Els jardins del Poblenou
The Gardens of Poblenou
I’ll tell you how I discovered them.
In September of last year, when Catalina was making her tour of European research groups, I was similarly engaged, researching the cities surrounding those research groups on foot, by bus, by tram and by train. The focus of her search started large and ended in pinpoints on the map; my search began in the pinpoint where we landed and slept, and spread out from there, a personal Big Bang, encompassing as much and as varied a landscape as possible.
Poor Brussels. It might have been a nice city, but suffered the stink of power (for some, shit smells like roses, while for others roses, shit: as seat of the European Union, think Washington DC) and the whirling perception of jet lag. Poor Lisbon. That beautiful, bony city, with its cardiovascular hills, its colorful tiled walls and few, scraggly parks. It suffered the weight of economic collapse, or near enough collapse to count as one, a history of melodramatic shout-weeping called Fado, and the misfortune to have followed Barcelona on our trajectory.
And Barcelona: if you’ve read any of my recent posts, you’ve read enough to know how this chapter of our story has turned out.
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We had graciously been offered use of the small apartment of Gabriel Mora, a Colombian researcher who had been Cata’s colleague in school, and had later applied and been accepted on staff at the same laboratory where she now works, two braided lives whose strands you can distinguish at one moment, while at others not so well. Gabriel lived on a pedestrian lane parallel to and one block away from the main Rambla del Poblenou; a block in the other direction from the neighborhood market, whose colorful foods are one part art, one part fresh, and one part (the better part) relationship; and only five minutes’ walk from the blue expanse of Mediterranean waters and skies.
When you are traveling, everything is new and registered by the senses, nothing has lost an ounce of its impact, or been sidelined yet by the lazy mind that prefers “Oh, that…” to “What’s that!". It is a state of being that is as exhausting as it is exhilarating, and whose experiences puff the day up, packing it so tightly from horizon to horizon that what might have been 12 hours’ living back home feels instead like 24 (or 36 or 48) abroad. So as I walked slowly in that late-summer sun, every corner turned was a brand-new moment, a building beautiful in its decaying opulence, another bright with recent renewal, a doorway hidden in flowers, a parkway laced with trees and benches, a public fountain with a dog lapping midday water, two children sharing a scooter, the younger in front of the older, the siren’s scent of a bakery, the bacterial haze of a sewer, the saline tang of the sea.
Gabriel’s apartment is on the Carrer de Marìa Aguiló. When I travel, I taste the street names on the palate, let the awkward new sounds roll around on my tongue, and wonder who was he, who was she? Later it may simply be a line connecting location with destination, but in the early days of one’s arrival, a road is a conduit and a monument, honoring the life and work of someone important in the history of community (usually a man). Marià Aguiló i Fuster was a Spanish poet and linguist who lived during the last two-thirds of the 19th century. He was one of the founders of the Renaixença Catalana, a resurgence of Catalan culture; director of the Provincial Library of Valencia, later director of the Public Library of Barcelona, he published numerous works of classic Catalan literature [Wikipedia]. In Poblenou, the Carrer de Marià Aguiló is perpendicular to the Carrer de Llull. Ramon Llull (approximately pronounced lyOOL) was a philosopher, mathematician and mystic who lived in the latter part of the 13th and early part of the 14th centuries, and who is credited with writing the first great work of Catalan literature. The two roads meet where histories meet, dust settles, and buildings rise and fall. Aguiló wrote a poem to or about Llull, Ramon Llull aconsellant al poeta (Ramon Llull Advises the Poet), whose text I can’t easily find. When Llull was alive, this urban neighborhood was probably field and forest.
That particular intersection is also the first memorable landmark in my personal history of the city. September, after picking up Gabriel’s keys at the apartment of a colleague, we emerged from the metro at Poblenou station, which by probably no coincidence whatsoever is on the street where we now live (Carrer de Pujades: named for Jeroni Pujades, 16th century poet and historian who wrote Dietari, a Samuel Pepys’-style journal of the day, and the Crònica universal del Principat de Catalunya, whose theme you might guess. Catalunya appreciates its literature). Following Cata who followed her friend’s instructions, we walked a block east to the Carrer de Llull. Ell-ell-yoo-ell-ell: a perfectly palindromic, mysterious, and apparently unforgettable collection of letters. We turned right toward the pedestrian Rambla, the delight of which I would discover the following day, and after walking a half block came to the Eiffel Tower Bakery, and across from it the flower shop. Llull and Aguiló meet in the 21st century: one gives the other a book, the other gives the first a rose.
