IaaC blog

The vibrations have changed;
Barcelona is no longer the same. The city council put down its iron fist. No more graffiti. No more prostitutes. No more skaters. The list goes on and on. Former mayor of Barcelona Joan Clos radically changed the street culture of the city. By prohibiting anything from flyers and graffiti to street vendors, skaters, and prostitutes, he earned the disapproval of the large group of people who make up the street art culture of the cosmopolitan capital of Catalonia. Artists everywhere protested, their voices of dissent supported by professors, students, and intellectuals. The By-law for Peaceful Co-existence, approved in December 2005 and enforced officially since February 2006, means to “curb anti-social behavior, attitudes of little respect for other people or property, and the avoidance of conflict situations that stand in the way of peaceful coexistence.” So reads the official bulletin. 

The decision was made only a year ago, yet the panorama has changed radically. This mecca of urban culture, which used to welcome artists from all over the world who reveled in the near-legal status of graffiti and street art, now boasts many more clean walls. Graffiti painters are, as of February 2006, considered offenders of the state. They face fines from 750 euros ($989) to 3,000 euros if caught with a spraying can in hand. The law, an “offense to urban culture,” as stated in Spanish daily newspaper El Mundo, has turned its prime artists into ordinary criminals. This is a radical thing in a city where the graffiti artists are household names and not one street block goes unscathed. It might encourage painters to abandon their purely artistic projects and turn their paintings into signs of rebellion once more, using more radical images and more abrasive paints.  

In 2005, before the law’s controversial approval, two major publications rendered tribute to the extraordinary works of graffiti that then embellished the naked concrete walls of Barcelona. The publication of Barcelona 1000 Grafittis, by photographer and graphic designer Rosa Puig Torres, marked an important milestone in the documentation of Barcelona’s incredibly rich urban art scene and constitutes an invaluable collection of photographs. The presentation of the book was held in the open with three graffiti artists creating works right in front of the public. Graffitis and Murals, by photographer Juan Jose Fernandez, co-director of La Santa, a cultural organization responsible for events such as the Contemporary Art Festival in Barcelona, documented Barcelona’s street art on camera during a four-year span. 

Today, most of the works featured have disappeared. Both Puig and Fernandez acknowledge that the high level of the works of art has been diminished by its prohibition, which is a shame, both for this discipline and the city’s artistic patrimony.  

One of the artists present at the presentation of Barcelona 1000 Graffitis, 26-year-old native Barcelonan graffiti artist Kafre, deeply resents the new laws and mourns the loss of so many exquisite works of art. Since age 11, graffiti has been a part of his life. Initially conceived by his young mind as a way of orienting himself around the city, he started spraying his name on walls and street corners to find his way around
Barcelona. This innocent “tagging” quickly grew in dimension, color and complexity, and with the years, his name and unusual creatures became ever more frequent on city walls. Growing up entangled in the web of street artists, he learned the rules of the game pretty fast. 

“Graffiti is not expensive, but it’s risky business,” he says. “Regardless of the efforts, and the enormous dimension of the work of art, it is never permanent. You step on other people’s work, and other people step on yours.”  

During his years as a teenage graffiti artist, Kafre experienced the greatest boom of urban art that Barcelona ever saw. Very different from the gangster beginning of graffiti in New York a few decades back, the conception of graffiti in this Spanish metropolis was not considered a dark subculture, and had developed into a respected form of popular art in the early 90s. As described by Josep Maria Catala, professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, and author of one of the prologues of Barcelona 1000 Graffitis, this art represents the return of painting to the walls, the place of its initial conception before its transport onto canvases.  

Barcelona was quickly becoming the place to see and be seen. Kafre’s generation witnessed massive streams of artists from all over the world invading the streets of Barcelona to learn from other “graffiteros” and spray the walls to their hearts’ content. The Catalonian capital reflected the global quality of graffiti, housing artists from everywhere and constituting itself as the epicenter in the solidification of underground nets of artists. Like nomads, they shifted from city to city, and to and from festivals in different cities of Europe. Kafre himself moved a fair amount to paint as far as Ireland, France, Italy, Denmark, and many cities of Spain. Just this past June, he was invited to form part of the Festival de Arte Urbana “Bastardo,” celebrated in Bologna, Italy. He was also one of the three artists presenting their works in “La Cuchara” gallery in Barcelona this past September.  

On one of his travels a few years back, he met Skount, a graffiti artist from the south of Spain. A mutual acquaintance set them up so that Kafre would have a chance to delve into Ciudad Real’s underground world, to spray with an insider. Currently, they both live in
Barcelona, Kafre studying philosophy, and Skount enrolled in an academy of culinary arts. Both experienced the change from pre-legislation
Barcelona to the current state of affairs, and when they meet on weekends to paint, they usually choose remote locations or go outside the city. Skount has felt the effects of the new law personally; he was caught painting several months ago, and the case is still pending. 

“
Barcelona itself has become very dangerous,” Skount warns. “Everything changed since the ‘no tolerance’ law.”  

Apart from their passion for graffiti, both of them began experimenting with smaller-scale art before the prohibition, and now they have more time for it than ever. Despite this transition, though, and even in the face of danger, neither could imagine leaving the streets for good. “Painting on canvas can feel limiting,” Skount explains. First, he says, there’s a higher price to pay.  

“When you’re painting a canvas, you need to buy paint, brushes, the canvas, and you a physical space to paint.” With graffiti, everything is cheaper. The canvas is for free, and spray paint is inexpensive. The price is the risk factor. Format makes a difference, too. “When you’re used to 20 meter walls to cover in color, a canvas rarely compares.”  

Skount explains that every wall is different, and “alive. It tells me what it wants.” With painting on canvas, though, at least he has something to keep. Of his graffiti masterpieces, Skount preserves nothing but photographs.  

“A graffiti on a wall can last an hour, a week, or months,” he says. “You never know. It’s just a part of the deal. You either accept that or you don’t paint.”  

This is an aspect of graffiti that Sam3, a spray painter from Granada, addressed specifically. He painted a wall in Barcelona with the image of one of the city’s cleaning crew eliminating a graffiti that reads “ERASE YOURSELF.” It was his silent protest against the constant removal of graffiti art, and the effacing quality that this new civic law has caused in Barcelona. His piece was admired by many, and in the end, erased by a man in cleaning garb very similar to the one on the wall that he was erasing.  

 Sam3 stands totally against the new laws. “Graffiti is a way of liberation,” he says, and this law has “killed it all.” He is especially upset about the removal of a legendary wall, the “hall of fame” in the center of Barcelona’s neighborhood El Raval, where painting was encouraged, resulting in the piece of concrete with the greatest amount of paint layers in the city, before it was pulled down, that is. Graffiti, his “antidote to a global disease,” was abruptly taken off the shelves, and he feels that the actual urban art scene in Barcelona cannot be compared with what was a year back. “Graffiti is no separate art, it is part of everything,” he says. On this, Catala agrees with Sam3. “Everybody is convinced that the important things can never be out in the open,” and they go search for art “in the hiding places of galleries and museums. The walls of this city have been talking to our eyes for years, and we haven’t been able to listen.”  

Maybe now it is too late.­­­­­­[the text is based on an article of Paula Kupfer] 

Paula Kupfer is in her second year majoring in journalism and Latin American studies at New York
University. She is from Panama.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.