Between highways, railways and Mediterranean forest, Torre Baró is a neighborhood perched on the rocky slopes of the Collserola mountain, which ends right at its feet. It belongs to Barcelona, but is 12 kilometers from Plaza de Catalunya, a distance that defines it as the most distant neighborhood of the city.
It is precisely on Torre Baró that it goes The 47the latest film by Catalan filmmaker Marcel Barrera. Apparently, the story begins in 1978, when Manuel Vital, a local bus driver and unionist, kidnaps the bus he is driving and takes it to the neighborhood to demonstrate that, contrary to what the Barcelona City Council was saying, it could be delivered in public transport to the neighborhood. Vital, who had traveled from Plaça de Catalunya to the neighborhood of La Guineueta with the 47, was tired of demanding a line that would reach Torre Baró.
But in reality, the work travels further back in time, to the 1960s, when thousands of migrants from Extremadura – like Vital himself –, Andalusia and other parts of the country arrived in these lands with impossible terrain and built their homes with their own hands. At first, they were modest huts built in haste, so that they could be covered before the National Police arrived and demolished them, since the law stipulated that a construction already covered could not be demolished.
Then, little by little, they expanded them and gave them strength with the materials they could buy. This is how, according to the film, the first germ of Torre Baró was born: a neighborhood with popular architecture more Extremaduran or Andalusian than Catalan, with dirt streets and no water until 1973, without street lights and with pets wandering the streets. Based on the neighborhood struggle, progress came in dribs and drabs. But what did not arrive, even after the end of the dictatorship, were the buses.
Vital’s feat, played by an immense Eduard Fernández, represented a “yes, we can” that changed the neighborhood forever, because from that moment on, public transport began to reach the entire suburbs of Barcelona. This is what the film tells, in which other actors such as Clara Segura, Zoe Bonafonte, Carlos Cuevas and Salva Reina also participate, all of them with great acting talents.
An optimistic film after “Mediterranean”
The 47 It is a moving, optimistic and at the same time vindictive film about times of immigration and neighbourhood struggles that seem to have been erased from memory today. “Many people from the south were rejected in Catalonia, just as migrants from Africa, Asia or the Middle East are today,” explains Marcel Barrera, also director of the combative group. Mediterraneana film that highlights the work of the Open Arms organization.
“And what hurts the most,” Barrera continues, “is seeing that many descendants of those who had just arrived at that time are among those who today reject foreign migrants.” The filmmaker then explains what motivated him to film The 47 This was the discovery of Manuel Vital’s story. “He seemed to me to be a character with bestial power and that helped me to talk about a time that many young people today ignore,” he observes to clarify this, to break with the pessimism of Mediterranean, It was suggested that the story be given a more optimistic approach.
But despite the optimism of The 47The changes that have taken place in the neighborhood since that day in 1978 when Vital hijacked the bus have been insufficient to ensure the well-being of the neighbors. At least according to what some of them said during the film’s presentation.
The production company invited some neighbors to the premiere, like Antonio, who met Vital when he was very young and even worked with him when he was fired for his union activities between 1969 and 1977. “He was a very calm man, always attentive,” he recalls.
“He was always a tough unionist, very red, and in times of transition he got closer to the PSUC,” he adds to give political meaning to the profile of Vital, who, after having hijacked the 47 in 1978, was again dismissed, even if he returned to the post of bus director thanks to a work amnesty decreed the following year.
Without sidewalks or bars and with suspended cables
Antonio assures that the neighborhood has improved a lot since 1978 in terms of public transportation: “If we didn’t have buses, now we have at least five lines, two of them on demand. You call him and he comes to pick you up at the stop you told him. But when you ask him about the paving of the streets, his smile disappears, like the rest of his neighbors.
“There are no sidewalks; “A woman who goes with her child’s stroller has to go in the middle of the street,” explains José Manuel, another neighbor, who adds: “And the streets, although they are paved, are in very bad condition because there is no maintenance.” “The same as on the Paseo de Gracia for Formula 1,” Antonio interjects slyly. Everyone laughs.
