Next Friday, November 7th, in collaboration with the Asociación Lachó Bají Calí, we will participate in the second edition of the NIGHT flamenco of the
MACBA
. It will be titled
We have titled
Lachó bají (Good Luck)
a proposal for this event that we have devised in collaboration with the Asociación Lachó Bají Calí (Gypsy Good Luck); it consists of a walk through the territory inhabited by the gypsy community of the neighborhood
El
Gornal
(L’Hospitalet) from the early 60s to the early 90s, living in self-built shacks first and in prefabricated houses later. A territory through which the Economic District-Gran Via of L’Hospitalet currently extends: a group of office buildings, shopping centers and luxury hotels clustered around the activity of the Gran Via fairgrounds of the Fira Barcelona.
Almost nothing remains of that time, the memory of the gypsy community that inhabited that territory then lacks references, they have been erased by a city model subject to the logic of economic flows. Even so, we will visit the minimum remains, the almost invisible traces of that memory: a farmhouse converted into the offices of the Consortium for the reform of the Gran Via in L’Hospitalet; an empty lot that was once a passage to the sites where the city’s waste was selected and back to the barracks, of which now only a few tiles remain hidden by uncontrolled weeds, next to a four-star hotel; vacant lots fenced off, owned by large investment groups that did not get to build in time, before the real estate bubble burst; and the place where the Puente School was located, which was attended by several generations of inhabitants of the barracks —the Lachó Bají school— which was located at what is now the main entrance to the fairgrounds.
The name of the association: Lachó Bají Calí, those words, although incorporeal, are also a place of memory, perhaps the only one that explicitly unites the present of the gypsy community of Gornal with its past.
On our walk we will be accompanied by the group Los Barraconeros —formed by Juan Luís Fernández Gómez
El Piki
, Manuel Gómez Cortés
El Sepo
and Lázaro Márquez Cortés
El Negro
, all three members of Lachó Bají Calí—, who will perform in the places linked to that past mentioned above that we propose to remember, songs and cantes that evoke that time. For our part, we will distribute a series of images and texts compiled in different investigations and informal conversations with former neighbors with whom we will try to promote resonances and connections between the past, present and future of this territory that, on the other hand, reflects transformations that are common to many other places in the peninsular geography.
We will start the walk at 6:00 PM in front of the headquarters of the Lachó Bají Calí association (Av. Vilanova, 22, L’Hospitalet, FGC Gornal) and will end around 8:00 PM in
Plaça d’Europa
(FGC Europa | Fira).
At 5 AM in the Capella MACBA we will publicly present the project together with Mercedes Gómez Cortés, president of Lachó Bají Calí and with the live performance of Los Barraconeros.
Come on!