to excess, but the girls just get surgery and fix it. And if not, they corset themselves up,” admits a shop assistant from Jeans (Lepant, 293), who is sick of selling corsets and levantacolas, buttock-emphasising jeans, to Colombian ladies. Areperías, Latino supermarkets, hairdressers and dental clinics are also cropping up on the streets of Lepant and Cartagena.

The Dominicans, who have been forced to leave Santa Caterina, are now abandoning a fashionable street, Blai, in Poble-sec. The Caribbeans are emigrating to L’Hospitalet, previously reached by the Equatorians and Bolivians, in neighbourhoods that are little different from those of Cochabamba and Guayaquil (La Torrassa, La Florida, Collblanc), full of salteñería bakeries selling the savoury Bolivian pastries. In Barcelona, the Bolivian Consulate’s move to near Urquinaona has given new life to the businesses. While I eat a sopa de maní, amid Quechua faces in a hidden room in a big supermarket, I go over the list of discoveries still to be made: the Romanian businesses near La Model, Little Armenia in Prosperitat, Porta and Trinitat Nova, the dwellings of the Nigeria and Ghana natives in the northern district… And I realise that the city and its surrounds have proved to be very good hosts. The result is, we have all been enriched. And nothing can stop it.

Vides privades de la Barcelona burgesa

By Marc Piquer.

Vides privades de la Barcelona burgesa

Lluís Permanyer

Angle Editorial

Barcelona 2011

272 pages

In one of the over 200 photos in Vides privades de la Barcelona burgesa [Private Lives of Barcelona’s Middle Class], renowned photographer Pau Audouard immortalises the chocolate industrialist, Antoni Amatller – himself an accomplished photographer – having lunch with his daughter Teresa, with one maid waiting on them and another looking on, in the lavish dining room of the house on Passeig de Gràcia, designed by Puig i Cadafalch, which bears the family name. A second photo shows the same characters being borne across the Egyptian desert on a pleasure trip which very few could afford.

Most of these photos, taken from private collections, reveal how wealthy families, regardless of how deeply committed they may have been politically and socially, lived out their lives (including their whims) with a very marked class consciousness. This schism was probably further accentuated when the walls were demolished: the mental distance already existing between them and those who toiled in hardship was compounded by a physical separation. It is true that the middle class had hardly borne the brunt of a stifling life in one of Europe’s most densely populated and unhealthiest cities, but even so, it did all the groundwork, as, it goes without saying, there was a lot to be gained. It knew that there would be 200,000 hectares to exploit or, in other words, a new city would be there to welcome it with open arms. The opportunity was far too good to be missed.

The outcome is basically what is explained, very pleasantly so, throughout this book, which uncovers certain aspects of private life, deeply rooted customs, the odd eccentricity and some unexpected apparitions (or is the vision of Pau Casals with a cigar in one hand and a tennis racket in the other not an oddity?).

In another recent book, published for the 150th anniversary of the Cerdà Plan, Lluís Permanyer, Barcelona journalist, writer and chronicler, did not mince words in his appraisal of the role of the middle class during the selection process of the plan for Barcelona’s Eixample district. As he tells us, the aforementioned class had received the engineer’s proposal with utmost disdain, citing aesthetic and city planning needs, some verging on the absurd. However, their true concern lay in the fact that the egalitarianism championed by a utopian socialist like Cerdà, determined to prioritise the quality of life of all citizens, might impinge upon their speculation plans.

At the time when Vides privades de la Barcelona burgesa picks up, nobody was arguing against a reform which, while it utterly failed to take Cerdà’s more visionary ideas into account, at least managed to preserve one of the territory’s good things: it did not and never would resemble la Bonanova. A plethora of mansions and small palaces were built, albeit alongside modest rented housing, the occasional industry and numerous shops. Interaction between unequal citizens was therefore inevitable, and in all likelihood nurtured the desire for a place zealously reserved for friends and family: the house. This was greatly facilitated by the advent of a movement, modernisme, which spawned the construction of brand-new buildings, decorated according to the burgeoning trends. Permanyer cites the examples of the so-called gallery and the doorway.

If l’Eixample (like la Rambla), its avenues – particularly Passeig de Gràcia – and the pompous facades designed by renowned professionals, were ideal in that they afforded the middle class public exposure and enabled them to act as such (lapsing, if necessary, into the Spanish tongue in on-the-street conversations, or showing off the mistress at the opera), the private setting became the best possible scenario for acting out rituals which were obligatory for that class (hiring wet nurses, receiving guests in the living room or having a piano, which was not necessarily used) and their religious morality (sending auntie off to chaperone young lovers or inviting a poor person to Christmas dinner).

Hence, good breeding prevailed indoors, although certain concessions were made in many homes. For simple entertainment – as being rich did not spare one from boredom – the ladies and gentlemen staged plays suitable only for friends and family, and often organised fancy-dress balls or, more sporadically, spiritualism sessions.

However, rather than conjecture on what awaited them in the afterlife, their concern focused more on whether their status would be maintained on reaching that final destination. So much so that La Vanguardia, as Permanyer reminds us, became the daily newspaper “one had to die in”: for years, death notices, the larger the better, commanded the newspaper’s front pages, relegating the real front-page news to the fifth or seventh pages.