Frequently, we perceive the world of the digital as contrary to that of encounters in the street, something like the gravedigger’s sand that, in the form of bits, It covers the old neighborhood, which we think is made by streets of the tones that have the memories of childhood. However, there are spaces in the network that serve as an anchor to these shared memories and even as a shadow of the public square. So is Friends of Tetuán de las Victorias, The group of Facebook what Elena It opened in 2013 and today brings together almost 7,500 Tetuaneros.
In Amigos de Tetuán de las Victorias the same unpaved scenes of old Tetuán that appear in the film are discussed We are neither Romeo nor Juliet, with Karina, which spread the loss of a pet or the news about pirate kitchens that are reaching Tetouan. However, it is around the old photos where the bulk of the activity takes place of the page. Images that reflect old lost locations in Tetouan but in which also, and this is the important thing, people come out. Rare is the post in which their real names do not sound in the comments and are virtually old neighbors.
Elena, 61, will always be a tetuanera, although she has been living in another neighborhood in the north of Madrid for a few years now. A lover as he was of old photos, one day he saw a page from another place, similar to what would later become Amigos de Tetuán de las Victorias, and he got to work. Some of the photos that are in this corner of the network are of his family, also of neighbors and, later, of various origins. Today they add up to about two thousand. Although now it has less time than in other times for work reasons, every day there is some content that invites you to visit the page.
It is enough to spend a while diving in the archives of the page to realize that the web is a meeting place. “There are many old residents of the neighborhood who have found themselves again through Friends… ”, Confirms Elena. Asked about some endearing moment, she tells us when, through the page, an orthopedist from the neighboring Barrio del Pilar paid for a wheelchair to a user who could not afford it. Authentic neighborhood solidarity.
Although she knows that we all idealize childhood memories, Elena misses the neighborhood where she was happy, at the end of Berruguete. So little Elena went with the rest of the kids in a big gang of different ages, through a neighborhood no doors where they lived on the street and the chairs were taken out cool summer nights. A neighborhood that no longer exists but still has many friends. “At home we were not bad, my father and my grandfather had good jobs and we would be one of the few who could even have vacations,” he says, aware of the poverty of those years.
The torrent of first-person testimonies, accurate recollections and information on the history of Tetuán contained, here and there, in Amigos de Tetuán de las Victorias is brutal. A little candy for researchers dotted in the comments of Facebook, waiting to be mined by urban historians and anthropologists.
On the other hand, the collection of old photos of Tetouan collected in the archives of the page is unparalleled. Elena is downloading them and organizing them little by little, by neighborhoods and times. A project that connects with the following company that has gotten between eyebrows: create a channel YouTube to compare the before and after of different parts of Tetouan. “But I need time to be able to carry it out.”
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