Wednesday at the Slice, a ten
Last summer already began with success, but this year its impact has increased and many have realized that it is a proposal full of reason and reasons. I am referring to Wednesdays on the Slice, the initiative of the Brunzit Collective that every Wednesday in July and August convenes and organizes in a different place in the City, emblematic squares and public spaces in the center. When I write this, the last one had been held at the foot of the Cathedral. The mechanics are simple: the Brunzit people announce the place and time, provide some basic elements (oil, salt, and napkins) and the diners attend, and each person brings the food they like to eat and – above all – share, because that’s what it’s all about. About sharing, about conversing, about making bread with oil together when the heat subsides and the evening arrives (which is another gift that the sky gives us every day, as beautiful to see as the rarest of eclipses). It’s about having dinner and spending some time in the cool air, one of the daily gestures of a certain way of life that has been sidelined by touristification and massification. This title of Dinners or Wednesdays on the Slice is very fitting, as it brings together in one phrase the idea of dining al fresco and the minimum unit of food that should be placed on the table, which, indeed, is a slice of bread.
It may seem like a small thing, but, as I say, it is an act full of meaning. I won’t say it’s ‘revolutionary,’ because even that word has become mangled and ruined. But it is a gesture that goes against the logic of mass tourism, which by its very nature tends to invade all spaces: also, or in particular, public spaces, to the point of turning them into another territory in dispute.
That a space is public means that it belongs to everyone, but this in no way equates to it belonging to no one. Public space, precisely because it is public, cannot be privatized. We must not allow it. Whenever citizens agree, it is common for town halls to license certain businesses (especially in the restaurant and hospitality sector) to use a part of this space to offer their products and services: these are the terraces, an element, let’s say, characteristic of a certain way of understanding leisure.
But like everything, this also has a limit. When some would like to turn all or a large part of the public space into an immense terrace, and when this terrace becomes a forbidden or hostile territory for residents, and an instrument in the service of speculation and a life cost increase so absurd that the citizens of these islands cannot afford it, then it means that the time has come to stand up. The public space of Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza and Formentera belongs to the citizens, not to a guild or political parties. If the Cort government and certain hospitality entrepreneurs have shown reluctance, or direct contempt, for the Sopars a la Llesca, all the better: it is the confirmation that the initiative was necessary and that it has hit the right note.
Els Dimecres a la Llesca propose an occupation (another word that has also been interestingly devalued) of public space which is, at the same time, a lesson in civility: the notion of the agora, of a common space for citizens, is recovered, which is simultaneously used and cared for by the collective, so that the squares are always better after each dinner. And it is a good reminder that we do not live off mass tourism, because only the opportunists, who even want to make the streets and squares their own to exploit them for their own benefit, live off mass tourism.
