What it was, what it is

Just another Summitar shot, I remember specially liking that mid-morning, when the clouds had vanished and the sun warmed everything while I was waiting for a never arriving bus.

The street you see is (if I recall correctly…) called Nou de La Rambla, quite near the end of the famous Rambla, some meters by the sea and the even more famous Columbus tower.

The zone right of the Rambla, where that street leads you was formerly known as the Barrio Chino (Raval nowadays), where dark streets filled with urin smell opened you the doors to the dark and surreal world which Joan Colom photographed during the late 50s and 60s. Pimps and prostitutes, thieves and beggars and criminals, but also, and mainly, just normal, humble, working people trying to make a living on the best way they could. He said it was the only place in Barcelona where he could really see Mankind.

The Raval is today a strange modern mix of a huge immigrant population from the four corners of the world and of futuristic ‘chic’ buildings claiming about the cosmopolitan way of life.

So, while the old friends meet and chat while they could be doing back in the 60s Barrio Chino, a fosforecent yellow woman from the city cleaning brigade sprays clean the Raval streets with a high pressure pipe.