No vaccine yet, not even in the testing phase, to prevent the bottle pandemic that has been punishing popular festivities since this summer, La Mercè 2021, a gigantic festival in Barcelona, will be held from September 23 to 26 with a very opportune proclamation for the chance, Moreno Custody, inspiring neighborhood fighter que, ‘if it is not true, it is well found’, flaunts el honor de ser the first barrack in the city to go to university. By candlelight, since there was no electric light in her home in Carmel, she prepared at night for exams for the Faculty of Nursing. Come on, what better than a nurse who, as will be told later, helped to raise Barcelona in one of its worst moments to proclaim a party in peace and with a sense of responsibility in a time when there are those who maintain that two years of restrictions because of the coronavirus they justify everything.
La Mercè, a celebration that celebrates 150 years of history this September since Mayor Francesc Soler Matas decided that the second patron saint of the city deserved some celebrations, is so colossal in its dimensions that the depth of its program is presented throughout several days. In this first session, the highlight was to reveal the name of the hawker, charming in the presentation, and, of course, to publicize the official poster, a work that this year bears the signature of a gifted of illustration, Malika Favre, frequent cover artist of ‘The New Yorker’, Parisian by birth, for years a professional Londoner, but from 2019 Barcelona of adoption.
4 days, seven districts
In this first appetizer of what the party will be, the emphasis has been, of course, on what worries the most, the fear that what happened in the main festivals of Gràcia and Sants, which at night mutated in a footstep from Jekyll to Hyde , is repeated multiplied by seven from September 23 to 26. Why for seven? Because La Mercè advances in its decentralization process and this year there will be music and shows in seven of the 10 districts of Barcelona. New spaces are added to the program, such as the Turó de la Peira park and the Vall d’Hebron football field, some decline, such as the one on the banks of the Besòs (a pity), but in all cases, as in 2020 , it will be necessary to reserve a place to be able to attend a show. Only two venues will be able to reach 3,000 spectators, the Estadi Lluís Companys and the amusingly still called marine zoo, next to the Forum, because part of the beasts of the Ciutadella were going to go there in 2004 until the project was scorned. Not the name of the thing, it seems.
During the presentation, the mayor, Ada Colau, wanted to highlight that this year’s program will be, as always, for all audiences in the broadest sense of the term, from the childish to the ‘undreground’, to say the least. mode, but with a special accent put this 2021 in the traditional festivals, because in the end they feed on people from the neighborhoods. It will not be possible yet, due to the pandemic, to recover the days of ‘castellers’, the parades of giants and the Correfoc in its traditional format, but, as a substitute, the Institut de Cultura de Barcelona, the mother who stops La Mercè every year, has organized a suggestive novelty for September 24 on Passeig de Gràcia, a parade of all the figures and characters of the traditional iconography of the festivities.
Guest city, Havana
Another card face up, because the full program of the BAM and the Festival de les Arts a Carrer will not be revealed in full for two weeks, it is that this 2021 Barcelona will be able to pay off a pending debt for a year, when the invited city, another tradition, it was havana, but its presence was postponed by the covid. This year, and we will have to cross our fingers, for four days Barcelona will be Cubanized with 50 artists residing on the island and with another 50 exiles for different reasons. Actually, from a scenic point of view, there is only one Cuba. To be aware of this, it is always worth revisiting that musical filigree that he recorded under the heading ‘Playing for change’ a unique and moving take on a classic like Guantanamera. It is easy to find on YouTube and it is a perfect aperitif for those who believe that the invited city this year can bring great joys. As a clue, Councilor Jordi Martí, who has co-hosted the party with Colau, has recognized his weakness for one of the groups that will come to Barcelona, Interactive, an exceptional fusion of son, jazz and funk that reaffirms that, in the absence of bread, children in Cuba are born with an instrument under their arms.
The point, however, is that the Mercè 2021 will not yet be the desired one. The clearest proof is that the pyromusical which closes the festivities, in number of spectators, the biggest spectacle of the celebration, will repeat this year the successful compromise formula chosen last year, when fireworks were launched simultaneously from the four cardinal points of the city so that the people of Barcelona could enjoy them from the roofs, windows, balconies and squares. Less is nothing.
So much restriction will seem like a great annoyance, but that’s what the hawker is for, Custodia Moreno, who arrived in Barcelona in
1947 when he was only four years old And what are the things, in a city that was Roman for 2,000 years, he had to live in a neighborhood of barracks without even sewers. Oh! if Augusto, founder of the Barcino colony, raised his head. It was neighbors like Moreno who reversed that non-living and, in the case of the preacher, they went even further, since she, already as a nurse, participated decisively in the call ‘big bang’ of 70s sex education in Barcelona. From his hand, family planning and contraceptive methods reached the most disadvantaged neighborhoods, which at the beginning of that decade were smuggled into Spain. That she is the hawker is undoubtedly a success, nor is it to underline, in case it is not sufficiently obvious, that Building a neighborhood requires more effort than lifting a glass bottle.
A poster to examine with a magnifying glass
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The choice of the poster artist deserves the same applause, again a woman, Malika Favre, who for the image of the party has chosen a very ‘pop art’ Mercè that breaks the fourth wall of the illustration and looks directly into the eyes of the spectator. It is a work full of minute details that it is a great pleasure to discover one by one, such as the uniqueness of his crown (a sardana closed with the clasp of a tile from the city) and the Barcelona references that are sensed in the pattern of his clothes.
In a way, the poster conveys the infatuation that Favre still experiences for the city, which he arrived in 2019, which invites, by way of closing, a brief literary excursion. Favre is, depending on how you look at it, Marco Flamio Rufo, one of the most fascinating characters in Jorge Luis Borges’ stories. He is the protagonist of ‘The Immortal’. He is the tribune of a Roman legion from the time of Diocletian who is looking for a source that offers immortality to those who drink from it. He discovers it, which must produce an emotion comparable to the first time one lives in Barcelona, but over time he ends up discovering that eternity is a sentence, like Barcelona. The poster is a bit of the tinted version of that initial joy that the city transmits. Perhaps it is what was most needed right now.
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