Photo: Vicente Zambrano

In recent years, property values have climbed more than the purchasing power of the people of Barcelona faced with renting or buying accommodation. The glaring gap between valuation and prosperity can only be closed if welfare and equality are valued as social assets.

The people of Barcelona are living moments of change and confusion. The charms of the Great Enchantress, as Joan Maragall called the city, have taken off all over the world. On the world stock market of cities, Barcelona’s valuation is on the rise and foreign population from all levels of society is being drawn to the city, from the humblest immigrant to highly qualified professionals who find good jobs and an attractive lifestyle here. We can say without fear of being conceited that foreigners no longer come just for the good weather, they also come because they find a lot of other incentives and benefits associated with living here. It isn’t the warmth of the sun, but the price of real estate that makes Barcelona attractive to the eyes of foreign investors.

A high valuation, though, doesn’t necessarily translate into prosperity. Value is measured according to the price index. Prosperity, on the other hand, is measured according to citizens’ welfare and the quality of a shared public space. In recent years, property values have climbed more than the purchasing power of the people of Barcelona faced with renting or buying accommodation. Barcelona has joined a world league of cities that have become fertile soil for big investors, but its inhabitants have had to face this gentrification with their incomes frozen.

In 1821 an epidemic of yellow fever broke out in Barcelona, a disease spread by mosquitoes which is fatal in 50% of cases. At that time the origin of the disease was a mystery and the city’s doctors were split between the ‘contagionists’, who believed it was an exotic disease transmitted by contact between humans, and the ‘anti-contagionists’, who were convinced the disease was not transmitted between humans but that it came from some microbe in the sewage. The epidemic of yellow fever in Barcelona made a great impression everywhere, because it was the largest city until then to have suffered a disease of that sort, so unfamiliar in Europe. The anti-contagionist doctors were a minority, but they persuaded the authorities to close the city gates to avoid contact with the stagnant waters of the port. The effect of this mistaken decision was lethal, because within a few days the death rate shot up even higher. Eventually the contagionists were seen to be right, as they had realised that the fever spread by contact between humans, but neither side was able to prevent the epidemic from spreading.

Similarly, we could respond to the new gold fever we are facing today either by giving in to the neoliberal paradigm and accepting that we can do nothing to halt the advance of globalisation or by armour-plating the city with walls and bylaws against speculation by big investors. The first option would lead to the gradual, definitive expulsion of the city’s middle classes. The second would not guarantee the object of prosperity either, which is to fairly redistribute wealth among citizens.

This glaring gap between valuation and prosperity can only be closed if welfare and equality are valued as social assets. For decades, Barcelona has been organised around associations that have safeguarded communal life. It has a rich network of non-governmental organisations that have guaranteed welfare services in the worst moments of the crisis. All this citizen mobilisation has not been in vain and has generated understanding between residents, dreams of emancipation and a wish for change. More than ever, Barcelona is in need of a political consensus that will help to bring together a city in which business opportunities are not measured according to their monetary profitability, but in relation to the possibilities of fomenting prosperity more horizontally and democratically.

Instead of sharing out the earnings of a few among the poor, we should foment an economy that doesn’t put productivity above all else and that values the reproductive and care work that guarantees citizens’ welfare, a welfare that must not be measured only in terms of income, but also according to its social, cultural and ecological returns.

Photo: Ajuntament de Barcelona

The terrorist attack on 17 August left an indelible mark on the city. The expressions of international solidarity that immediately began to reach us from all over the world confirmed that we were experiencing events with a global impact. The thirty-five different nationalities of the victims of La Rambla are an indication that the pain was spread throughout the world.

Last July we celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Olympic Games, a joyful event that also marked a turning point in the city’s history. Whereas the Games put us on the mental world map of so many people around the world and placed Barcelona among the most charismatic cities in Europe, a terrorist attack is a reaction against the values and freedom of that Olympic spirit, against a city that has never wanted to turn its back on the world or be submissive. A few weeks after the nostalgia (and self-criticism) of celebrating the Games, we became the object of terrorist violence alongside other European capitals such as Berlin, Madrid, Paris, London and Stockholm. This sea change will force us to face new challenges and problems.

