I'll Get The Champagne...: May 2009

Barcelona is different. Capital of a stateless nation, a Mediterranean port city, the place where anarchism worked, the site of the rebirth of the Olympic movement in an orgy of spectacle and urban potential… Barcelona is all of these things at once. What is more, living vibrantly in the now of the present and in the recesses of an archive that tells of oppression, the city continues to surprise and to confound both residents and visitors alike. When one considers Barcelona as both an aesthetic entity/experience and as a built environment—as spatial practice and geographic place—its singularity becomes even more apparent. Indeed, such is the power of the image of this lived and built Barcelona that it is possible to now speak of the Catalan metropolis as having its own “brand.” Branding, a process in which meaning is collapsed into an image or a feeling that can then be managed and manipulated, relies on patent difference in order to function effectively. As regards the possibility of urban branding, Smith points out rightly that “city re-imaging is the deliberate (re)presentation and (re)configuration of a city’s image to accrue economic, cultural and political capital” (399). In the case of Barcelona this practice or dynamic has taken place at various levels — most pointedly in municipal campaigns geared towards increasing tourism and promoting the city as a stylish locale. Image and marketing are no strangers to one another in the promotion of the Catalan capital and a recent change in labeling practices by the Catalan company MANGO reflects this most fittingly (Fig. 1).

Figure 1. MANGO apparel label with Barcelona brand added.

From the company’s perspective, the addition of the city’s name to its apparel logo taps into the stylish aura of the place: “per tal que la imatge de la multinacional s’identifiqui amb la de la ciutat, de la mateixa manera que altres marques de moda s’associen amb la ciutat de Barcelona o altres capitals de la moda” (“L’Ajuntament). For his part, Jordi Hereu, the city’s mayor, sees the deal this way:

"la signatura d’aquest conveni és un pas més per vincular la marca Barcelona a referents internacionals de prestigi i d’innovació. La moda és per a Barcelona un aspecte important de la seva economia i de la seva cultura, sent la nostra ciutat un referent de formació i de recerca per la moda. La ciutat es felicita per aquesta iniciativa d’institucionalitzar el vincle entre el nom de Barcelona i una empresa catalana com MANGO, reconeguda internacionalment pel seu caràcter innovador. És una prova més de la projecció i les garanties que ofereix la ciutat de Barcelona, sens dubte, un valor segur." (“L’Ajuntament”)

This mutually beneficial relationship seems predicated on the special character of Barcelona as a “sure bet” of quality and distinction, but that said, how does one adequately engage with the difference exhibited by a city such as the Catalan capital if the process of branding is itself a generic process — one that literally commodifies variation and reifies the supposedly intangible elements of urban life that make the city unique and “authentic”? If branding—or re-imaging—has become part of the modern capitalist condition and touches everything from the smallest consumer item to how cities and even nations imagine and market themselves, what sets Barcelona apart? If the easy and interchangeable symbols that come to be metonyms for cities looking to proclaim their difference do not indicate distinction, where then does it lie?

I propose that Barcelona’s particular difference—and thus its inherent brand, so to speak—is powered by a motor that is only now receiving the attention that it deserves. Namely, I point to the fact that Barcelona’s modernity has been conditioned intimately by the experience of siege. I argue that if the Barcelona brand has become so potent today, it is because inherent in its aesthetic and spatial distinction are the tensions of centuries of struggle for cultural survival as the main urban element of the Catalan fact. What is more, I propose that these tensions point to nothing less than the potentiality of Barcelona as a national capital in the sense that Giorgio Agamben implies in the term when he discusses sovereignty. [1] If Barcelona’s hook to the world has become the intoxicating potential or possibility for transformation that it represents — which MANGO president Isak Andic points to directly when he states that “Si bé MANGO és present en més de 90 països, identificar la nostra marca amb el nom de Barcelona és una manera de no oblidar on vam començar i de projectar el potencial de la ciutat per tots els continents” (“L’Ajuntament”)—it must be recognized that this root of the city-as-brand goes even deeper and touches the concomitant potential inherent in the thing to not be. [2] I argue that it is in the experience of siege, both literal and metaphoric, that Barcelona’s potential to not be has been made patent on so many occasions. Barcelona’s brand becomes then, more than surface appeal; it is a question of resonance, of echoes and of deeper meaning for the “consumer” who is open to its message. Unfortunately, it has also become a burden for many residents and as a result of the negative potentiality inherent in the city’s history of being oppressed, has contributed to the latest manifestation of the siege rubric.

