June 2021
Territori contemporani 4/5
by Ariadna Parreu

Golden ruin

A friend of mine who lived in Bristol says that if there was a zombie apocalypse we Mediterranean people wouldn’t survive at all, those who would do would be the English southerners. Well, so Tarragona, we could say, is the Catalan Bristol.

There was, there is, there will be… an art center in Tarragona where until January we saw the twelfth edition of SCAN, they have adapted to the bug and the space, and they have done it beautifully with the bet for the youngest.

Aix, the Roman Tarragona! I remember going to pee in the bushes of the amphitheater, among other things. Nearby is the circus, which is not so deteriorated, and that steel fence that cuts the last gap, the one that borders Sant Oleguer street, offers us to enter at night, and thus walk, touch, kiss, rub those old stones with the intimacy of the centuries and a beer in hand.

There is a trail of party ruins all over the Costa Daurada, but I want to mention the discotheque Prisma in Torredembarra. It began as an arcade and then moved on to other decibels. Between summer apartments and vacant lots, there is an esplanade with a watchtower of the nineties parking style, the dance floor is underground. It’s closed but there is a badly walled access where one can descend to the phosphorite hells. Go with flash.

From the hells to heaven: Jujol’s eye candy in Vistabella, the church Sagrat Cor, is a pure delight, made of leftovers, of the color of the earth as of shit. Inside there are the tempera paintings that Jujol himself made and, although the paintings got fucked up a lot with the civil war and a fire, I recommend going soon, because they are in the process of restoration and are becoming 3rd evolution pokémons. No, maybe in context, this definition is not positive.

Church Sagrat Cor (Photo: Ariadna Parreu)

In the whole world there are only 50 life-size statues of Mazinger Z, the only one in Iberian territory, in the province of Tarragona. Near Valls, in the urbanization Mas de Plata, is located this trace of the childhood of the boomers. About two years ago it was repainted and it looks like new, although with that sad coloration of the concrete.

Mazinger Z (Photo: Ariadna Parreu)

The petrochemical complex is a nighttime spectacle, but it also offers its daytime thing. In these old peach fields, converted during the Franco regime into a cathedral of synthetics, there is a village with many villas: La Pobla de Mafumet, next to the soccer field, a villa with colorful mosaics and among them, an exact reproduction of the views behind you, the petro.

A dirt road behind a stream, leads us to l’Enguany’s house, a trencadís of recovered materials that make up an organic house, some olive trees and the cab (a work tool of his father) with the advertising of Privée, used to be Vip’s. Her workshop is a magma of metal, plastic, wood, cactus and cats enjoying herself among her canvases and materials sequestered from abandoned factories. When he wants, he opens his doors to us with calçots, romesco and Priorat wine. If he is not there, you can ask for Dolors, his mother, mistress of the flora and small beasts.

The capital of Baix Camp is home to Bofill’s city-building idea in the Gaudí district. A frozen and erotic utopia, reviled in a neighborhood that begins to cease to be suburb.

City-building of Bofill (Photo: web estudio Bofill)

There are countless legends of the fog of La Mussara, the abandoned village. In the cemetery are all the bones removed, because for more than 50 years it was a shooting range of the military camp Los Castillejos. While the village was left behind, the army was established there. Today the ruins of both remain, worth examining the mural paintings of the dining rooms as a palimpsest. It is possible to find a party…

The nuclear of Vandellós II is attached to the sea, so that you can not walk to the beach that blocks, but you can get there by boat. The Punta Grossa is known to have the temperature about 2 degrees above the surrounding water, ideal to go with children.

Nuclear Vandellós II (Photo: nuclear forum of the Spanish Nuclear Energy website)

I do not know if synthetic or ruin, but U2 recorded Vertigo in the Punta del Fangar. In this land of rice fields we have another art center, it seems that we have plenty of them. Lo Pati in Amposta, its careful trajectory in contemporary art, coherent and continuous bets, and its neutral article, are all a declaration of intentions.

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Graf Route through Tarragona by Ariadna Parreu, artist, teacher, from Reus by birth and Tarragona by adoption.

This text is part of the set of routes directed by Frederic Montornés. With the intention of getting out of Barcelona city and making other route projects known, GRAF invites Frederic Montornés to make a first introductory Route to the repository of Territori Contemporani – a television programme to discover the spaces of diffusion and production of contemporary art in the regions of Catalonia, through the artists and cultural agents involved – and in the same way, to direct four GRAF Routes through the four provinces of Catalonia by the hand of artists linked to these territories.