As an anecdote, the neighbours remember this urban planning advisor from the Trias era, who told them that they were privileged because of the views they had. “That’s true,” admits José Manuel, “but to say that we were the Pedralbes of the north of Barcelona…” Everyone shows their smile, somewhere between irony and indignation.
Desideria, an octogenarian neighbor who plays a small role in the film, joins the conversation and explains that “even when it rains, the buses have to stop running because the streets are full of dirt and stones; they can’t pass until they come and clean it up, so the service is suspended.
Mónica, the youngest of the group, who, like Antonio, wears a t-shirt with the poster of The 47adds that “the wiring is the other big problem, because everything is outside, hanging from pole to pole and sometimes cables are stolen.” José Manuel adds that “there are no bars or any other type of business, nothing.” And everyone agrees that living in Torre Baró remains heroic. “Torre Baró exists and resists!”, they say in unison that they will shout at the end of the film.
Lowest life expectancy in Barcelona
In 2015, Gemma Tarafa, then Health Commissioner of Barcelona City Hallpointed out that there is an eleven-year difference in life expectancy between Pedralbes and Torre Baró. “It’s a situation that hasn’t changed at all; “My parents both died at the age of 60,” explains bookseller, founder of the LGTBI+ bookstore and feminist Acció Periférica José Martínez Vicario by phone. He was born and raised “in the old town of Torre Baró”, the one with steep slopes and thin sidewalks, like his parents, who arrived with his grandparents in the late 1950s.
A second bus would have to be diverted so that improvements could be made to Torre Baró again
Eduard Fernández, protagonist of “El 47”
Martínez is clear that he will never leave the neighborhood. He lives in the house he inherited from his grandmother. “We have the best view of Barcelona!” he says. But then he gets angry because there is no pharmacy. “Imagine,” he says, “in a neighborhood with such a high rate of chronic diseases and no pharmacy on call.” “What does a person with a serious health problem do at night?” he asks, adding: “Because in the old town of Torre Baró, the buses don’t come at night, you have to take a car for everything.”
“Of course, we have few neighbors up there,” he adds. “But that’s because they’re throwing us out, with all this lack of interest in us, not because we want to leave.” The dilemma between staying and resisting in such a special neighborhood, or throwing in the towel and moving to better-served neighborhoods (or directly with the services), hovers throughout Marcel Barrera’s film.
The director himself focuses on the situation in Torre Baró: “Currently, there are hardly any shops and if you order a pizza at home or buy socks online, they tell you that they will not bring your orders there.” “These are things that are not very acceptable in today’s Barcelona,” Barrera emphasizes in a conversation with elDiario.es.
The mayor says that with the Copa América, Barcelona is looking at the sea again and I wonder when it will look at the mountains again, if it has already done so.
José Martínez Vicario, resident of Torre Baró
For his part, the bookseller says: “The mayor says that with the Copa América, Barcelona is looking at the sea again and I wonder when it will look at the mountains again, if ever.” Martínez Vicario calls for a special plan for the neighborhood that “proposes solutions based on the obvious technical difficulties it faces.”
And it also calls for a massive regularization of home ownership, since many are not registered because they are self-built, making it difficult for their owners to manage many municipal services to which, if they were recognized as such, they would be entitled.
There is a difference of eleven years between life expectancy in Pedralbes and Torre Baró.
Gemma Tarafa, Health Commissioner of Barcelona City Hall in 2015
“I remember one day I asked the City Hall for a special toilet for my mother, who suffered from kidney disease, and they refused me because the address was not registered.” “What do you do when you are poor and you are not offered the services you are entitled to?” laments this cultural activist.
Asked about the neighbors’ requests, Eduard Fernández admits to having been impressed by Torre Baró. “Now the last bar is closed and the streets are as they are,” laments the protagonist of the film, concluding with reference to the events he narrates. The 47: “A second bus would have to be diverted so that improvements can be made to Torre Baró again.”