The city demonstrated from the start that it was prepared to cope with an attack of this magnitude. The effectiveness of the security forces and the health care services saved lives, placing citizens at ease and allowing them to respond to the attack without hatred or fear. More important than the basic reactions that emerge in times of strife, this attack has brought to the surface Barcelona’s long legacy of pacifism and its spirit of resilience in the face of adversity.

We have talked at length about Barcelona’s resilience and pacifist tradition in recent issues of this magazine. Urban resilience does not consist solely of good protocols for dealing with natural disasters or guaranteeing the provision of services in the event of sabotage. It also demonstrates the efficiency and dedication of the professionals who guarantee the security of their fellow citizens in cases of extreme need. That is why the Barcelona City Council decided to award the Gold Medal for Civic Merit to the Guardia Urbana, the Centre for Social Emergencies, the Risk Prevention, Fire Extinction and Rescue Service, the Police of the Generalitat (Mossos d’Esquadra) and the Medical Emergencies System for their extraordinary performance on 17 August.

Photo: Ajuntament de Barcelona

The resilience of Barcelona has also been evident in the solidarity of shopkeepers, neighbours and the general public in the period immediately after the tragedy. We must celebrate their response, in which they left aside any divisions and maintained their shared values with aplomb and assertiveness.

Making partisan use of a tragedy such as this, through an abusive interpretations of facts that are solely the responsibility of the terrorists, shows a lack of respect for the victims. Any perverse attempt to take political advantage of such an infamous act is equivalent to giving victory to the terrorists, who only seek to divide society and to open wounds wherever there is a climate of peaceful and democratic coexistence.

We are not afraid, but we cannot ignore the wound that the attack on 17 August left in the city, and very noticeably in La Rambla, a boulevard that, now more than ever, must be recovered for the citizens who felt expelled from it. The reform of La Rambla has taken on a new meaning after the attack. It is no longer just a matter of developing an emblematic part of Barcelona that had been taken over by tourists. This urban fabric, which had fallen into the hands of speculation, now needs to be regenerated. We must return a public space to the local citizens who claim the right to live in their city.

Foto: Arianna Giménez

The Gender Justice Plan for the period 2016-2020, drawn up by the Department for Life Span, Feminism and LGBTI Persons, plots the route towards building a city where women have a voice and participate in decision-making; where domestic tasks and care-giving are distributed more fairly; where the poverty and deprivation that women currently face, are dispelled: in short, a city where no woman has to be afraid of going home alone at night.

In recent years, the economic crisis has had a negative effect on the city of Barcelona. But the data shows that women are more acutely affected by deprivation and exclusion. They take on the care-giving burden, and have suffered more than men in terms of long-term unemployment and labour market instability. We have too often seen how motherhood has a detrimental effect in the workplace that is translated into lower salaries and lack of access to management careers.

Despite the patriarchal inertia of society, an atavistic force that is difficult to correct, some things are starting to change, and here in Barcelona there are clear signs of that. First, in a city that has elected a woman mayor for the first time in its history, the fact that priority is being given to creating a Gender Justice Plan is hardly surprising. This plan has not been imposed by the Council; rather, it is the first fruit of concerted efforts to understand social justice from a new perspective. Recent years have seen the emergence of numerous small- and large-scale initiatives that are making real change possible: a neighbourhood network has been activated to facilitate access to common assets through numerous examples of social innovation such as consumer groups, time banks, urban allotments and social finance. The sense of community that these measures bring must form part of the structural evolution towards a different city model. For that to really happen, a gender justice approach must be integrated into this transformation.

Photo: Arianna Giménez

Photo: Arianna Giménez

The Gender Justice Plan for the period 2016-2020, drawn up by the Department for Life Span, Feminism and LGBTI Persons, constitutes the City Council’s key intervention mechanism for eliminating gender inequality. It is a tool for promoting equality between men and women — and among women themselves. This plan plots the route towards building a city where women have a voice and participate in decision-making; where domestic tasks and care-giving are distributed more fairly; where the poverty and deprivation that women currently face, are dispelled: in short, a city where no woman has to be afraid of going home alone at night.

