It's a matter of glamour
We need to change our aesthetic attitude. It's a matter of glamour. We don't have glamour, like the Italians do.
Manuel Vilas
Friday, 18 October 2024, 16:21
Spain could sell itself just as well as Italy if it made a bit of an effort. I've been passing through many Spanish cities ... because I'm promoting my latest novel. They all have an exceptional historical and architectural heritage. We need to change our aesthetic attitude. It's a matter of glamour. We don't have glamour, like the Italians do. We should start with the coffee. If you walk into a bar in a Spanish city, in a baroque square, for example, and they serve you a scorching-hot, weak coffee, complain. Enough is enough - why can't we have good coffee in Spanish bars? And it's the same with everything.
We are so foolish that we fail to realise that beauty pays. If I were Minister of Education, I'd introduce a subject in secondary schools called 'glamour', where teenagers would be trained in an appreciation of beauty. You can't live without beauty. At best, you survive.
We have everything the Italians have but we don't know how to sell it. Elegance, sophistication, nuance, heritage, beauty - without these all we're left with are beaches full of drunken tourists from Northern Europe, cheap beer and sunshine.
Nobody listens to me although I've been saying this for twenty years, and nobody, absolutely nobody, takes any notice. I've visited Spanish cities where the councillors and architects have allowed the construction of appalling housing estates that spoil and stain life; they should be put on trial. Don't stain life, for God's sake. What can one man do, shouting in this desert?
Enough ugliness. Think of Italy always, because Spain can aspire to equal the great beauty of our streets, our buildings, our cathedrals and our way of being in the world.
Make an effort. Don't go out in tracksuits, please. Put on a jacket; you can get one for 10 euros.
Make sure your eyes reflect passion and desire. Go to the opera. It costs a fortune, that's true. Ask for an opera and theatre programme in your city. Rage against your local council if it's incapable of creating culture. Be special. Polish your shoes. Do your grocery shopping dressed like a prince.
It's not about money. It's about your will. Greet life. Don't allow another single, bloody roundabout more in this country. We are already cursed with the ugliest roundabouts in the world. Let the ministers and the King of Spain go live in housing estates with roundabouts.
Beauty is a political right because without beauty, you're not a human being - you're just another slave, a poor, sad animal.
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