It may be that the greatest show in the world is a man on a wire, a man who plows the sky without an engine, a man who steals from all his spectators: the vertigo, the hiccup, the breath, the courage, the children
No one can help but look at that man on a wire. No one can stop watching it for 38 minutes. No one can help but think that it will end, no one can help but think that the cable will break, that it will be unmoored from where the hell they tied it. The cable is 350 meters long and the man, not content to have only walked it one way, also does it on the way back.
The man is Nathan Paulin and he soars through the Barcelona sky above Passeig de Gràcia, which commemorates the 200 years of existence within the Grec program, and goes back and forth on a steel cable from the Telefónica building in the Generali building, a cable 70 meters high, above the trees, most of the buildings, the terraces of the hotels, where no one can help but have their mouths open, and it’s not for drinking. It must not be a coincidence that one of the two anchors is at the headquarters of an insurance company.
Sometimes he rests. He sits on the cable (as hundreds of people have sat down there, on the asphalt), then gets up and carries on, or hangs on the damn cable, and climbs back up like someone getting out of a swimming pool. He appeared punctually at eight in the evening, while a loudspeaker broadcasts his thoughts, a few sentences written by him; a deep and (sorry) funeral-like music accompanies him throughout the journey.
On a couple of occasions, the cable takes on a life of its own and becomes a 3 or 4 meter wave, up and down, the tightrope walker stays calm and crosses his arms, the cable calms down. People screamed for a moment and held their breath, mothers held their children’s hands. Some imprudent taxi driver blows his horn. But Nathan doesn’t mind the noise. A few meters from the terrace of the Iberostar hotel, the guy stops and says hello. He smiles, and it doesn’t seem forced.
Finally back to square one. Thousands of people applaud and exhale all the breath they had contained, thousands of liters of air turn into whistles. It might be the biggest show in the world, or maybe the longest, 700 meters on a cable, 38 minutes that seem like 380. The evening comes.
At 8:48 p.m., in the center of the Sant Pere roundabout, Elisa imitates Nathan. With her arms crossed, moving them synchronously, she pretends to keep her balance, while her friend Alba portrays her in reverse, “for Insta”. But it has no grace: its line is white and is painted on the asphalt, where we mortals live.
