“Thank you very much for your visit & rdquor ;. It is a phrase painted on a farm in a small town in that Spain that is emptying. The photographer portrayed her Santi Cogolludo and this newspaper showed it a few days ago in an article about his book ‘Geographies of oblivion’. Since then, the phrase resonates in my head due to its contrast with a saturated city and with a more everyday and typical graffiti: the ‘Tourists go home’. Some so many and others so little.
When was the last time you were grateful to see a tourist in Barcelona? Surely, in June 2020, when the first brave peeked out after the confinement of the first wave of covid-19. As a good millennial, before that moment I don’t remember having missed them (they were always there), but I do remember a few more times (I insist: they were always there). Now, it is estimated that in 2022 they will stop 822 cruises in Barcelona. We have officially lost the only chance we will have in decades to live without them.
Of course, everything is rejection of the tourist until we are. Like when it makes you angry to coincide with many people in, what do I know, Cadaqués a sunny finde and you wonder why others can’t go elsewhere. Sometimes we should remember that “The people & rdquor; we are also.
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On a recent trip to Rome, we had dinner in Trastevere, earlier at eight in the afternoon, because from then on everything was booked and complete. Does it ring a bell? At the end, we stroll among its dozens of terraces and its hundreds of little ‘instagrammable’ lights. There was real buzz, but we claimed it had “A lot of life & rdquor ;, which“ gave pleasure & rdquor ;. The next day, the owner of a small Roman shop spat her reality in my red face, of shame and of a tourist: “I live in Trastevere, but from Thursday to Sunday I don’t step into my house. It is impossible to sleep there so I have looked for another place to go & rdquor ;. I was afraid, in case we end up the same, in case we are almost there.
Since I saw the photo, I think of that small village and that friendly graffiti. I turn it around and end up thinking that They appreciate our visit because we are not really here. How long would it take them to change the phrase and ask us to go home if we landed there? At what point does a tourist become too many tourists?
Reference-www.elperiodico.com