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As with every travel, I find there are gardens that look like gardens, and there are gardens that are gardens, whether or not they look like one in the traditional sense. I was in Barcelona for four days, and everything looked and smelled like Spring.
On one of my many walks through Poblenou, down little streets that get smaller toward the water, while more interrupted, I arrived at an unremarkable corner lot wrapped in corrugated tin sheeting. Head-high, the fence made this plot similar to any other future construction zone: surrounded by three- to four-story apartment blocks, and nothing but sky rising above the metal. Along the road and at the far end of the fence, there was a little door and it was locked. Next to the door was a green sign that read Hort Indignat del Poblenou.
The text was in Catalan, which meant it was almost readable. From Portuguese, I guessed this was a garden, but a strange, metal-wrapped one; the part about indignation was puzzling, so I imagined there was a local translation significantly different from the global one; and the rest, in lettering that was clearly bootstrapped and grass-rooted, discussed the who, what and why of the place. I left its mystery – yet another mystery – for another day.
The bankers’ sabotage of world economy affected the country heavily, and this city variably. Powered by a major working port, an industrious people, and a history and culture that attracts millions of tourists each year, the boom of the past couple of decades may have been dulled but was not dismantled. Construction projects that were marginally funded or promised only marginal returns, however, collapsed into piles of rubble, behind wire fences or stone walls or corrugated tin fences like this one, all guarded by minimally locked gates, nothing of value within but the future, a future that would not arrive tomorrow, nor next year, nor who knows when.
We saw plenty of structures frozen in time. We found ourselves in the vicinity of the green sign the very next day, as we took an evening walk toward the beach. Hey, look at this… The door this time was partially open. We peeked through the crack but it afforded no view. There were voices inside. Should we go in? Shy to enter uninvited, we puzzled out the sign a bit more: one more unexpected charm of Barcelona. It added to the color and richness of that short visit, and firmed the impression that this city and its people were uniquely positive and undeniably vibrant.
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Spin the clock six months… it only moves in one direction. We find ourselves, delighted and surprised, living right in the middle of our favorite part of the city, just a few blocks inland from Gabriel’s place on Marià Aguiló. After struggling our furniture up seven floors in the tiniest of elevators (four large pieces refused such luxury, and asked to be carried up fourteen half-flights of stairs), and after sweeping away the better portion of the dust of moving, Cata and I headed outside for a breath of air. We had no aim in mind; or perhaps, shared a vague desire to see to the Mediterranean, so we turned right at the Rambla and, like a couple who’d spent their lives here, ambled arm in arm in that general direction.
We walked at the most relaxed pace. The pedestrian ways, with their multiple generations and ease of being, recommend it: one needs a pretty cold heart to resist that calming influence, and to keep a “hurry” on. The slower you go, the more you look; the more you look, the more you see; a few blocks down as we glanced to our left – it really was simultaneously “we” – there was that stretch of metal fence from our last visit. It was the indignant garden.
— Let’s go past the hort? (It was a question.)
— Sure. (Was the relaxed answer.)
We walked down the Carrer de Fernando Poo.
To avoid scatological inferences that don’t exist, Fernando Poo is the Catalan spelling of Fernando Pó, a small island off the coast of Cameroon, in West Africa; first European landfall was in 1472 by Portuguese navigator Fernão de Pó, soon claimed outright by Portugal, and developed into a sugar industry which briefly held bragging rights as the major supplier to Europe. We know what this kind of “development” means to indigenous peoples.
In 1642 the Dutch East India Company wrested control and made the island the center of its (apparently more lucrative, and certainly less moral) slave trade. The Portuguese grabbed it back six years later and, finding slavery more appealing than refining sugar, retained the flow of chained humans until the island was signed over to Spain in 1778, as part of a larger land agreement involving the Americas. So far, so good, eh?