The Gender Justice Plan is defined in the context of changes that have also brought multiple crises — in terms of the economy, the sustainability of care, the environment and representation — which have a major impact on inequality between men and women. It is at the local level where we are more aware of it and where we have more tools at our disposal to mitigate it. We have the opportunity to improve our system of representation and make our democracy more democratic with mechanisms that enable men and women to participate equally in decision-making.

One of the objectives of the Plan is to strengthen the mechanisms for the political, social and technological participation of women, giving them a voice and empowering them to transform our patriarchal society.

Photo: Arianna Giménez

Thinking about an inclusive city forces us to rethink its economy and even the very concept of economy. We must work to put the care of people at its heart as an activity that creates social value, not just market value. It is not about creating simple compensation mechanisms to guarantee women’s rights and well-being, but about making good use of a cross-cutting policy to transform all areas of daily life. We are facing an institutional change that the council itself has to start, one that involves reviewing all the processes we follow when it comes to integrating equality as a requirement and ensuring equality of working conditions in the public sector.

We need a more feminine city in which the tasks that, up to now, have been carried out primarily by women are held in high esteem and distributed more equitably, since nothing will give prestige to the abnegated, anonymous work done by so many women for other people if men are not prepared to take on or share in those tasks. It is not about rewarding women for doing less gratifying work; it is about according them the economic and social value they contribute to the well-being of society.

There are many hidden layers of Barcelona. In this issue we speak about urban wildlife, we endeavour to portray the many resident-led movements that have arisen in districts such as the Nou Barris Athenaeum and the historical importance of the women leaders of residents’ and workers’ movements. We talk about the rescue of family photo archives and albums and we discover what Barcelona smells like.

Photo: Vicente Zambrano

We often bemoan the superficial relationship that tourists have with Barcelona. Visitors establish an essentially epidermal and iconic connection with the city and then leave with only a few poorly assimilated impressions and a gallery of selfies recorded on their mobile phones. Yet the city has a layer that is invisible to these visitors: a thick layer which is the real Barcelona, the same layer that connects us with its day-to-day vibe and innermost pulse. At the same time, there is also a Barcelona that remains invisible to those of us caught up in its daily grind, one to which we will give particular focus in this issue.

We should begin by first speaking about the animals that inhabit the city and are a part of its urban ecosystem. Our coexistence with these beings revolves around a balance that is much more consequential than the benevolent relationships some of us have with pets. Barcelona is inhabited by a rich diversity of both autochthonous and allochthonous fauna.

Photo: Vicente Zambrano

Photo: Vicente Zambrano

The urban wildlife workshops organised by the group Animal Latitude has enabled us to examine and compare the visions of urban ecology experts and animal rights activists who work to protect animals and promote a healthier relationship with them. The workshops are part of the environmental education project “Animals in the City” which has the support of the City Council and the Diputació of Barcelona. While many of us have seen Dolphins do flips at the zoo, few of us have been lucky enough to catch glimpse of cetaceans off the city’s coast. We have heard of wild boars venturing into urban areas, but few of us are aware that such incidents represent the tip of the iceberg of existing human-wildlife imbalances. This is but one case among the many imbalances that occur when autochthonous animals are allowed to roam overfed and uncontrolled in an urban environment, or when exotic or invasive species collide with existing ecosystems.

Nor are we all that familiar with the invisible work carried out by volunteer activists and urban ecology professionals who strive to preserve urban greenery and biodiversity along with our natural heritage, while ensuring that urban fauna is managed ethically.

In this issue we have also endeavoured to portray the many resident-led movements that have arisen in districts that were long neglected by the city council and which have expanded Barcelona’s vocation for democracy. We will look back to 1977, when a residents’ group got the asphalt plant in Nou Barris shut down and opened Ateneo Popular 9barris, which for the past 40 years has operated as a community-managed cultural centre. In a comprehensive report, we also call attention to the historical importance of the women leaders of residents’ and workers’ movements, such as Maruja Ruiz, Llum Ventura and Paqui Jiménez, who demonstrated unwavering commitment to democracy and incorruptible opposition to Francoism.

