In El Born, the shops are at the same time a workshop, a bakery and a place of artistic creation
They sold, beat, and spun cotton in their workshops, many of which were concentrated on a single street in old city, the district with the most history Barcelona. That activity of the cotton growers gave name to one of the alleys, narrow, pedestrian, from the Born neighbourhood: Cotoners street (cotton farmers), which today continues to honor the artisans who worked and traded cotton, and who in 1433 formed their professional guild.
More than two centuries before they had the seasonings of hides and skins. They also have their street in the Born neighborhood, Assassins. Equally, carders, card makers, the wire-barbed instrument used to brush cotton or wool by hand, gave it its name, cards, to a public road in the same area.
And so it happened with a few trades: flashers (they made and traded blankets), Mirallers (they made and sold mirrors), Hatters (they made hats) and other union officials who started up their workshops giving life to an entire neighborhood. The soul of that place continues to make it beat today a group of artisans who, waiting to serve their customers, create their collections.
Joan Rovira does it with bits of bamboo in his hands, the bamboo that he himself obtains in the forests. With it he shapes, completely manually, to jewelry and small sculptures which, surely, he already dreamed of molding in the mid-80s, when he studied jewelry at the Massana school. too soon to a conception of advanced jewelry that transgresses the classic canons, but that the type of tourist who has valued the Born neighborhood the most in recent years does appreciate.
Joan's store is in number 10 Cotoners street, a few meters from what many artisans in the neighborhood like him agree in pointing out that it has been a true cultural magnet: the Picasso Museum. From it radiates attraction of visitors from outside the city and abroad who go in search of art.
Hence, Joan Rovira expresses: “Whoever walks around here already has that different look, which has allowed us to grow in our own way. I have been able to make pieces like my dreams, with my language, the people who walk these streets are helping me”.
Joan knows what he has in hand because for years he left it parked to dedicate himself fully to a multinational, financially well situated and traveling a lot, but with his creative talent parked, until one night he woke up and said: I was a jeweler! So he took back his old jewelry table, restored it and put together his first collection.
At age 50 he embraced his true devotion. With his wife he looked for a place. “We wanted it in El Born because we knew the artisan tradition of this neighbourhood, and we found it on this street that leads to the Picasso Museum”. Today, from the attic of his store, he creates the jewelry that he sells there.
A few meters away, on the same street as Cotoners, is making leather bags what catches the eye from the street, in the workshop, at the back of Carolina Iriarte's store. She was born in Buenos Aires, she studied Fine Arts and Art Direction and Scenography, and, when she arrived in Barcelona, she spent three and a half years working for a shoe designer. "I saw that this was the kind of life I wanted to lead," she recalls. Y she created the first handbag prototypes of hers.
Living near El Born, during the 2008 crisis she saw how many premises were becoming empty and she decided to rent one as a workshop. From then on she began to open other stores, some of well-known fashion brands and El Born was approaching its moment of greatest splendor.
The prices of the premises rose and many brands closed, mainly craft workshops that combine the sale in the store with the creation of their articles remained. Carolina designs her bags, unique pieces made with leather that comes from tanneries in Igualada and the Italian Tuscany, and works with two workshops in the city.
In the corner next to the Iriarte bags, there is Roger Amigó's shoe store. His story also speaks of a before and after obeying his true dream. He was the boy who asked for shoes because he adored them and with his first salary he bought handmade pairs. She was making quality collection of it. "I fantasized about having my own shoe store," he recalls.
But she chose to study film production. He was a film teacher until the crisis of 2008, that illusion of opening a place dedicated to dispatch your own selection of shoes in a space that was like your home ended up specifying what it is today WILDEBEEST , his shop in Cotoners, 14.
He had prepared his Business Plan with the help of the Barcelona Activa service for entrepreneurs, and in spring of 2009 raised the blind of his business.
He started selling CYDWOQ models handcrafted in California, a style that fit in with the context of a tourist visiting the Born neighborhood. But today He also designs shoes made with leather that they manufacture in Andalusia. He sells them in Osaka, England and Greece with your own brand that he baptized with the name of his grandfather Evarist Bertran. They are shoes with personality. Each pair of them walks on its particular history because, like all crafts, they are unique and unrepeatable.
And before leaving Carrer de Cotoners, we enter another of the shops that combine sales to the public with creation in a workshop. At street level, BdeBarcelona Sustainable Disseny is, one could say, the store of the future.