Once the British had cleaned their bloody hands of slavery at home, they zealously (and probably economically) took their mission abroad, and from 1827 to 1843 maintained anti-slavery bases on the island. According to the history books, take them as you will, during one three-year period – presumably early on in their stay – 20 ships were detained and 2,500 potential slaves freed.
In 1843, Spain planted its flag on the island – again – and British influence waned. In the 1920s, the League of Nations investigated “labor abuses” on the island, where the cash-crop economy had shifted from sugar to cocoa. Competition from larger nations created an economic crash which in turn squeezed landowners’ profits: labor went unpaid and workers were forced to buy from company stores, the kind of economic slavery we have seen around the world, again and again and again, a painted face on an old scourge.
As the country’s value diminished, it was allowed to declare independence, and in 1973 the first president was sworn in. He was deposed in 1979, but his name (Biyogo) stuck; the island nation is now known as Bioko. Whenever this Poblenou alleyway was named – for the navigator or the land he put on the map (the consequences of which outlined above) – I assume it was before its prominence in Spanish affairs had waned to nothing.
We walked along that iron fence, in the direction of nowhere in particular, and this time not only was the gate open, it was open in our chosen neighborhood, where we have rooted ourselves for the next few years. You’re not so shy when it’s your back yard, and however small one’s entitlements are, they can still be hung proudly on your breast: We belong. So we poked our noses around the corner, then stuck our heads in. Our bodies followed. What we saw was an enclosed lot with a nondescript, gravelly yard for a base. A ramshackle structure framed a roof and three patchwork walls around table and shelves filled with odds and ends. Everything seemed to be odds and ends.
Flowering trees and raised garden beds were arranged around the lot. A couple of hollow statues of Knights Templar leaned against the walls, their hoods low and swords roots in the ground. Three people were working on some pallets in the back corner. We wandered around the grounds, neither approached nor accosted.
There were tomatoes growing, and since this spring season is fed but not yet burdened by the sun, there were salad greens. Good crops of fava and hearty bunches of herbs were here and there. Many of the raised beds were christened with a descriptive name on the wood, and some were decorated with colors or pieces of painted tile. The odds-and-ends revealed themselves to be “recycled” as opposed to “discarded”: big blue delivery drums, I imagine for olives or other bulk foods, held water for the plants. A beat-up wheelbarrow none would choose but a picker. A stack of discarded, appropriated, and soon-to-be re-employed pallets.
We approached the three men, who were in the process of dismantling some of the old wood. Cata held out a small bag of kumquats she had just purchased.
—Would you like a naranjita? _—_Hm. What are they? —(biting into one) They’re slightly sour bite-sized oranges. Great refreshment for people working in the sun (smile). Try one… —Mm!
Introducing yourselves with offered fruit is a fine way to open arms. Another is to offer to help, which we did. The task at hand was to reduce what were whole pallets to their parts, bending exposed nails back so they wouldn’t bite you, and sorting the results into piles: dry wood here, damp wood there. We learned that today’s wood would become tomorrow’s fire, destined for a community calçotada – a local tradition where a leek-like relative of the onion family is grilled and served alongside meats and mulled wine – a small festival open to hort members and their friends.
We also learned the names of the kumquat-eaters: Pepe, a loquatious, grizzled sunbeam, who co-founded this hort some years ago; gently charming Luis and his insistently charming canine companion Ramón; and Michael/Miguel, a burly transplanted Scot whose red tinge and lilt proved his land to be charming even in translation. I think the best way to know someone is to share their labor. While we worked, they told their stories of the garden, and through the garden their stories; we told them who we were: recently arrived, with long community and garden experience, and deep aspirations for this land and this people.
—Ah, we have someone else practicing Permaculture! And this chica from México – what is her name? – Carla! She plants medicinal herbs and gives classes here. —Now that is an excellent trick. Look how much we learn when new people join us, Luis. And how much we have to teach… —Stop by the calçotada tomorrow! You don’t have tickets to eat, but we’d love to introduce you… —We have a couple of garden plots opening up. Come to the assembly Monday next – you can join us! —Good-bye, good-bye! See you tomorrow, see you tomorrow!