Barcelona is a metropolis for which the concept of siege has specifically modern connotations. Captive in various forms for much of its history following the comprehensive defeat of the Catalan crown in 1714, what was to become the economic motor of Spain would learn to live under the watchful eyes, cannon and restrictive centrist policies of the Spanish state for the bulk of its modernization. Sovereignty and the capacity to decide, both in municipal and by extension, national terms, have thus always been contested in its modern phase. What is more, around the turn of the twentieth century, a foundational period both in cultural and political terms, this external vigilance was supplemented in the Catalan capital by periods of brutal class warfare amongst its own citizens. That this time of growth was inflected by urban violence only heightened the city’s understanding of what it meant to be under prolonged attack as both working- and ruling-class Barcelona felt besieged from without and from within.

The city persisted and survived trials ranging from living with the Ciutadella army barracks on its doorstep to being bombarded on various occasions from Montjuic Castle on the mountain above. It withstood, as well, two dictatorships during the twentieth century and was finally rewarded in the years following the transition to democracy in 1975 with urban expansion and growth that rivalled those of the latter half of the 1800s. As had happened during that first modern Catalan renaissance, Barcelona was able to slough off its overt prison garb as it built and developed frenetically. This process of revitalization culminated in the hosting of the 1992 Olympics. The ostensible success of those Games as a performance of urban possibility coded as “renewal” has resonated around the world ever since. Even though critics are increasingly questioning the ultimate consequences of this period, urbanists in particular now point to a “Barcelona model”—especially in terms of waterfront revitalisation—as a way of helping urban centres connect not only to their citizenry but to the built environment and their natural geographies, as well. This model status has become an integral part of the Barcelona brand and within that rubric endorses a process of radical transformation that codes potential as a positive element. Increasingly, though, local voices in Barcelona have begun to disagree with this aspect of the brand.

Of course, Barcelona’s attractiveness is not limited to policy wonks and urban planners. Its arrival as a sought-out destination—an “in” city—on the world’s map, has been a mixed blessing. Among its valued attractions Antoni Gaudí’s and his contemporaries’ instantly recognisable modernista architecture has helped confer upon Barcelona “must see” status for tourists travelling to Europe. At the same time, the celebrated urban “renewal” has brought the holiday beach experience to within steps of Barcelona proper and the brand image of Barcelona has become one not of a specifically Catalan metropolis but rather that of a cosmopolitan sensorial experience that one consumes. As a result of these multiple dynamics, the city is less and less a local city and more and more a “world” city — its brand resonating at once in terms of urban form (the particular built environment of the place) and as regards its style — that is, the surface appeal that it offers the visitor with limited time and/or desire to “know” the city. The flip side of this “success” is that the metropolis is also, increasingly, a difficult place to live for its residents. Mass tourism and the economic effects of being a very desirable location for visitor and potential expatriates alike are changing Barcelona, with the wide-ranging consequences of the brand’s success having been felt in a relatively short period of time. Not surprisingly, this rapid ascension and visibility after so many years of being stifled and ignored have had unintended results and now, as in the past, the Catalan capital is once again facing a siege. The walls and conflicts of old have been replaced by new threats to social cohesion but the effects are just as serious. Real estate speculation, top-down urban planning and the promise of a unique urban experience projected by Barcelona’s postmodern image have all had deleterious consequences. Perversely, the city’s strong design-based foundation has contributed to the current danger that is perceived in many quarters. Barcelona’s continuing siege dynamic owes much to the fact that it is a very deliberately “designed” city on the one hand and is a now pre-eminent “city of design” on the other. Barcelona’s literal development within its historical siege rubric has ceded to what may be called its postmodern siege. Given that this new form is predicated in large part on the city-as-experience that the manufactured brand image of Barcelona promises, it is interesting to key on the sensorial, specifically, on look and sound. An exploration of these two facets of the urban experience provides a new approach to an analysis of the city’s civic tension now that the idea of what an urban siege entails has been literally and figuratively internalised with the advent of the postmodern global city. What is more, the insistence on look, which has been driven by the powerful design imperative in Barcelona, has also been fundamental to forced evolutions in the city’s sound, a telling, yet until now, under-appreciated aspect of how the Catalan capital has changed due to external and internal pressures such as densification, immigration and the consequences of the aforementioned increase in mass tourism.