Photo: Vicente Zambrano

Also in this issue, we vindicate the role of important women of both yesterday and today, as exemplified by Clotilde Cerdà, daughter of Ildefons Cerdà, a Republican and anti-slavery Freemason who founded the Academia de Artes y Oficios de la Mujer (Women’s Academy of Arts and Occupations) and paid very dearly for her struggle for the intellectual emancipation of women. Amongst today’s most important women is the veteran teacher Maria Antònia Canals, whom we interview in this issue. This historical educator and member of the organisation Rosa Sensat has always been an advocate of “mathematics that are useful for life”. Her exemplary character and precise pedagogical instincts have opened pathways for many generations of teachers in our country.

We have managed to rescue one of the many hidden layers of Barcelona from family photo archives and albums – artefacts which in many cases made their way to flea markets inside shoe boxes and biscuit tins. And it is thanks to such invisible networks woven by antique dealers and collectors, by public and private archives, and particularly by individual families, that we have been able to obtain exceptional evidence about the way everyday life was lived throughout most of the 20^th century.

And there is yet another invisible Barcelona, the most sensory and evanescent of them all: the one that we smell. We will let you in on recent studies carried out to create a map of the city’s smells. How might they influence urban planning? What does Barcelona smell like? Enter, read and smell.

Photo: Vicente Zambrano

The world’s population is now mostly urban and will be progressively more so in the future. Cities will hold an unprecedented concentration of people, and both our happiness and our creativity and efficiency will largely depend on how good we are at making a habitat for ourselves that doesn’t become dehumanized. Indeed, the future of mankind depends on the city, currently one of the main instruments of progress with which to face the future. And the changing times that we live in will force us to rethink the very concept.

A local authority has limited room for manoeuvre as it tries to guide the changing course of a city. The disorder that is inherent in any spontaneous action can never be completely regulated by local government and nor should it be. In areas that laws or municipal directives don’t reach, life has a way of creeping through the cracks to affirm itself and create new tensions and contradictions for us. Today more than ever, we need to rehabilitate life in the cities before it becomes simply the survival of the fittest.

At a time when market forces and speculation appear to be ruling over us more powerfully than ever, Barcelona needs to redouble its efforts to ensure basic rights like access to housing and public space that is free of coercion. Throughout 2016 the Architects’ Association of Catalonia (COAC) organised the Architecture Congress, an event that had not been held since 1996. The lectures and discussions that were held resulted in a commitment to the new values of participation, equality and sustainability.

Photo: Vicente Zambrano

Citizens live under constant attack from structural and symbolic assaults that force us to think of intolerable situations as normal, everyday things, which have become part of a momentum that is very difficult to halt. We talk of gentrification, energy poverty, transport deficiency, noise, segregation, touristification of the public space, etc. In response to these destabilising factors that jeopardise a large part of the urban population, we now have the concept of the “right to the city”, a set of rights that brings together a minimum common denominator of guarantees under one umbrella.

The right to the city is not about the right to live in one, which is obviously anyone’s right, but about the ability of those who already form part of the urban fabric to access basic services and a shared public space. Wherever ad-hoc market forces cannot guarantee this, it will be provided by force through urbanity, the ethics of the city, which is simply the set of shared tools that a community has for living together in a particular space. While urbanism is the responsibility of the authorities, urbanity will depend on the citizens, because it requires of us a sense of community that can only be built on the basis of collective generosity.

This right is not viable without the duties of citizenship that go with it. The sense of urbanity cannot just be about being polite and courteous or a code of conduct for road users. It will also demand a shared vision: respect for differences, social empathy, environmental awareness and the will to participate in collective governance. A free and open city by all means, but with the refinement of urbanity.

The pacifist response must come from the people, but it must also be global and it is here that the role of cities will become ever more significant. Violence will not only be instigated between nations in conflict but also from within our major urban centres.

A young man of the Conscientious Objection Movement. Barcelona, 1984.
Photo: Robert Ramos

Protest against Spain joining NATO, on 1986.
Photo: Pepe Encinas

This year marks the fortieth anniversary of the founding of Barcelona’s centre for peace Casal de la Pau, where the pacifist activities of the 1980s were hatched and which a decade later led to the “No” campaign in the referendum on Spain’s membership in NATO. Today, we shall weigh up the present, the past and the future of the culture of peace. What does it mean to be a pacifist today?

The wars of today are not what they once were. Western nations feel powerless in the face of new forms of violence that are unpredictable and uncontrollable. War could break out in a remote province of Asia or in the underground carriage that’s taking you to work.

