Barcelona Metropolis

When she gets home, it’s half past eight in the evening. She sets down the grocery bags – long handle adorned with Modernist iron filigree. Such porosity, such marvel, what a resounding click on closing it. What a tactile sensation! – on the floor at the entrance and looks around. There’s nothing blocking her view of the dining room balcony from this end of the apartment where the entrance hall is. No walls, partitions or doors.

Her entire apartment and those of her neighbours, further on, are laid bare, illuminating the Sant Pere sky with their living room and kitchen lights. Casting its glow over everything is the rosy halo of the sun setting behind Collserola.

Every day, the same routine. Now is when she retraces the steps of the previous hours. She recalls, one by one, all the doors she has opened and closed that afternoon, envisioning them lined up one after another, like a continuous series of filters that conceal everything this single-room apartment insists on showing her. When she first moved to the neighbourhood, there were more shops with doors and handles, knobs, grips, levers and latches to open. Now she only has three in her vicinity. The other establishments either open automatically or, worse, are always left slightly ajar, as if doing us a favour.

I couldn’t tell you when this habit began. At first it was happenstance, as is often the case with habits that evolve into addictions. She’d find herself drawn to a shop window, decide to venture inside for a casual browse, and each time she turned to open the door, she’d inevitably be greeted by a shop assistant. “Can I help you?” “What can I get for you, dear?” And with her timid “Nothing, just looking”, she’d cut short the conversation. Yet, by then, a warmth had already begun to settle in her body, a sensation she didn’t feel before going in. Now, depending on the day, she’d prolong the interaction: inquiring about the fabric of a garment, its post-wash shrinkage, whether an item was handcrafted, and by whom and where. All to linger in the ambiance they had suddenly created within those confined spaces – shops adorned with knobs, handles, grips, levers and latches.

She dreams of walls, bricks, partitions, and even screens. Of ramparts, walls, bastions and gateways. She imagines what it would be like to enter and exit rooms, to separate spaces, smells. To set boundaries. She doesn’t get the fascination with vast lofts in El Poblenou and wanting to pay high prices for old single-room workshops with freight elevator lifts, devoid of spots to hide from family, strangers, or even oneself, almost.

Now, in her mind’s eye, facing the window of her balcony, she’d arrange all the doors she’s gone through this afternoon. She’d line them up before her in this singular space without barriers or limits, if only there were any. But there weren’t. Her entire life, and consequently that of others, is laid bare in this “singular space, loft, apartment” at the heart of the Sant Pere neighbourhood. “Breathtaking views of the square Plaça de Sant Agustí Vell”, they promised. “So you needn’t be separated from guests while cooking dinner and they are in the living room”. What they neglected to mention is that her sole guests would be the neighbours, also residing in compartment-less flats, appearing before her like another extension of her dining room. And, inevitably, she sees her. Despite all the doors she has closed with her eyes shut. Despite wanting to inhabit the apartment without having to see. Despite wanting to tear out her eyes. She sees the neighbour.