{"id":1669,"date":"2011-09-08T23:05:38","date_gmt":"2011-09-08T22:05:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/followthebaldie.com\/?p=1669"},"modified":"2016-10-24T22:19:23","modified_gmt":"2016-10-24T21:19:23","slug":"the-physical-invention-of-historical-barcelona","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oreneta.com\/baldie\/2011\/09\/08\/the-physical-invention-of-historical-barcelona\/","title":{"rendered":"The physical invention of historical Barcelona"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ub.edu\/geocrit\/sn\/sn-371.htm\">Here's an excellent piece<\/a> by Agust\u00edn C\u00f3cola Gant on the creation in the mid-20th century of Barcelona's so-called Barrio G\u00f3tico by Catalan nationalist entrepreneurs: a Disneyland <em>avant la lettre<\/em> to erase the memory of 400-odd years of failure following the city's eclipse by Valencia, and serve as a marketable brand for plebeian Grand Tour-ism.  <\/p>\n<p>At the end he fails to land a punch on capitalism - socialists, Shahs and sundry indulged in even more shameless themeparkisation, and no other economic system has produced serious history of comparable quality or quantity - but he makes the interesting suggestion (without mentioning Umberto Eco's splendid and seminal <em>Travels in hyperreality<\/em>!) that, like the Americans, we should acknowledge to punters that the <a href=\"http:\/\/followthebaldie.com\/spanish-walking-tours\/barcelona-walking-tours\/barcelona-city-walks\/barcelona-in-4-hours\/\">palaces, synagogues, etc etc<\/a> are 20th century fantasies, and that they will be pay for this.<\/p>\n<p>That strikes me as bit unworldy - like Donald Rumsfeld, he doesn't appreciate that for the happy snapper, which is just about everyone, brand Old Europe is all Europe - and it runs against our experience taking folks around. <\/p>\n<p>I virtually never do the \"<a href=\"http:\/\/followthebaldie.com\/spanish-walking-tours\/barcelona-walking-tours\/barcelona-city-walks\/roman-and-medieval-barcelona\/\">old town<\/a>\" for the same reason I don't go to EuroDisney or Venice - boring buildings, boring people - but evolved standard practice is to figure out how smart clients are by throwing them post-modern bait of some nature. <\/p>\n<p>If they bite - which is by no means that often - then you can deliver a happier pitch: you pretend it's not a film set, and the group pretends to believe you. <\/p>\n<p>Only in about 5% of cases - so not those who buy the Glorious Medieval Past, nor those who believe copycat silliness like <a href=\"http:\/\/followthebaldie.com\/spanish-walking-tours\/barcelona-walking-tours\/barcelona-city-walks\/death-of-an-anarchist\/\">the Glorious Anarchist Past<\/a> or the Glorious Second Republic, etc etc - does it make any sense to get cultural-critical. And I'm not sure all that cynicism is all that much fun either.<\/p>\n<p>So, from the horse's mouth, a big nay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>And how to sell it to tourists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[48,252,251,249,250],"class_list":["post-1669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-default","tag-barcelona","tag-wikiadolf-florensa-i-ferrer","tag-wikicasa-dels-canonges","tag-wikijeroni-martorell","tag-wikijoan-rubio-i-bellver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oreneta.com\/baldie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oreneta.com\/baldie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oreneta.com\/baldie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oreneta.com\/baldie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oreneta.com\/baldie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1669"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/oreneta.com\/baldie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3047,"href":"https:\/\/oreneta.com\/baldie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1669\/revisions\/3047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oreneta.com\/baldie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oreneta.com\/baldie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oreneta.com\/baldie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}