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We stopped by the next day, a Sunday, later in the day. The calçotada had gone from fire to embers, and 30 or so were left semi-circled around a woman who played guitar and sang songs of Portugual and Catalunya. A few other were hovering around what was left of the fire, stirring the last batch of a spiced rum concoction whose alcohol slowly burned off in blue flames on the liquid surface. Enough alcohol remained that the stirrers, who had clearly tasted each batch, were happily sloppy in speech and thought, a condition that didn’t aid comprehension, but suggested satisfaction and camaraderie and guaranteed the fiesta’s success. Luis was there with Ana, his wife, as well as omnipresent Ramón, who feigned obedience when attention was directed toward him, and ignored it when not. Pepe was there as well, and he reiterated his invitation to the assembly, introducing us to a few more core members.
We learned that the “indignation” of the movement was in seeing valuable landscape left as a rubbish-filled blight on neighborhoods that were otherwise full of life and light. The ugly metal and wire walls embraced waste in a city were space is at a premium, and green often loses to gray. How long will this remain undeveloped? The city answers: Unknown. Can’t we do something creative with this and other abandoned tracts? The city answers with silence. So a small group of community-minded folks take it on themselves to improve things.
Across the street is a residential home for the elderly. When the gate is open on the garden, one or another will come over to sit among the growing things. There is a deep and clear-spoken accord with the neighbors: garden? Sure! Don’t make it a party zone. Don’t make it your personal barbecue pit, where we can only afford a balcony, if lucky, or a window to watch, if not. The agreement is that there may be infrequent but regular community events, such as this onion-roast, perhaps one each quarter. And when the weather is fine – that time is coming now – they project films on the light-gray wall rising above the garden, inviting the neighbors in to participate.
All for all. All for all.
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There are eight horts indignats in the area, three or four in Poblenou. This first garden has existed for eight years. It’s future is certain: sooner or later, it will be razed by reinvigorated developers – probably from abroad, with as much interest in preservation of the local culture as Cristóvão Colombo. A recent example of Colombus Love can be found in the Swiss company that bought three buildings in the neighborhood, and is the process of evicting the senior residents by any means possible; a retired man whose wife passed away several months ago, whose name was not on the contract, a contract whose fine print was not understood, a retired man is now bound for the street. Where there is money to be made, there is love to be lost. So let’s not be disillusioned: the life of a garden is like the life of a plant, is ephemeral like the life of a man or woman, and as beautiful as it is transitory. I prefer to embrace the present, than mourn the future.
And how else should we face life? I am a number of years Catalina’s senior. While futures cannot be seen, and so are uncertain, the odds are heavily in Cata’s favor (or misfortune, perhaps) that she will have a number of years on this earth after I have already counted mine. If we were of equal ages, perhaps my delusion of being deathless would dance with hers, and we’d waste precious moments, thinking we had an infinite number of them. As it is, with time always winking at us as we walk, it is easier to stay awake: look, how precious.
Look how precious is this shared, ephemeral garden, in an occupied building site, a few blocks from the Mediterranean Sea, cleared, planned and planted with shared labor, the harvest distributed. Leaning on a hoe together, right now, is the Why of it.
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Until a year or so prior to the Barcelona Olympic Games, Poblenou was low-rent/industrial, where most of the industry was decaying or abandoned, and most of the inhabitants precariously housed. The Games created an urban renewal movement which transformed the life of the city, making it so desirable to tourism that it is now the third most visited city in the world. (Hurray?)
Of course, it also transformed the lives of those who lived and scraped by in Poblenou, replacing their affordable houses with higher-rent buildings, shuffling the prostitutes around to other still-shabby zones, and creating an infrastructural foundation for the new “@22” zone, a center for high-tech industry in Barcelona.
We have arrived after the rise and perhaps shortly before the boom. The Swiss know it is a good investment to kick people out and rebuild or refurbish to higher rents; the slightly-decayed areas around the Rambla are easy pickings and, when the global economies stop staggering around from the world’s bankers’ one-two punches, it is easy to see this area grow quickly. Meanwhile, if you walk south toward the old city, you will pass crumbly walls and fenced nothings, old sewers and new bike lanes, nice roads and “for sale” signs, chaff of the past and seeds for the future.
