I wanted to show the City Council that everything is still the same here, that nothing has changed in the neighborhood, that the fences they put up are of no use, that as many people continue to come to the Carmel bunkers as before or more, that they have to live in this neighborhood it is no longer what it was, by any means, that we are completely saturated, that…
In this way begins the story of Joan, the 76-year-old neighbor of Carmel who was beaten last week, after recording with his mobile phone and drawing the attention of a group of visitors who were preparing to jump the fences installed laid at the beginning of May to mitigate the tourist massification of this place. And on top of that, when they had him on the ground, they took advantage of it and stole his device, an iPhone 14. Dozens of people braved the heat yesterday and gathered in the Juan Ponce gardens to express their displeasure.
“I should have started recording inside the house, secretly, and not from the street, where everyone could see me, but… Before the elections here we had urban guards every day, a few meters from my house, I saw them all the time, and now, on the other hand…”. Joan has lived all his life in the secluded Carrer Marià Labèrnia, the main access road to the very crowded bunkers, a storefront on the street flanked by small houses that always seemed like a village, but which some time ago turned into a surreal scene where hundreds of guiris go up and down every day!
“They hit me again two or three years ago – remembers Joan”. That time it was in the morning. A guy was peeing on my doorstep, drunk, and I asked him what the hell he was doing, and he told me to fuck you in English, fuck you, like that, and punched me all over face, and because I was wearing a ring they had to put eleven stitches in my mouth”. The government of Mayor Ada Colau, here in the district of Horta-Guinardó represented by the socialist councilor Rosa Alarcón, understood that closed gates every day at 2:30 p.m. and other measures would contribute to mitigating the crowding of the viewpoint , a saturation that has already altered the daily life of the neighborhood, which people are rather fed up with.
“But as many people continue to come to the bunkers as before – continues Joan – and those who want to jump the fence, especially now, since the municipal elections here we no longer see the Urban Guard like before… it’s that the “the other day 50 or 60 people were jumping the fence at the same time!”. Maybe if the fences were a little higher… And other visitors, when they find the fences closed, disperse around, with their chips and cans of beer, because the Turó de la Rovira is not the only viewpoint in the area. Here people have the feeling that a symbol has been taken away from them.
“Then they tell me that Dominicans don’t like to be engraved, and when I want to realize it I have fifteen people around me – continues Joan, now showing some of his bruises – and one of them hit me in the chest that knocked me to the ground, and then others took advantage and kicked me a lot all over and one woman took my phone away! If the security device of the Urban Guard had been where it was before so many days, none of this would have happened”.
The next day Joan bought another device, but when he retrieved his files he found that they had already deleted the video that could betray them. “This time they weren’t tourists, they weren’t tourists, because the truth is that all kinds of people come here… the locator says that the phone is in Can Barók, in a block on Carrer Francesc Alegre… but, come on , the truth is that the Mossos d’Esquadra aren’t paying much attention to me either.”