Until now, wars have been administered by nation states. And that is why pacifist movements have always been at odds with the government bodies that have promoted military values to defend a demarcated area of sovereignty. Citizens of the western world no longer feel that the integrity of their nation state is under threat, but they do see a threat to the security of their lives in their homelands. Today’s European is not setting out to win a war. He or she just wants to avoid or postpone a disaster.

During the cold war, the military were seen as the escalators of a perverse arms race that could only lead to destruction on a global scale. Now, though, they are seen by many citizens as a peacekeeping force that we send to faraway armed conflicts to ensure the stability of the world order. While anti-Francoist activists were filled with indignation at the suspension of the rule of law during the dictatorship, now many citizens are willing to live in a permanent state of emergency deemed as necessary to control the flows of migrants across our borders. We face a worrying scenario. The democracy we dreamt of put full citizen’s rights above national identity or one’s ethnic or cultural status. The model of a pluralistic and inclusive democracy is giving way to the establishment of large zones of exclusion.

Demonstration in Colombia in November 2007.
Photo: Ruta Pacífica de las Mujeres / CooperAcció

So what does it mean to be a pacifist today? What role do peace movements have in this new and very disconcerting context? Present and future peace will not only be defined as the opposite to military conflict, but also as the opposite to the broader notion of catastrophe. The shock waves of remote wars that reproduce like spores, spreading their effects far and wide, reach us in the form of terrorist attacks or waves of migration. The pacifist response must come from the people, but it must also be global and it is here that the role of cities will become ever more significant. Violence will not only be instigated between nations in conflict but also from within our major urban centres.

Social imbalances can lead to the insurgence of the excluded and the discontented. A clash of cultures or the devastating effects of climate change will sorely test our peace, with outbreaks of violence that we can’t foresee but for which we must be prepared. The devastation of New Orleans after hurricane Katrina was not just the result of a natural disaster, but also the consequence of the breakdown of a social order which led to looting and lawlessness.

But peace cannot be reduced to a simple question of public order and security; that would entail renouncing our own practice of peace and turning all responsibility for it over to the authorities. We cannot leave the matter of peace in the hands of the police. The culture of peace must plan for all these challenges so that the imminence of disaster is not used as an excuse to maintain the status quo.

The demonstration held in Barcelona in support of refugees on 19 June 2016 under the slogan “Open borders, we want to welcome”.
Photo: Pere Virgili

As Slavoj Žižek says in his book Violence, “If one were to open the borders, the first to rebel would be local working classes. It is thus becoming clear that the solution is not to ‘tear down the walls and let them all in,’ the easy empty demand of soft-hearted liberal ‘radicals’. The only true solution is to tear down the true wall, not the Immigration Department one, but the socio-economic one: to change society so that people will no longer desperately try to escape their own world”.

After almost thirty years of uninterrupted publication, Barcelona Metropolis is coming out with its 100^th issue. For more than three decades it has endeavoured to explain the city to Barcelonians and to the world at large. The magazine has also been a platform for debate and for sharing the challenges and changes faced by a city in constant transformation.

The brainchild of former Barcelona mayor Pasqual Maragall, the magazine was intended to give Barcelona an expressive tool that would cast the city as a great Mediterranean metropolis in the midst of a period of pre-Olympic acceleration. Edited for twenty years by Joan-Anton Benach, the publication’s beginnings were marked by a distinctly cultural focus. This was particularly evident in its central supplement, where cultural topics were explored in depth.

First released under the title of Barcelona. Metròpolis Mediterrània, it has always been a tri-lingual (Catalan, Spanish and English) publication, a quality that has helped it become a data source for scholars and biographers of the city. As founding editor Joan-Anton Benach mentions in the interview that opens this issue, Australian writer and art critic Robert Hughes extensively combed the pages of this magazine for research material that he would use to write his book Barcelona, a monumental work that helped explain the city to the world through art and literature.

The publication evolved and was eventually renamed Barcelona Metròpolis. Edited by Manuel Cruz between 2008 and 2011, and then by Bernat Puigtobella from 2012, it has progressively widened its spectrum of interests to become a magazine open to all topics that are a part of Barcelona’s everyday urban and social transformation. Just like Pasqual Maragall, the mayors that succeeded him – Joan Clos, Jordi Hereu, Xavier Trias and Ada Colau – have all been more than respectful and afforded full editorial independence to our editors, who have all shared the common mission of inspiring critical discourse.