A couple of blocks toward the sea and a block shy of the cemetery, Carrer de Dr. Trueta (Josep Trueta I Raspall, b 1897, a Catalan nationalist and renowned doctor, exiled to England after the civil war, member of the team that developed penicillin) starts proudly on the Rambla and crumbles relaxedly to the north and south. Not far into the crumble, you’ll find what looks to be a little-used or poorly-treated façade, that in fact conceals the seat of Poblenou community activism. The Ateneu La Flor de Maig – literally, the Mayflower “Athenian” – is a civic center of, by and for the residents of the barrio. In 1890 on this site, sixteen workers created La Societat Cooperativa Obrera d’Estalvi i Consum La Flor de Mayo, a buying coop for local laborers who otherwise would be chained to the enslaving pricing practices of local factories and merchants. The founders were aficionados of choral music, and named the new business after one of the better-known works of José Anselm Clavé, Les Flors de Maig.
Prop del riu hi ha una verneda, Prop del riu hi ha una verneda,
Prop del riu hi ha una verneda, i un saló enmig sa espesura amb catifes de verdures i amb sofàs de troncs de faig.
Lloc agrest a on van les nines i on besant sa cara hermosa les confon l’aura amorosa amb les flors del gentil maig…
℘
Down by the river’s an alder grove Down by the river’s an alder grove
Down by the river’s an alder grove and a room amid its thick branches with a carpet of living greenery and couches, trunks of beeches
A wild place where young women run, as, planting kisses on a beautiful face, they confuse that amorous breeze with the flowers of gentle May…
Pepe had invited us to attend the next Assembly of the garden community, held every two weeks in one of the upstairs halls of the Ateneu. We arrived on time to find a few loiterers out front, likely though not certain to be waiting for the same meeting; a few minutes later Ramón arrived to remove all doubt, followed by his master; a few minutes late, or later, Pepe with the keys.
The Ateneu is somewhat fallen in, and comfortably used, like a preschool playroom whose corners are banged round, toys are scuffed and broken and repaired again, cups are of a plastic that may once have been clear but is now opaque with scratches, and mismatched chairs of as many heights and sizes as there are people. There is no way to contain all the dust and tumble of a place like this. History hasn’t so much passed by as it has passed through, left by the back door, circled around, and come in again by the graffiti-scribbled front door. That’s the Ateneu.
Pepe opened with a quick recap of the previous meeting, a welcome to the prospective new members (Cata and myself and Gregório, whom we met outside), and a brief history of the horts indignats, highlighting the communal nature of administration, effort and decision making. We launched into a review of the previous week’s calçotada, a net surplus in costs, with a perfectly complete consumption of everything but a beer. At this point said beer is produced, cold from the Ateneu refrigerator, along with a couple of bags of chips. It is a large beer, and each of the ten people present get two gulps’ worth poured into a well-worn yellow Ateneu-Flor-de-Maig plastic cup. One raises his cup: A la calçotada! A chorus replies: A la calçotada!
Gregório is a potential member like ourselves, and is from Extremadura, an “Autonomous Community” of southwestern Spain that borders Portugal. He is probably in his early 50s, but looks older, weathered by years of manual labor, outdoor work and cigarette smoke. He is also nearly incomprehensible. I was feeling linguistically incompetent until Cata mentioned that of every 100 words he spoke, she had been able to puzzle out ten: hardly enough to complete sentences or conclude thoughts. What was clear, though, is that he’d worked as a gardener for the city of Barcelona for thirty or more years. He had a lot of experience with a lot of plants, and while his traditional bravado presented his ideas somewhat more forcefully than necessary, it was likely that his expertise and connections could help the hort along with know-how and even materials.
However his membership progresses, a community circle is a circle and, with a strong enough core, personalities that seem rough often soften, pointed statements are gently dulled and turned aside, and patience is taught as new ideas and energies are welcomed. Working a community into shape is the most wonderful challenge.
When the meeting finished, Cata and I stayed behind to help Pepe clean up. More stories: how they began, how they handled change over the eight or nine years of their existence, and how everyone – everyone – was welcome. “Some people have never learned how to listen, never had anyone listen to them,” Pepe explained. “You don’t turn them away because of lack of experience. We are all learning here. People learn about community over time…”
More important than working a garden, working together.
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Gregório and Cata and I were invited to meet at the garden the next day, to learn where things were, and how they worked. Cata needed to be at the lab, so incomprehensible Gregório and I met Pepe midday at hort #1.
