Some are outraged. To many others, however, the painting of the kiss mural is the same for them. Both are equally photographed with Joan Fontcuberta’s mural in the background. Because there is no digital evidence of any visit to Barcelona that does not include a stop in this corner of the Gothic Quarter, a few meters from the Cathedral.
Couples huddled together, influencers showing off their figure, any tourist pointing to one of the 4,000 snapshots that make up The world is born in every kiss. The last selfie from Barcelona that is going around the world through social networks is that of a graffiti, a big unfinished tag. This is how images of cities are formed today, apart from the official guides. How do you think the Carmel Bunker Parties became so popular?
The Betevé television channel advanced the hooliganism. Municipal sources later pointed out that the city’s monument conservation brigade is already aware of it. “Manual means, water and neutral soap will be used, and if another solution is needed, it will be studied as long as it does not damage the mural.” It is a tag, a painting, the most rustic signature in this world, but of a particularly large size.
So big that many believe that they are nothing more than the first strokes of a graffiti that was half finished. But when tattooing a wall with colored letters, it is customary to paint the backgrounds first, and then the outlines. This painting is not a half-baked work. The author did more or less what he planned. To mark a place that is continuously photographed and posted on the networks to, in this way, travel across the world. For some time now, it has become more and more common to encroach on the heritage.
The sources detail that the Barcelona City Council increased by one million euros the item allocated during the years 2022 and 2023 to the cleaning of graffiti in protected buildings and owned by the Consistory. “Although the contract is for publicly owned buildings – the sources insist -, work is also being done on others privately owned, such as the ones next to the Magarola house, on Carrer Tallers. The impact of these cleanings is very positive on the whole street”. In 2021, throughout Barcelona, ​​115,092 graffiti covering an area of ​​279,422.51 m2 were erased; in the course of last year we are talking about 123,742 painted and 300,345.30 m2, and during the first five months of this year 47,739 painted and 111,979.93 m2.
All their lives the writers, the graffiti artists of the old school, were reluctant to mark what they called stones and churches – that is, monuments and very old places –. But little by little the search for notoriety of the new generations of aerosol fans questioned this unwritten rule. Suddenly, the repercussion on social networks gained more importance than the work itself. The likes started measuring everything.
And in this way in 2019 Moe x Bcn did one of his first paintings on one of the facades of the Palau del Lloctinent, at the headquarters of the Archives of the Crown of Aragon, in Plaça de Sant Iu and also in the Gothic Quarter. Moe and his review of The Simpsons tavern keeper was actually trying to follow in the footsteps of the parents of the Art logo, the Muelle and the Black Pacifier first, the Pez and Konair later. The thing is, these people never painted stones or churches, and they were never inspired by TV series either.
Then the graffiti woke up in places as prominent as the churches of Santa Maria del Pi and Santa Maria del Mar. Most of them were tags with no more pretensions than to stain, like the ones that these days mark the side door of the Pi, the one in the Plaça al Milicià Desconegut. And we’re not just talking about screens. One of the largest murals in Santa Maria del Mar denounced the homophobic attack that killed a young man in Galicia. Very soon, these new trends multiplied the traditional neighborhood indignation at graffiti, even in territories historically conquered by graffiti artists, such as in a large part of the neighborhoods of the Ciutat Vella district, where many people had become accustomed to living there.
