In the face of the shocking news, the terrifying images published in newspapers and broadcast on television regarding the attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils, echoing others carried out in various parts of Europe. Perpetrated by terrorists who, like many other immigrants, had been welcomed in Catalonia, questions arise one after another. The ‘why’s’ accumulate, unsettlingly seeking causes, motives, reasons, and questioning the situation without finding clear answers. With sadness and dismay, we discover that our house is full of woodworms.
It is, to say the least, intriguing that Joan Miró’s public work has twice been involved in two of the attacks of this newly begun 21st century, simply by existing; these were not precisely the targets, nor were all the people who unfortunately lost their lives. For the first time, in the tragedy of the World Trade Center in New York, where, among many other things, the “Grand Tapestry” by Joan Miró and Josep Royo was destroyed, which had been created at “La Farinera” in Tarragona in the seventies. This emblematic space, where the masters created all the textile work with a team formed by students from the School of Art, is now distributed in public and private collections across Europe and America. Of the “Grand Tapestry”, all that remains are the magnificent cartoon, a preliminary study preserved by the Miró Foundation in Barcelona and which was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art of Tarragona, along with all the Tapestries and overweavings created at “La Farinera”; the photographs by Català Roca, reproduced in the book “La Farinera, el teler del món” from the Tamarit collection, published by Viena Edicions and the Provincial Council of Tarragona, which capture various moments of the monumental work; and Pere Portabella’s film, which shows us fragments of its execution and the tapestry’s exit through a breach that had to be made in one of “La Farinera’s” walls to remove it to the exterior, rolled up like a large worm, on its way to its exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris before traveling to New York, where after being exhibited to the public for nearly forty years and photographed by millions of tourists, it met its destruction. The Islamic State, the mastermind behind the attacks, habitually destroys all vestiges of ancient cultures it encounters, whether Islamic or not. The “Grand Tapestry”, although not considered a target nor belonging to archaic classification, can perfectly be added to the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan, and the monuments and sculptures destroyed in museums of territories occupied by fire and blood.
Now, quite the opposite, the pavement mosaic located at Pla de l’Os on Barcelona’s Las Ramblas, where Younes Abouyaaqoub abandoned the van after leaving dead and injured strewn across the entire Rambla. It seems to have halted the impact. A mosaic, Miró’s gift to Barcelona, created to welcome everyone who arrives in our country, a land of welcome and brotherhood with all peoples of the world. A brilliant work, like almost all of the master’s, inspired by cathedral rose windows, as Luis Permanyer explained today. Works that, like then, underground, burst forth within the artist, emerging and growing powerfully, looking to the sky, seeking stars, planets, and constellations in which to mirror themselves, while listening to the birdsong, the crystalline sound of fountains, and the murmur of waves on the beach. Conceived, and at times realized, in Camp de Tarragona, and in Tarragona itself, in Paris, in Barcelona, or in Palma de Mallorca. This same Camp de Tarragona where the terrorists, disguised as squatters in abandoned houses, perpetrated the tragedy—uneducated adolescents, infected by the virus of hatred, transmitted by the not-so-young Imam of Ripoll, who has been transforming them into furious reactionaries against life in freedom. Clinging to archaic laws, never contemplated in Islamic religion, and in the name of a god created in their imagination, the banner of the Islamic State, they have plunged into a holy war, the “Jihad”, with very limited funding and terrifying results against our civilization, in which Muslims, precisely, turn out to be the main victims. In Cambrils, they attempted to carry out an act of terror similar to that of Las Ramblas, and after leaving a sinister trail of pedestrians run over, if not wounded and stabbed to death, the Mossos d’Esquadra, in an effective operation, shot down the terrorists. It was early evening, and the sea stood still.
The power of Joan Miró’s work transcends itself, representing life in all its splendor and the cosmic relationship of every living being with the universe. One would like to believe that its powerful magic caused the infernal machine to stop just as it reached the location of his mosaic at Pla de l’Os, abruptly cutting short its sinister criminal route. Perhaps the intervention of a power superior to all of us, and the power of art, thwarted the plans for what could have been a more far-reaching massacre than the one we experienced. Now we know they intended to attack emblematic places, and the deflagration of the house in Alcanar, where they hid and manipulated explosives, prevented them; the sight of the mushroom-shaped cloud, caused by the explosion, rising skyward is unforgettable. Last Saturday, the Generalitat de Catalunya and the Barcelona City Council called a “fearless” demonstration, which was massive, in response to the attacks. When the river of demonstrators reached Plaça de Catalunya, the spokesperson for the Ibn Batuta foundation, Miram Hatibi, and the actress Rosa Maria Sardà addressed the public, culminating their speech with a fragment from a text by Federico García Lorca:
“ La única calle de la Tierra que yo desearía que no se acabara nunca, rica en sonidos, abundante en brisas, hermosa de encuentros y antigua de sangre”
And La Sardà, splendidly reciting Joan de Sagarra:
“Do you know what the Rambla of the flowers is?… It is Barcelona’s ballroom.”
Afterward, “El cant dels ocells” (The Song of the Birds) by Pau Casals was played, in a deafening silence, performed by cellist Peter Thiermann and cello student Guillem Gràcia.
Meanwhile, the war against the Islamic State continues in Iraq and Syria, which in the past were true paradises, cradles of culture, now barren and devastated territories. At the demonstration, there were boos and shouts directed at the King and representatives of the Spanish government, due to their involvement in selling weapons to Saudi Arabia, which funds the Islamic State.
The trampled flowers will be reborn; they will not be the same, but they will be flowers. Miró’s mosaic, now an icon of mourning, will tomorrow again welcome all citizens of the world.
