After last week’s post regarding the sad closure of historic shops in Barcelona’s city centre, I thought it high time to celebrate the little pockets of the city where creative retail is having a renaissance. There are dozens of streets away from Barcelona’s Ciutat Vella where intriguing owner-run boutiques are clustering. Here is the first in what I hope will be a regular series.

Carrer Parlament is located in what was, until recently, considered a naff part of the Eixample. Now dubbed San Antoni and perhaps better known as a place where hipsters head for brunch in cafes like this and this, cute little start up shops and galleries are adding interest beyond the morning latte. 


Cottage
This enchanting florist reminds me of that famous scene in Vertigo, when Kim Novak steps from a black and white San Francisco street into a glorious Technicolor world via a flower shop. All sorts of blooms, indoor plants and pots of fresh herbs for every occasion. C/Parlament 10. Tel. 93 129 5595

Unik
I had a touch of the déjà vu when I walked into Unik. After poking around for a few minutes, I realised that Clara, the creator of these fantastic upcycled lamps, mirrors, coat racks and other items, was responsible for one of my favourite pieces of jewellery – a pendant made from an old enamel pill box. Each piece here is totally unique and has either been transformed entirely (a metal sieve to a lampshade) or tastefully repurposed (a window frame to a mirror). I want the army of small robots made from old cutlery and other bits and bobs to be my new best friends. C/ Parlament 13. Tel. 93 251 48967   

 [‘galeri ]
The fledgling [‘galeri] is a tiny space that sells a neat selection of ‘Made in Barcelona’ items. Everything here had a quality, handmade feel to it, but particularly lovely were vases made by Atuell that are as fine as folded paper and Loope leather tote bags. Co-owner Luis tells me that he plans to hold regularly shows of photography and prints, and going by the small range of both already in stock, this is one to keep an eye on. C/ Viladomat 27. 

A couple of decades ago, my first magazine story on Barcelona was about its quirky old shops. I wrote about a dusty old store in the Raval that made its own hair tonic and other barber supplies, stores that proudly displayed big cotton knickers and bras with cups large enough to toss a salad in, and one place, reportedly the oldest continuously-run shop in Barcelona, that had a pair of blackamoors inside the entrance.

All these were located within the old town, the Raval/Barri Gótic/El Born triangle that has since become the hottest tourist destination in Europe. For some time now, they have been disappearing – a disturbing phenomenon widely discussed in local media and yesterday picked up by the The New York Times.

Most of these places are/were family run and trading in commodities that have long since lost out to the internet or modern, ‘lifestyle’ stores; books, traditional toys and scratchy everyday bed linen and towels. After 20 years of rent protection, their monthly rate has risen – quite a lot. In the same period, tourism in Barcelona has exploded –and their prime stomping (and shopping) ground is the Ciutat Vella. This has created an imperfect storm. In one case, a toy trader was forced to pack up after his rent rose from 1,000 euros per month to 35,000. (It is now occupied buy Geox, which I can’t decide is a sign of just how much passing trade there is this street or how much people love those ugly shoes).

Like the story in the Times, many commentators see the disappearance of these unique historic shops as just another sign of the ‘selling out’ of the old town to the tourist dollar – and the adversity this has on local residents. However I am not sure this is true – and it doesn’t explain why many of them, such as this old nut roaster and herb trader, are still doing extremely well thank you.  Couldn’t the traditional toyshops have started to introduce ‘designer toys’ for the adult market? How about a coffee corner in those dusty old bookshops? As a New Yorker friend (who lives in Barcelona) so succinctly put it, ‘If you can’t take the heat get out of the kitchen’.

To me, the greater loss is one of patrimony. When a global chain takes over, you can bet your bottom euro that a leadlight shop front or wrought iron window frame will be end up in the skip lest it interfere with their brand’s I.D. So far, the city’s authorities have been pretty useless as enforcing preservation laws on commercial property (Just last weekend I went on search for one of my favorite modernista pharmacies – it’s gone). But perhaps this has always been the case. In a city where art nouveau was one of its defining artistic movements, why is there only one café and the same number of restaurants in the style still in existence? Whist in Brussels and Paris they are everywhere… 

I have never fallen in love with a pair of Camper shoes, but I could live in one of their shops. From the early Memphis-meets-minimalism interiors from Ferran Amat (founder of the mythical Barcelona design shop Vinçon to the ‘anti-design’ concepts of Marti Guixé. Camper Together regularly commissions, seemingly at whim, a choice designer or architect to outfit one of their shops. Barcelona has seen Jaime Hayon and Benedetta Tagliabue, Osaka and NYC the Japanese design studio Nendo, Alfredo Häeberli in Zurich and the Campana Brothers in Berlin and London. To name but a few.