Light chain and little padlocks closed the main gate and a tool cupboard. The intention here was to create an easy, shared space, so nothing of great value was needed, nor kept there, and the level of security similarly relaxed.
Some simple rules:
- When you open the main gate, be sure to lock the lock to the chain to avoid it “walking off” while your nose is down in your garden plot.
- When you are in the garden, the door stays open; all are welcome; answer questions as you like, point people to the sign on the metal fence outside; walk your talk.
- Clean the tools when you are done with them, and lock up the cabinet – it has the same combination as the front door.
- Don’t give the combination to others: a group of teens decided to make it their party clubhouse, annoying the neighbors, and the community was forced to change the locks.
- Go easy on the water: it must be walked in from the public fountain in the next block.
I asked about communal projects, two of which are pending. The first: using a large piece of waffled plexiglass found in the recycling (and immediately recycled), frame in a high section of the hut, so that the winds coming in off the Mediterranean don’t lift the roof off (as often). The second: using similarly recycled wood, build a standing frame that can receive a long mesh fabric, creating a canopy that creates a seating area that protects a bit from the heavy summer sun.
Finally, Pepe took us both down the rows of beds to two areas that had been abandoned where their gardeners had left the area. Gregório preferred a slightly larger plot near the far fence, in which a few bok choy and other greens had volunteered from the previous season; and Cata and I inherited a cantero boxed in with pallet sections, and border with well-established aloe, rosemary, sage, oregano and a mild variant of thyme.
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Time and weather are like gravity: they pull everything slowly down to earth, then rain washes it slowly toward the sea. Everything is recycled. Everything past is part of us, and everything future will be part of you and me. So that slow collapse had begun on our inherited cantero, the very plants that called it home had begun to square their shoulders and jut their elbows and kick the sides out this way and that; and the lovely organic tilth that was contained held enough moisture and microbial life that the pallet walls were slowly being nibbled away.
I planned a little repair work, and soon. I would be returning to the States in less than two weeks (to be gone for two months or so), and we wanted to leave the garden bed usable before I left. I asked Pepe what they did about materials.
—Today is Monday. On Mondays, the city picks up larger objects from recycling. You might keep and eye out for pallets and other useful items at the recycling cubos around here. —Any problem just grabbing something? —Oh, no. It is all discarded. Most of what you see here was discarded and picked up by one or another of us. A pickup truck helps, of course.
So hands shaken all ‘round, plans for the next days in mind, I left Pepe to his chores around the hort… I turned left, then right, and when I reached the very first intersection, saw a row of cubos there, with a pallet leaning against one of the containers…
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A week has passed, filled with all sorts of household and business tasks. But we have had time to stop by almost daily to touch up this and that. Three days ago, I used the Community Saw to take my pallet into sections, a Community Pick to trench in post-holes, and a Community Hammer to pound the pallet beams down into them, and nail the new wall to the old.
Just a little attention makes a discarded space so much finer, and the bit of sweat that drop from the brow to the hand to the ground makes the object of your attention that much more valued. It probably makes your heart bigger by the same degree – whether garden plot, or garden itself, neighborhood, city or nation.
Two days ago, we both walked the two-and-a-half blocks down the rambla to Carrer de Fernando Poo, and weeded, culled, then double-dug the soil to clear invasive roots and used the Community Sieve to remove stones and other junk. Then we used the Community Rake to smooth it all down. A little more effort, a little more love.
And yesterday afternoon – a Saturday – we trimmed, transplanted (two strawberries, the big oregano, and some mint that threatened the World; we left the leek where he had been planted by the wall), and planted five Community Tomato Seedlings that remained from this years seeding.
We’ll see what else we get in the ground before I leave; then Cata’s father, who has worked in agriculture most of his life, will arrive for a visit. That should be delight laid upon delight.
We walked home yesterday with a bag full of clipping from garden to table: rosemary, sage, Nasturtium leaves and flowers, some mint, and an ivy we moved to a pot on our terrace.
It may be that Barcelona has more to offer than other cities; I am not entirely convinced. What I do know is that we have arrived with open hearts and open arms, and this particular city, this particular community, has come running to receive us.
