On an unexpectedly beautiful day in early March the subterranean traveller, coming out of a business meeting in Carrer del Bruc (his business being English classes), decided to walk back the long way home to fully enjoy the first signs of spring in the air, while at the same time avoiding the stink of poverty he had experienced on his way down there in line 1. He went up Bruc and then turned left into Aussiàs March and right again up Roger de Llúria. Barcelona’s Eixample is like that. Its square blocks with the cut-off corners automatically invite to some kind of left right left approach. Best walkers adjust their stride to the rhythm of the traffic lights, mixing sun and shade according to the time of day and season. Long diagonal stretches were not always possible though, the subterranean had discovered early on. Some double block constructions like a hospital and a factory might be in the way, and his route was only fully 45 degrees if he came from Sant Antoni - and he did not want to go there over Catalunya, certainly not on a day like today with all the tourists gazing at each other.
Casp still looks pretty neat a good two years into the politics of self-destruction initiated by the former government immediately after the Bilderberg Group’s annual meeting in Sitges which ZP had been invited to. Shop windows are richly dressed with shiny luxury goods, through open restaurant doors mouth-watering smells escape and people walking the sidewalks generally seem busy having a jolly great time. The traveller liked it none. If the vast majority are hanging on to ever shrinking incomes, displays of lavishness can only invite to violence. And he had come to like the laid back attitude in this town during the years of affluence. No need to get smart and roughen up, really.
The subterranean traveller didn’t want to spoil the beautiful day on outbursts of hot boiling adrenaline, though. Leave them to it, those haves, seemed the wiser choice. He had his own route to follow. Pau Clarís wasn’t necessarily an improvement, but onto Gran Vía there was escape in the noisy bustle of traffic. He crossed the south bound lanes to walk through the little garden beyond Psg de Gràcia and then back onto the sidewalk another block to avoid the heights of horror on Rbla Catalunya.
And then it was already Academia building with the square on the left, a natural centre of life in the strangled town. Barcelona is being sucked dry by Madrid. It’s what you’ll get. With so little to go for, the last euros are floating to the capital; and they probably like it that way but it’s also unavoidable with the banks sucking from behind. Madrid is merely poised to be the last man standing. Down here we’re hanging onto not cracking, with things worsening faster than most people can adjust to. Every other story is about somebody being fired, about people staying home a day per week with the appropriate income cut to avoid lay-offs, about companies which after months of ongoing reorganisations ultimately are closed down by overseas made decisions. There’s no mercy left in the system, it seems. There’s no system left, basically.
The traveller went right, up Aribau and then left again into Diputació. He had begun reading Michael Hudson when this whole end of the world as we know it spectacle erupted, lengthy articles on what Hudson phrased debt peonage, the newly established dependence system based on the majority of people having more debts than assets. And it were to have been carefully planned as well: raise housing prices as high as you can, give everybody a mortgage based on the insurance the steady growth of the nineties would forever continue, and when the market is saturated pull the plug. You declare your enormous accumulated asset power worthless and in your next breath demand to be fully repaid the resulting book losses - the most blatant money sucking deal ever invented; and it was still going on, week after week, bail after bail, with different names but all the same.
The subterranean chose to go straight one more block and then up Casanova, only to go left again immediately into Consell de Cent. He was instinctively moving away from the upper classes’ unsustainable wealth and heading for the neighbourhoods beyond Urgell. Here’s where the fear is starting to mount, where people realise there’s no room left for further adjustments. They have given up on their luxuries, gone back to conducting marvels with potatoes and onions, stopped going on holiday or to the theatre. In most parts of town people no longer control their finances. They receive whatever their employers are prepared (or able) to offer and they don’t know what next month’s payslip will look like. They are supposed to be thankful they still have a job as so many more are going to lose theirs. It’s uncontrollable.
People, it must be said, don’t know what to do. They have no experience with this kind of crunching. They may have been born poor, but there was always a way up, always a future to believe in. All they can think of now is wait until the government stops spending their money on banks and wars, stops hurting its own voters so much.
People are turning to their family for help, putting money and strengths together, like way back when. But what if you have no family? What if your family is living in a faraway country called Home and waiting for that monthly cheque you had to cancel some time ago? Foreigners are often considered easy lay-offs for an unpresentable mix of considerations which somehow render their needs less urgent. Many are packing their belongings and returning in the conviction poverty is better endured if there is at least some kind of future to cling to, or else a familiar shoulder.
At the corner of Comte Borrell, the subterranean traveller felt a camera eye staring at him. Was he being registered, would anybody care to look at him walking here with his thoughts? They are closing us in, you know, the super haves. Now they have digitalised our computer memories. Microsoft and Google offer fully marketable history profiles and generic tastes to compete with your own erratic desires. You had better keep a private written record of what you’ve been up to.
Where to go from here? One further down or one up already? It seemed to the subterranean he would always have to share the space he lived in with the ever tightening control mechanisms, with behaviour scanning cameras, with the short range eavesdroppers advertised on teleshopping, with all-seeing, sharp-shooting drones (coming soon to a war theatre near you), with the people behind these inventions who so desperately need to be in control.
The traveller, waking himself from his thoughts, for the first time today felt an absolute freedom of choice. Straight, right or left, it was up to him, up to where his mood, that mixture of desire and chance, would lead him. Within the context of this rectangular collection of squares, an almost infinite number of routes were available. (With seven blocks to go in either direction, 128 routes to be precise.) The traveller on this early warm day chose to let the sun decide where he would pick a few stretches of shade. The sun, our mother of mathematics. And when he did so, the subterranean realised escape lay in spontaneous, unpredictable behaviour. It offered experiences you had not asked for and it made it perhaps slightly more difficult for the surveillance equipment to understand you. Plus you could take the attitude with you into the chaos of narrow streets around the Eixample, where the vast majority live.
It didn’t really matter whether it was all true, reasoned the subterranean traveller going straight just one more block, whether the austerity politics really constituted endgame tactics, whether the infamous future of old was turning into reality. What mattered was that people had so much to lose, so much which was earned through optimism and devotion. It should always be worthwhile defending one’s habitat, against minor evils as well as major ones, shouldn’t it? This is, after all, our town. Not Madrid’s. Not the tourists’. Not the banking system’s. But of the people who live here. So follow your own individual paths through this rectangular reality which was laid out by earlier generations. And never stay on the same route for too long. Be prepared to choose at every next corner. Left, straight or right? With a clear goal in mind the proper choice will reveal itself. I wish you all the wisdom and luck you may need.
