‘Alcarràs’ (the film) catapults Alcarràs (the town)


The town, no one will be able to deny it – not even the neighbors themselves -, has little. It is one of those homely towns in the south of the province of Lleida, little concerned about appearance of its houses and its streets, focused on agricultural activity and crossed by the old national highway, the N-2, to which the neighbors still pull out the chair, on summer evenings, to get some fresh air and be entertained by the hustle and bustle of traffic. Until recently, by Alcarràs passed byon the way to some other place, because there was nothing to see there.

And although it is still a tourist destination with little monumental heritage, a limited range of shops and restaurants, and extreme weather (thick fog in winter and suffocating heat in July and August), things have changed almost suddenly. This same Saturday, for example, around a hundred people have participated in the conference ‘Alcarràs Florit’a initiative that celebrates its ninth edition and that this year it has doubled its capacity and has increased the days of visits due to the avalanche of interested parties, most of them from the Barcelona area, but also from the counties of Girona and Tarragona. Now, people do stop at Alcarràs.

The miracle has been carried out by the Barcelona director Carla Simón, who spent her childhood summers in the municipality and who took the town as the setting for her latest film, which she baptized simply and simply as ‘Alcarràs’. And that film, look where, won the Golden Bear on February 16 at the Berlin Film Festival. Alcarràs (the town) lives since the success of ‘Alcarràs’ (the film) in a state of euphoria. Visits to the peach trees in bloomwhich are in full splendor during the first fortnight of March, is being the first test of strength for the town.

“About 500 people are going to come, between the weekend of March 5 and 6 and the weekend of March 12 and 13”, explains Rosa Herguido Fo, Ensenyament i Patrimoni Històric technician of the Alcarràs City Council and ‘alma mater’. of these walks among the fruit trees of the municipality, inspired by the ‘hanami’, the ancient Japanese tradition to observe the fruit trees at the time of flowering. Unlike other years, in which neighboring towns of the Baix Segre subregion such as Aitona or Seròs took the cake of visitors, Alcarràs has now registered an unusual influx. Herguido Fo explains that, in addition to going through the flowered tree farms in a little train, the participants can learn about some element of the local heritage. “In this edition you are invited to discover the Rural Life Interpretation Centerwhich has interesting pieces of old farming donated by families of the municipality”, he adds.

An opportunity

“For us the movie is an opportunity, which goes beyond the anecdote. It is an opportunity for our hoteliers and restaurateurs, for our merchants and also for our peasants, who are the protagonists of the film”, explains the mayor, Jordi Janés, in his office at the town hall, in a square where in the past, at the end of the 1990s and early 2000s, they used to gather dozens and dozens of Sub-Saharans waiting for a job contract in picking the fruit. “At a time of serious crisis like the one agriculture is going through now, Carla Simón’s film has also been a shot of pride for allnot only for Alcarràs, but also for the agricultural regions of Lleida and rural areas in general”, he highlights.

Janés takes a sheet of paper from the top of her desk. It shows a list of boxes with numbers and percentages. They are the updated data of the municipal register. “We are already in the 10,000 inhabitantswhich makes us the fifth population in the province of Lleida, ahead of many regional capitals“, details the mayor, trying to illustrate the complexity of the municipality, which in recent times has also become a residence for young families from the capital, who have settled in this town, just 11 kilometers away, attracted by its most affordable prices.

In less than 20 years Alcarràs has doubled its population. but, in addition, the diversity is tremendous. People of 59 different nationalities live here and we have almost 40% of the population of foreign origin,” says the mayor.

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Avel lí Estela Moliner, third generation at the helm of the Novetats Moliner business, has placed a red carpet in front of your establishment and has decorated one of its shop windows with Alcarràs film and ‘merchadising’ motifs. The idea has come from the town merchants associationwhich has also sponsored the making of t-shirts and sweatshirts with a design inspired by the film and the preparation of fruit jams, like the ones that the film’s team distributed among those attending the Berlinale on the day of its screening.

A photo of the director of the film It occupies the center of the assembly exhibited by Novetats Moliner, “founded in 1950, which makes it the oldest active shop in the town”, underlines the owner. “The truth is that I don’t remember when Carla Simón I used to come to town when I was littlebut my mother, who was running the store at the time, does have her in mind: she was Cal Cameta’s girl, which is the name by which her relatives here were known,” says Estela, happy among the hustle and bustle of customers coming in and out of your multi-product store.


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