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In a Barcelona street, at night, a shop for tourists overflowing with fans probably ‘Made in China’

Gilles Denizot
2 min readJan 19, 2025
A shopfront window for tourists showcasing a multitude of hand fans beneath graffiti on a stone wall in Barcelona… #SilentSunday © 2025 Gilles Denizot
#SilentSunday in Barcelona © 2025 Gilles Denizot

This tourist attraction is located between the Cathedral and the FilmoTeca. I walk past it every time, before and after the cinema. On the way out, I hardly see it, busy avoiding the onlookers. On the way back, I suppress a retch. This is what I loathe and tend to call ‘shit we don’t need’ (pardon my French). Fortunately, above the shop window, a rebel has spray-painted an inscription whose meaning escapes me, but I appreciate the colour and the free-falling suspension points, while the light seems to be trying to escape its confinement.

All the world’s weariness is there: the profusion of low-quality articles, the brightly-coloured vulgarity that masks the whiteness of the inner walls, the glitter without depth, the futility, the waste, the mass tourism. Again and again, the proliferation that pollutes rather than enriches, since we attach importance to everything that is quick, insignificant and insipid. Hurry up, a like that doesn’t require any thought. Here, on Medium, soon published, already forgotten, despite having received dozens of claps. We do not read, we scroll. We do not discover, we follow. We do not watch the end credits, and instead of lingering in the atmosphere, we throw ourselves…

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Gilles Denizot
Gilles Denizot

Written by Gilles Denizot

When India refused to renew my work visa, I set out on a journey here & there. Then, I began writing stories that nobody reads… https://gillesdenizot.space

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