A walk through Muntaner

I confess that I am a fan of Barcelona's Muntaner street. One of my great weekly moments is when I walk home from the La Salle campus, a few metres from Plaça Bonanova, to my home, located between the Faixat bakery and El Velódromo, and also a restaurant and office for politicians who traffic in dreams and perks. Almost four kilometres long – believe me, beyond the Diagonal life goes on – the street of the famous medieval chronicler is not the prettiest or the busiest. Even so, it embodies who we are like few others.

First of all, a rich but aging society. Old people reclining in their comfortable tacatacas, or even in wheelchairs, stroll silently hand in hand with their loving Latina caregivers under the watchful gaze of equally elderly ladies, but with elegant pets, most of them unruly poodles that have become their only – and finally faithful – companion since their husbands passed away. Older men and women who, with their presence, remind us how far we have progressed, but also the only argument of the play.

Muntaner Street embodies the worst and the best of our times: its achievements and its miseries.

Let it be known that at Muntaner children also have their moment. At five o'clock, without knowing how or where they come from, kids in blue uniforms and white shirts appear everywhere, hunched over by homework and eager to tell how their day went, what they learned in class and, more importantly, who they had a good fight with in the playground. Since the parents are interested in earning money, their crossfit, their yoga, etc., in general, the operation to return home is carried out by the inmates, who among their many tasks also take on the release of the puppies and their extracurricular training, obviously in English, while they wait for the bus, snack in hand. One day, if they get good jobs, they will be the ones who will not have to go pick up their children!

Secondly, and perhaps more worryingly, Muntaner embodies how hedonistic and disoriented we are. Between Piazza Bonanova and Via Augusta, there are up to 37 establishments dedicated to what we might call health and beauty : dental institutes, hairdressers, gyms, podiatrists, facial and body treatments, yoga... all with promises such as “We take care of you here”, “lose weight”, “massage to your taste and need, gentle and deep”. When you can go on a diet, go to the spa or do pilates, who is going to go to have a snack with grandma?

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To say the best, I could tell you about the emotion I feel when, absorbed in my thoughts, at the height of the Plaça Adrià, Muntaner experiences an unexpected change in level that shows the Barcelona that looks out to sea, popular and bustling, from Sant Andreu to Raval and Poble Sec. As always happens to those who come from outside, seeing the city from its most panoramic points invites you to think about it in a big way. Doing so in that exact place, sheltered on a bench in the Monterols park, softens the most terrible of evildoers. But the consolation does not last long.

Just a few metres from the Carrasco i Formiguera monument, a whole host of shops specialising in all kinds of care for a variety of pets, completely anthropised and with the rank of close relatives, suddenly burst in like a rash. Let it be known that buying a vest for a dog seems great to me. But the proliferation of dog groomers and veterinary clinics with their catalogues of vaccinations, microchips, ultrasounds, endoscopies and echocardiograms when there are so many people who are having a hard time, not so much. Also, the fact that on the same street where we treat canine cavities there are miserable people pulling a cart in search of abandoned metals or strays resting in ATMs between blankets and urine seems serious to me. Not to mention advertisements like “Canitas. Social security for your pet. For only €19.19 a month. We all have the right to universal health care. Your pet, too.” Are we making people invisible at the same time as we humanise animals?

Muntaner Street embodies the worst and the best of our times. Its achievements, but also its limitations and miseries. Typical of the city that is capable of placing a brothel next to a church, and above the brothel, a virtuous family earning their daily bread. If you have forgotten, go to the Maragall library and the poet himself will tell you about it.