Barcelona ‘by hand’ | Catalonia

The publication of the book Barcelona sense GPS, by Professor Maria Rubert de Ventós, is currently undeniably up-to-date. The collection of his articles published for more than 10 years in The newspaper, and now elaborated and ordered to form this book, it serves to see that many of the elements of the current discussion about Barcelona and its transformation were raised long ago. It is useful to mention the way in which these observations about the city are expressed here. These are the result of different things done a long time ago and it should be mentioned, since normally the credit for some ideas falls on the last one who has pointed them out, something that newcomers are quick to pick up on time and echo it. If you read this short and intense text about the city, if you are from Barcelona, ​​you will realize the value of linking and sewing things that we all know.

The book arises not as an editorial project that is the result of an impulse, but rather as a meeting of different experiences over the course of a few years. Among these experiences are, in addition to the articles published in the press, the tireless curiosity about this city and also the urban planning classes given by it at the ETSAB, which often extend to visits to the city, which are nothing more than purposeful walks. They are not accessories of the classes, they are walks in which to experience the city since, to think about it, you must walk and do it without too many certainties, hence the success in my view of “without GPS”. Attending certain events previously informed or instructed about what we are going to see or hear is advisable on many occasions, but in others the lack of prejudice and specific information about what awaits us around the corner is precious, a gift. Barcelona sense GPS it is in a way an invitation to drift and to let discovery illuminate ideas. From the strict perspective of thinking about the city, there are two things that are antagonistic: the walk and the office. From the office it is more difficult to see things from the point of view of how to get there. The walk, on the contrary, includes preambles until reaching a place, which the office saves and, therefore, suppresses. There is no place for tacticism here. Arriving at a site provides information that represents in a literary sense “the road”, without which it is impossible to map the city and, therefore, think about it.

From the perspective of thinking about the city, there are two things that are antagonistic: the walk and the office

We are faced with a set of observations that, without apparent effort, become proposals for Barcelona for the simple reason that the proposals for this city arise (or at least should do so) from observation. The reflections and comments on urban elements, from which they give it structure, such as the Diagonal, seen in two directions, Pere IV, the Meridiana, or the Ramblas, which serve to call attention to the other Ramblas and the need to have more than these civilized streams turned into promenades to give structure to the coastline, even those that punctuate it, such as squares or stations. The conscious mix of elements of different scales, such as the airport or beach bars, is very successful in the text. Something that, even with the order that the edition implies, has not been lost in relation to the origin of the articles. In this way, structural elements such as those mentioned are mixed with the subway, the tram or the bicycle or with the claim to de-asphalt or plant trees every eight meters, another proposal for the city that does not need makeup drawings, it is enough to state it. The awareness that articles should reach a wide audience forces them to bring together different and heterogeneous things and thus talk about the beaches, the decoration, the airport or the Rondas, brought together and separated thanks to the cadence of their publication. The book is also an occasion to see how things of knowledge are given rise, studied, walked, discovered, clarified or rectified, written to the public and explained in the classroom, in this order. At the sight of the book, one has the impression that the things exposed in public should reach the university more often and not the other way around.

This way of cultivating interest in the city has one more facet that we cannot ignore. The book is illustrated “by hand”, with drawings and paintings by its author, and this fact cannot be separated from her experience and observations. The illustrations are not accessory, although they are distributed throughout it with some freedom. In some cases they are perfectly synchronized with the short chapters and in others floating above them. The drawings and paintings, often made “from memory”, illustrate the book and its way of thinking in a double sense. The drawings give a sample of the culture about the city of its author, which is what remains when everything learned is forgotten, and for her the representations of the streets and windows of the city, those of a meal on the table or inside his house, and it seems to tell us: the house is completed in the city.

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