Yet for me, the most meaningful of the Camper Together projects comes from the curious and original mind of Curro Claret. The work of the Barcelona-based industrial designer is rarely seen on the pages of glossy designer magazines, yet he is well respected within the city’s creative community. Claret is more concerned with function and the social and experiential role of design – the added value that goes beyond its price tag – than the latest trends from Milan. “I refuse to accept the belief that design is the domain of the rich and sophisticated,” he states in Retrato Imperfecto de Curro Claret, a book published by Camper to commemorate the opening of their new Madrid shop.

This is the second project Claret has carried out for Camper after an interior made for their Barcelona Plaça Catalunya shop in 2012. Like that project, the ‘design team’, consisted of a group of people who are, or have been homeless, or what we like to term ‘marginal’. Working together with the Fundación San Martín de Porres, and using upcycled material from the store’s previous furniture and fittings, the team transformed the store in Calle Preciados into a bright space where shoestrings from out-of-catalogue models were made into curtains and lampshades, recycled elements transformed into shelving and stools, and old Camper advertising posters reproduced in oils to adorn the walls.

Claret is clear to point out that the project was about work, not charity. It was about implicating the men and women in the design process, teaching skills and reaching agreements on what would make an attractive store that transmitted the brand’s values.

“I hope it doesn’t stop here,” said Claret at the store opening. “ And there are other companies out there that understand this is not about charity, but rather exploring ways we can make the underprivileged feel valid and creatively alive.” Amen to that. 

Every once in a while an email arrives in your inbox that you are not sure is legit or a meme via The Onion. This happened to me yesterday, when for some unknown reason I received a newsletter from a company called La Casa por el Tejado (or the House on the Roof).

La Casa por el Tejado works in, that most ambiguous of terms, ‘property development’. But rather than throwing up low cost housing on Barcelona’s periphery or converting old warehouse to trendy lofts, these people have gone straight for the solomillo – the rooftops of Barcelona.

In a nutshell La Casa por el Tejado negotiates with the community of owners in period buildings in Barcelona to buy their rooftop – which it then uses to build luxury penthouses for foreign (principally ex-Soviet) buyers. The purpose of their email was to brag about a junket they held in the luxurious Hotel Mandarin Oriental, where they presented their project to a rapturous crowd. Whilst this may seem all well and good in a neo-capitalist market, a little context is needed.

La Casa por el Tejado has their eyes on the greatest urban prize of all – Barcelona’s Eixample neighbourhood. The Eixample (or  ‘Extension’ in Catalan) was planned in the mid-18th century by one Idelfons Cerdá. The engineer had the enlightened idea of laying out streets on a grid system - a notion obvious now but revolutionary for the time. Although it has developed into  Barcelona’s most bourgeois hood (and arguably its most beautiful – this where Gaudí and his contempories threw up their singular art nouveu fantasies) it wasn’t meant to be that way. Cerdá conceived the Eixample as an urban utopia; a place where the middle classes could find camaraderie in is relentless uniformity, wide streets and community gardens. He also put a height cap of 16 metres on each building.

Under Spanish property law, the roof of an apartment block is communal – it belongs, in equal parts, to all the residents. It’s a place where they hang out their washing, meet to chat, or lay in the sun.  And although non of them can be blamed for wanting to earn an extra buck and god knows the local building sector could do with a boost after the 2008 crash, the proposition of La Casa por el Tejado just seems well, unsavoury. What next? Weekender pods on the balconies? Souvenir shops in the lift shafts?

Curiously enough, on the same day I received another piece of news regarding plans for Barcelona’s rooftops. In a much more heartening and imaginative scheme, the local council is offering property owners partial funding to turn their rooftops into communal ‘green zones’. If I had it, I know where I would much rather throw my money.