Now more than ever, the meaning and integrity of a magazine like this one lie in its ability to observe how the people of Barcelona comprehend and adapt to new times. It is not really such a question of telling an institutional story as it is about stimulating debate regarding our challenges and listening to the people and communities that get things done and contribute to progress with a transformative spirit. We also try to give to experts in a variety of fields free reign to express themselves and identify important dilemmas and junctures.

Our city has always had narcissistic and self-congratulatory tendencies, which have counterbalanced our other defeatist and bad-natured habits. For obvious reasons, the City Council has always done a good job of shining a positive light on its governing actions. It nonetheless needs outlets such as this one that enable it to put labels aside and listen to the citizenry with an open ear. The magazine looks forward to expanding its content in the future, but from now on it will be published in print in only two languages (the English version will be available exclusively online).

Barcelona Metròpolis will continue with its mission to focus in on the city and its metropolitan area. We will also maintain our commitment to the values that have always distinguished us and to challenging and vital issues such as peace, equality, sustainability and the necessary co-existence between diverse ideologies and ways of navigating the urban experience.

Happy birthday!

Newspapers with editions in different languages.
Photo: Pere Virgili.

According to the census, more than three hundred languages are now spoken in the country whose capital city is Babelona. While this linguistic richness constitutes a major social and economic asset, it is also a cultural asset existing within the fragile balance of a particular ecosystem.

Barcelona has become multilingual. The city that proudly and confidently spoke to the world in Catalan, Spanish, English and French during the 1992 Olympic Games is today an even richer and more diverse linguistic habitat, a reflection of our globalized planet. According to the census, more than three hundred languages are now spoken in the country whose capital city is Babelona. While this linguistic richness constitutes a major social and economic asset, it is also a cultural asset existing within the fragile balance of a particular ecosystem.

A taxi with its ‘occupied’ sign in Catalan. Above the Texas cinema, the only cinema that exclusively offers films translated into Catalan.
Photos: Pere Virgili.

Eight international organisations are working in support of a project called the Protocol to Guarantee Linguistic Rights, whose aims are to offer guidelines for the defence of language equality and to support endangered languages. If Barcelona is to be a benchmark for multilingualism, it must start by protecting its own language, Catalan, in a way that ensures that it can be assertively used without becoming a kind of imposition or source of conflict. At this point in time, when some would like to see our society fractured by linguistic differences, it is more important than ever to encourage harmony and respect amongst speakers of different languages. Addressing someone who looks foreign in Catalan should be interpreted as a sign of respect. Were this not the case, we would be demonstrating bigotry towards people whose linguistic identity is not discernable by the colour of their skin, physical features, surname or mode of dress, while at the same time denying large sectors of the population access to the Catalan language.

There should be no room for linguistic laziness. Languages should be thought of not as problems but as opportunities, not as barriers but as bridges that facilitate the incorporation of new people and communities into the life of the city. To the extent that we can all understand one other, we should also put the languages of new arrivals to good use to further the development of Barcelona, a city which needs to forge economic and financial links with the vast network of cities that are re-drawing today’s world maps.

A class of Catalan at the Casa Amaziga of Catalonia. Photo: Pere Virgili.

As Francesc Xavier Vila points out in his article on the languages of Barcelona, the city’s multilingualism is nothing new. It goes way back to the time when the area known as Barkeno (inhabited by Iberians, Greeks and Carthaginians) became Barcino (which Latinised natives and colonisers alike) and later Barchinona, where vulgar Latin lived alongside Classical Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Amazigh and Barbarian languages.

An Amazigh speaker is the subject of the interview which kicks off this edition of Barcelona Metròpolis: Najat El Hachmi, a writer of Amazigh origin and winner of the Ciutat de Barcelona prize. Today, she is one of the rising stars of Catalan literature. Najat El Hachmi is a representative of the new wave of immigration of the 1980s which brought non-Europeans to our country. While no longer an old empire’s metropolis, today’s Barcelona sets the scene for stories written by both local and foreign authors such as German Stephanie Kremser and Frenchman Mathias Énard, a recent winner of the Prix Goncourt. The rise of Najat El Hachmi and the other writers mentioned is an indication that the life of this country and this city that we are building is destined to be ever more diverse and heterogeneous. Barcelona’s narrative is no longer in the hands of any one social class, media group or powerful lobbying group with a branding concept. Nor is it in the hands of a City Council that works to empower and give a voice to the citizenry: together these citizens will build the Barcelona they want.