From the Transition to the Olympics

With the death of Francisco Franco and the transition to democracy in the late 1970s, Catalonia entered a new phase, one in which hopes of greater autonomy had been raised in the wake of the Moncloa Pacts. Now relieved of the weight of overt Francoist and right-wing derision, the capital Barcelona started a rapid and steady process of change and revitalization headed by architect and critic Oriol Bohigas. Even though, as Resina points out, “Bohigas favored monumentalization of open spaces through architectural design of a markedly avant-garde character [and with] his blessing, his disciples inflicted the unpopular places dures on a city that was starved for green space,” there is no denying the radical nature of the changes that the city was about to experience (Resina 209). This type of comprehensive and interventionist urbanism was not new. As Delgado observes astutely, urban design as policy did not come about only with the democratically-elected local governments of the Transition; it began as early as 1953 with the Francoist administration’s official plan for the city, continued through this scheme’s revision in 1964 and then saw a new Plan General Metropolitano developed and approved in principle in the 1970s under Enric Massó, the last mayor to be named by Franco (Delgado 22).

While multiple projects, expansions and developments occurred around the city during the post-Franco period, the announcement by IOC chief Juan Antonio Samaranch on 17 October 1986 that Barcelona had been awarded the 1992 summer Olympic Games meant that the Catalan capital was to enter a new phase of its history. As a result of this victory, Barcelona would gear itself up not only for the world’s premiere sporting event but for its largest celebration of mass spectacle and image production. This embracing of the idea of city-as-image would propel Barcelona into the global imaginary—here was its literal and figurative branding—but it would do so at a great cost. If the technocratic development principles of the city planners had started the estrangement between citizen and city, it was this element of spectacle that would ultimately contribute to a new sense of siege as the traces and legacy of Barcelona’s modernist past combined with new endeavours so as to maximise the city’s potential as a brand image of cosmopolitan urbanity, progress and fashion.

The success and style of the 1992 games, with their groundbreaking opening ceremonies by the theatre group Fura dels Baus and compelling venues played off Barcelona’s intrinsic architectural beauty and style while underlining the tremendous transformative potential (from a capitalist perspective) of such a global media event. Indeed, in addition to the choreographed theatricality of the opening ceremony, which set a new standard for this type of production, one of the most suggestive—and repeated— images was that of Olympic divers in full flight while framed against the city’s skyline at the Piscines Picornell complex. The perceived subject may have been the athletes soaring freely above the metropolis, but the placement of the pool and the diving towers when combined with the ingenious camera angles ensured that more often than not Barcelona’s most recognisable building and the one that most epitomises its look and that has come to be its synecdoche, the Sagrada Familia, would figure in the background. The fact that Gaudi’s masterpiece was (and still is) unfinished and was itself flanked by massive cranes served both as an overt marker of ostensibly avant-garde progress to the outside observer and as an ironic reminder of the continuous construction project that Barcelona had become – both literally and figuratively in terms of how its image would continue to be built as its renown grew in the post-Olympic years.

Barcelona’s Olympic transformation was so acute and so visible that ever since urbanists, architects and politicians from around the world have sought to duplicate it. While the specifically Mediterranean context of Barcelona is often suppressed in the transfer and application of this “model,” it has become, nevertheless, both a powerful template for innovative change at home and a vehicle for Catalan architects and urbanists to succeed abroad. This interchange—consolidation and planning at the local level, projection and distribution of form and technique overseas—has been celebrated both at home and abroad and a charitable interpretation would be to read this dynamic as a natural, yet postmodern, evolution of Barcelona’s status as a port, a city to and from which people, ideas and goods have long flowed — even if that exchange has often been restricted. However, the notion that the Barcelona Model has mostly served planners, political elites and real estate developers is one that has begun to gain greater and greater traction. [3] That said, in the wake of such an apparently successful Games and Spain’s full entrance into the EU—which Catalan nationalists initially saw as a way to further escape Madrid’s influence—it seemed that, on the surface, at least, the siege experiences of the past were finally over.

