A peek at history

So perhaps you have heard about various cities in Europe (especially Barcelona in Spain) and I think this is illustrative (from my own adopted city) of the genesis of at least a part conflict faced by both sides. In the first photo (which I took in April 1999) you see a building near our apartment. It is called Edificio Adriatico. It is the same building as in the second photo which I took in the spring of 2024. Twenty-five years later. You can see the changes.

You may not have a way of interpreting the changes. In the first photo you can see that people were living in the apartments in the building and had potted plants they tended on their balconies. This is still a common practice in the neighborhoods here.

Twenty-five years later both the Edificio Adriatico and the building behind it have been spiffed up, but people don't live there anymore. They have been pushed out by tourism and development - both in holiday rentals and hotels as well as infrastructure developments. About eight years after my 1999 photo the city installed a tram from Plaza Nueva (the large square in front of City Hall) to the Plaza España (site of the 1928 Hispano-American Exposition).

It now runs right in front of the Edificio Adriatico. Which in 1999 had a bakery on the ground floor but today houses a Hagen Daaz ice cream shop for the huge numbers of tourists now roaming the streets of that part of town between the Cathedral and Plaza España especially. Today only the very wealthy would be able to think about living in such an historic building but likely they would not be interested, given the congestion (not to mention the horrible restaurants along the same route all catering to tourists and selling paella to the same fools that think "it's Spanish" but not knowing it's from Valencia not Andalucia)

So their cities have been changing. There is good news and bad, but having drunk bachelor party goers urinating on your doorstep as Barcelona has been experiencing, or as we had last spring multiple nights of drunk football fans singing under our living room window at 2 am having been closed out of the bar across the street is not a way to win over the locals. (As well as being very poor form in general.)

So don't be put off by the over blown news stories, but do visit a country, you want to learn more about, in a way that respects the traditions and culture. And maybe think about the family who once lived above the bakery around the corner and tended their balcony plants each morning.

And now back to the holiday week...