<![CDATA[Ara Balears in English - public space]]> 10 <![CDATA[We return to the parks and to low-consumption existence]]>

We are at the park. At the Estacions park in Palma, where small social ecosystems coexist with each other. Now, from where I wait for my bus departure time, I can observe one. It is the ecosystem of the people sitting around the multiple and enormous planters in charge of generating shade. Inside each one, four trees rise, connected by earth and air: their crowns caress and join into a single roof that shelters us all, and the branches tickle each other with lights and shadows, letting the air in. It is a late summer afternoon and since I sat under the shelter of this porch I have stopped huffing, sweating, and swearing. The city seems, for a moment, habitable.

]]> <![CDATA[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.

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