Olympic Consequences

There is no doubting that 1992 was a watershed year in terms of Barcelona finally achieving the international prominence that it had sought when it hosted the World’s Fairs of 1888 and 1929, respectively. With the Olympics Games focusing the world’s attention on the city, the Catalan capital tried to make the most of its international media close-up by portraying itself as a vibrant economic and cultural hub. Nevertheless, while Catalan was one of the official languages of the Games, the Spanish state was determined to incorporate the event into the larger 1992 celebrations going on in the country and avoid it becoming a rallying point for Catalan independence. [4] I would argue that these tactics recalled the treatment of Barcelona during the 1929 Fair and that the further emptying of the city of its political charge as a capital of a stateless nation abetted its growth as an international image while, at the same time, contributing to the disconnect experienced by its citizens. Here then is a latter variation on the potential to not be that was so patent in the military threat that the city faced throughout its modern history. The timing for the presentation of a de-politicized urban image of city-as-spectacle was propitious also in that Barcelona’s ascension coincided with a general shift in style and tourism trends. The 1990s saw a rise of superficial “specificity” as travelers looked beyond traditional packaged trips and more at tailored travel “experiences” that would become increasingly mainstream by the 2000s. A concurrent general gentrification and democratisation of architecture and design spearheaded by “star” architects such as Frank Gehry, Enric Miralles, and I.M. Pei also contributed to the attractiveness of Barcelona. New monumental and “trophy” architecture in cities around the world helped make Antoni Gaudí’s early twentieth century work even more known and immediately recognisable while relieving it of the vernacular meaning that it had accrued. Buildings such as the Casa Battló, the Pedrera and especially the Sagrada Familia Expiatory Temple, helped confer “must see” status not only on Gaudi’s modernista oeuvre but also, through the metonymy that the built environment can engender, on the entire city itself. These dynamics contributed to the growing stream of international tourists “doing” Barcelona by consuming the city’s surface appeal—its distinctive modernista look—often with only the briefest of historical or cultural contexts provided by their Fodor’s, Lonely Planet or Let’s Go: Spain travel guide. With the “must-sees” checked off during the day, nights would be free to enjoy the city’s increasingly vibrant entertainment culture.

The image production that arises from the Barcelona model and its brand is, on the one hand a product of technocratic desire—development, speculation, transformation, etc—and, on the other, predicated on the promise of “experience.” This potential for sensation is where the look, feel and taste of the city come into play. Unfortunately for those residents of Barcelona who aspire to a “normal” urban existence and not the out-of-the-ordinary experience that the image of Barcelona has come to represent, this focus on sensation as both a side-effect and “natural” progression of the Barcelona brand image has had deleterious effects as regards quality of life in the city.

In response to the changes that Barcelona’s international success has wrought, many neighbourhood groups have sprung up in order to protest both public and private initiatives. For many, the Barcelona brand/model is flawed in that it privileges capital over community. Undeniably, Barcelona’s ascendance to world city status has come at the expense of a further erosion of its own Catalan specificity and the local areas, neighbourhoods and communities that make up the greater city of Barcelona have all been caught up in consequences of the city’s wider move towards spectacle, branding and image production whether they like it or not. Here this latest—and unexpected—phase of the city’s experience of siege comes to the fore. For while mass tourism may pour millions of euros into municipal coffers, the effects on daily life have been far from negligible. This siege may not feature the walls or cannons of the nineteenth century, the social violence of the early twentieth, or the overt ideological force of Spanish military dictatorships, but the attention given to large-scale developments such as the Olympics and the Fòrum Universal de les Cultures—which emphasise the city’s international reputation and image—have come at the expense of investments in making the city a viable place to live for its citizens. Electrical black-outs, water problems, as well as chronic delays in local train service and stunted airport growth all underline the growing disconnect between Barcelona, the imagined city of style and design and Barcelona, the city where citizens live and work. The negative perception of top-down urbanism and its triumph of style over substance has been exacerbated by the rampant real estate speculation of the 1990s and early 2000s. This speculation has not only affected individuals; the irony of the economics of the Barcelona model is patent too in the changes in the nature of businesses that exist in what have become prime tourist areas of the city. High amounts of tourist traffic have contributed to a general loss of specificity as chain stores that can afford high rents gradually push out the small family and independent businesses that contributed to the character of the Gothic Quarter or the Ramblas. Of course, these increasing flat rents and prices have had a serious impact on the local populace across the city in that people across the age spectrum found it impossible to afford to live in the city proper. Barcelona has become too expensive for the Barcelonans. Where once walls and cannon kept citizens in, economic forces now conspire to keep many out.