Everything that is sold in it is made by local artisans, using recycled materials as the basis of their creations. we will find clothes, bags and other accessories made with fabric from boat sails, wool and jeans reconverted into new threads to make new textile garments, and no plastic in a big hug to the Planet.
In the attic of this original and much-needed store, Félix Zuazu shapes rings, earrings and necklaces. With recycled metals and natural stones, he humanizes each piece. In the jewelry store run by his parents, this Navarrese, from Tafaya, met a jeweler who provided them with items and who had studied at the Massana art school in Barcelona, and Félix went there.
He studied jewelry in the late 1980s and began preparing his jewelry for stores. In 2004 he arrived at Cotoners, he was seeing how the neighborhood acquired value for so many artisans, causing the guild soul of the trades of yesteryear to beat again.
“There are people here who work very well, and what I really like is that they have come from everywhere: Germany, Argentina… just like those who usually walk these streets the most, they come from many different places”, he comments.
Many of these artisans who daily raise the shutters of their shop-workshops - about twenty - are linked to the trade association @Borncomerc , and more specifically to that of artisans_of-Born . Now they make pineapple and cross their fingers so that the tourists return soon. The emptiness has shown the little life of the locals in the neighborhood. With the years, many of its buildings have been converted into attractive tourist accommodation for foreigners.
That's why, Martha Cloths, another of the artists who works in this charming corner of Barcelona, claims the need to return autochthonous awakenings to the Born.
“It is a very quiet area, architecturally beautiful and without much traffic, and the artisans have made it a pleasant climate, but people are missing who live here every day of the year. We already knew that it was a tourist neighborhood, but with the pandemic it has been shown in an exaggerated way.
Marta has lived in El Born for 18 years. Her uncles had had an antique shop in the neighborhood, so she has been able to follow the changes in this neighborhood of Barcelona since her adolescence. Her ceramic pieces, among them her very peculiar cups with breasts molded into them, They are born in the back of her shop on Carrer de l’Esquirol, which she shares with two other artisans. There she Marta has the oven of her ceramist and her workshop where she shapes each piece of her seal Altamar de ella.
Along with her creations, there is also Ecologina clothes, by the creator Giada Gaia Cicala, fashion with recycled fabrics. And in the attic of the premises, she paints her ceramic swallows Aina Trias. she also does vegan, cork bags and hairpins, hair clips, covered with patterned fabric.
For Aina, working at El Born is like being at home. Her grandfather had an orange stand in the old Born market, and they lived opposite it, where her grandmother still does it today. At the age of 16, Aina settled in the neighborhood. “There were many workshops, painters, street musicians, a lot of cultural life, but little by little the neighborhood has been selling its soul”, she regrets her.
“Many years ago, this had been a dark neighborhood, the shops were giving it life and attracting tourists, but Now we don't have tourists or people who live in the neighborhood. The spaces are beautiful, with a lot of charm, but we are here above all because of nostalgia”, she expresses. Along with Marta and Giada, she gives life to the store that bears the name of Marmara.
Turning the corner, on Barra de Ferro street, on the way to the Museu Picasso and right next to the European Museum of Modern Art (MEAM) , this the tailor shop of Oscar H. Grand. In what used to be an art gallery, of which there is still a painting on its walls, we will find him with a needle and thimble in hand, outlining finishes of men's jackets, shirts or pants, or cutting the patterns from it.
“I really like this place because, In addition to receiving clients, I have my workshop here, and the influx of people on this street adapts a lot to my way of being and working”, he explains. “The Picasso Museum is the cornerstone of the neighborhood”, he adds.
He also confirms Angelika Heinbach. She is a German artist, specialized in mosaic and modernist trencadís. with his technique she organizes workshops, both individuals, as well as for groups, families with children, also to celebrate their birthdays, for couples and work teams from all kinds of companies, which in an hour finish producing her photo frame, the emblem of her soccer team or a modernist-style keychain that Angelika was fascinated when visiting Barcelona for the first time.
“It was 40 years ago, I was impressed by Miró and Picasso, but especially by Gaudí and I wanted to learn the technique, which I ended up perfecting in Italy,” she says. She now teaches her creative sessions at her premises on Calle de los Assaonadors (seasoners), 100 meters from the Picasso Museum. Her workshops were born with the purpose of bring people closer together in a different context, of artistic learning, to strengthen or create bonds that humanize relationships.
That same spirit is what is breathed from local to local, visiting each of the artisans of a self-made neighborhood, with the meticulous dedication of artistic creation. Trades that, awaiting the return of visitors from further afield, They continue to make the Born beat.