Activities at the Brazilian association housed in the Parc-Sandaru Civic Centre.
Foto: Pere Virgili.

Barcelona will achieve linguistic sovereignty if it is able to give Catalan its rightful place in the world. It will also serve as a haven for languages if it is capable of welcoming – without being condescending or pretentious – speakers from all around the world, including those of the most endangered languages.

For centuries, Barcelona has been committed to the book sector and intends to continue to uphold this commitment, now as a UNESCO City of Literature. This issue addresses all the realities that define what literature means to Barcelona, and seeks to explore the reasons why it aspires to the UNESCO title.

Photos: Lluís Clua

Books filled the city in September. We are not referring only to textbooks because of the start of the school year. Books literally came out onto the streets, meeting up with residents at the cathedral during Catalan Book Week, and subsequently at the Second-Hand Book Fair in Passeig de Gràcia. For a few days, these sites became meeting points for new and old, literary and professional, children’s and young people’s books and books for all ages. They brimmed with activities that united the street, writers, residents and literature.

During the course of the year, numerous events bring books to the fore in different city locations, and also unite authors and readers. These include Barcelona Negra, Poetry Week, Món Llibre for youngsters, and Kosmopolis, the self-defined amplified literature festival. And let us not forget World Book Day, on St George’s Day (Sant Jordi), as the publishing world event par excellence. Book-lovers and newcomers to reading throng festivals, bookshops and libraries.

For writers, the city is a source of inspiration, as well as a haven. Some ten years ago, PEN Català, with the City Council’s support, contributed to creating a network of city-havens for threatened writers to facilitate the right to freedom of expression that is denied to them in their places of origin. This initiative ties in with the proposal from the mayor’s office to create a cluster of cities to welcome even more refugees, such as those fleeing from the war in Syria.

Barcelona has become the Iberian Peninsula’s publishing capital in terms of number of titles and turnover (excluding school and official books), where almost 300 publishers bring out more than 30,000 titles a year and employ some 5,300 professionals. The city is home to multinationals that use it as a platform to access the Spanish and Hispano-American markets. However, it is also a place that welcomes small publishers with personality, that are just starting out and are trying to carve a niche for themselves.

The programme for hosting threatened writers, the distribution network provided by libraries and bookshops, the broad range of festivals and trade fairs with a potential to embrace more readers, the publishing sector that makes Barcelona the publishing capital, World Book Day, the Casa Vil·la Joana museum project, and corners that ooze literature or have inspired stories that became books… These realities and on-going projects, as well as Barcelona’s capacity to create international bonds and networks, have led to its candidacy as a UNESCO City of Literature, an opportunity to continue promoting local culture, here and everywhere, with the help of the book world.

Photos: Pepa Álvarez

This issue addresses all the realities that define what literature means to Barcelona, and seeks to explore the reasons why it aspires to the UNESCO title. We begin from the distant past, when the city set up what Sergio Vila-Sanjuán called “a comprehensive book ecosystem”. And we conclude with some food for thought about the future by Antoni Martí Monterde. Monterde believes that, beyond literature, Barcelona has to rethink itself as a cultural capital, and adds that “being a UNESCO city is the recognition of a structure in which the literary book plays a fundamental role in citizens’ lives, something more than one of its economic driving forces, which it undoubtedly is too”.

For centuries, Barcelona has been committed to the book sector and intends to continue to uphold this commitment, now as a UNESCO City of Literature. Networking with other cities allows it to share and exchange experiences that drive creativity, while also bringing literature closer to the citizens in all neighbourhoods. Barcelona will continue to work to decentralise festivals, to further foster the untiring work done by libraries, to support neighbourhood bookshops – which in many cases have become cultural facilitators –, to spread educational programmes to promote reading, and to continue to spearhead high-quality literary and publishing initiatives.