The Barcelona Experience

The new siege of/in Barcelona is multifaceted and one of the most tangible results of the success of the Barcelona brand/image that has contributed to it has been this aforementioned increase in tourism over the past twenty years. Tourist visits to the Catalan capital—and their nature—have especially been transformed by the advent and proliferation of cheap inter-European airlines. Flights starting as low as 1 euro plus taxes bring tourists and weekenders from all over Europe to airports in Reus and Girona where landing fees and flight traffic are lower than at the Prat airport on the outskirts of the capital. Indeed, passengers are often unaware that they will not be arriving in Barcelona proper and are bussed into the city upon arrival. Thus, for many, “Barcelona” has come to encompass a massive area stretching from Tarragona in the south to the Empordà region in the north. The cosmopolitan Barcelona brand as entertainment destination is made out to be part museum and part beach, with bits of discotheque and restaurant thrown in for good measure. The physical alterations to the city’s seafront that have turned the city to face the sea are the direct result of the rehabilitation projects of the 1980s and1990s. These changes have had a profound effect on the city’s relationship to the Mediterranean and as a result of the massive investment in remodelling the zone from the base of the Ramblas to the Olympic Port, the holiday beach experience has been brought to literally within steps of Barcelona proper. The knock-on effect of this has been to make the city even more attractive for a wide-range of tourists and emigrants from northern Europe. Like in other areas of Barcelona, though, this particular development has occurred much to the chagrin of locals — in this case, those in the previously working-class Barceloneta neighbourhood who have seen their waterfront radically redesigned for purposes not at all compatible with the needs of the small-scale fishers who were once the area’s primary residents. What is more, real estate speculation has gone hand in hand with the beach development and meant that flats have been priced out of reach for many residents as property is bought up to service a growing tourist trade and expatriate community. Once again, residents are faced with a future in which there children will not be able to afford to live in the area where they grew up.

The economic question is a constant in the new Barcelona and for tourists the Catalan capital is still a relatively affordable city. This is especially so for the British, who up until the economic crisis of 2008-09, had seen their money go much further in Catalonia than in their own cities, particularly, London. The combination of easy access through the aforementioned discount airline flights and this basic affordability has given rise to a large number of weekenders — among them traveling “stag” and “hen” parties replete with revelers who treat the city as a fun park for wild week-ends of binge drinking. Neighbourhoods such as the Gothic Quarter and Gràcia, where homes, bars and restaurants are often found in very close proximity to one another, have seen a reduction in quality of life as noise and general rowdiness encroach on formerly quiet residential areas. Frustrated by inaction at city hall, residents have formed a variety of groups to protest and lobby the local government for more stringent laws. Here is where one sees the intersection of the effects of Barcelona’s look and the changes in Barcelona’s sound — so much so that as a response to increasing noise levels, in 1998 L'Associació Catalana Contra la Contaminació Acústica (ACCCA) was founded to specifically combat noise pollution. Residents of Barcelona have found themselves literally besieged by noise as bars and terraces proliferate, discotheques multiply and flats are transformed into illegal guest houses where groups of tourists noisily stay during their brief sojourns to the Catalan capital.

The Barcelona brand is powerful and compelling. Barcelona has truly become a “world city” and has seen its image and model employed around the globe as a means of spurring growth and development in cities far removed from the particular circumstances of the metropolis that lies beside the Mediterranean between the Llobregat and the Besòs rivers. That said, however, as I have alluded to here, Barcelona’s difference is not an easily interchangeable marker or image but rather has its source in the unique conditions of its modernity, in the fact that it was radically affected by the experience of siege. That this dynamic has returned in a postmodern sense through the emptying-out of the accrued meaning of the place that is Barcelona reminds us to beware the homogenizing power of branding even as it leads us to the inescapable conclusion that Barcelona is different.

Notes

[1] See Agamben’s Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life.

[2] For Agamben, “what is potential can both be and not be” (45).

[3] See La ciudad mentirosa and Odio Barcelona among others.

[4] See Resina, pp 219-20.

Works Cited

Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1998.

“L’Ajuntament de Barcelona i MANGO promocionen la marca Barcelona.” http://news.mango.com/?p=811&lang=ca. 15 maig 2009.

Delgado, Manuel. La ciudad mentirosa: fraude y miseria del “modelo Barcelona.” Madrid: Libros de la Catarata, 2007.

Odio Barcelona. Barcelona: Melusina, 2008.

Resina, Joan Ramon. Barcelona’s Vocation of Modernity: Rise and Decline of an Urban Image. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2008.

Smith, Andrew. “Conceptualizing City Image Change: The ‘Re-Imaging’ of Barcelona. Tourism Geographies. 7.4 (2005): 398-423.

I'll Get The Champagne...

31 May 2009

Recent Food Fotos

Back to BCN

19 May 2009

Barcelona is Different