US presidents are used to bowing to them (the most famous, the three in a row from Josep Piqué to George Bush), seeing Barack Obama reclining in front of the Abbot of Montserrat and kissing La Moreneta is shocking. Perhaps it is now when the world learns of the existence of a joyful Catalonia thanks to Obama’s agenda, which is not at all improvised but very successful. (Who organized the route for them these days?)
Obama’s Montserrat bow was the day after Bruce Springsteen’s first concert in Europe. The Boss saluted Barcelona, ​​Catalonia and, in a time of depressive destruction of the language, subtitled Letter to you in Catalan. The singer with a “disappeared bed voice”, according to Maruja Torres’ brilliant definition, not only made the usual clichéd winks of any singer in any country, but used only Catalan at several points in the concert. Michelle Obama, Kate Capshaw and Patti Scialfa did a tambourine choir singing Glory days from the stage and Steven Spielberg pulled out his cell phone to film the audience. The director who tries to save in each film the threatened and beautiful adventure of going to the cinema and who had filmed Liam Neeson playing Schindler, Whoopi Goldberg playing Celie, Harrison Ford playing Indiana Jones, Daniel Day-Lewis playing Lincoln, Meryl Streep, editor of The Washington Post, has now shot exteriors on Montjuïc and Montserrat mountains.
The impact of Barcelona and Catalonia on the world with this concert is priceless. The world didn’t watch when he played, this weekend they did. From the gastronomic route through a Barcelona that doesn’t need to make a fool of itself by removing two saltwater lobsters from any restaurant, or sucking on shrimp heads, to a walk through the Gothic Quarter infested with tourists like them.
(This article about the Boss, Obama and Spielberg is not a provincial view, it is from a small country – which we are – and with low self-esteem but whose facts confirm the historical modernity and its obvious differences.) (Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world, a candidate for the presidency of Spain was moving away from expressed modernity, trying to win votes by quoting Bruce Sprinter (sic).)
In just three days we may have learned to love each other a little more.
