A foreign barbershop now occupies the place of Antonio's Gonzalez watch workshop in the Hospital street of Barcelona, Spain. Date: 19/05/2014. Photo: Xabier Mikel Laburu. Antonio came from a family background of watchmakers, in 1977 he bought the transfer of this little workshop from an other owner who was retiring. He managed to keep the workshop working despite the market changes regarding electronic watches and similar, but in 2005 he decided to retire due to health problems.
A narrow street carved with the pace of thousands of souls that crosses the old city of Barcelona. Old buildings built of stone and bricks that soar to a hardly visible sky, hide a little jewel that passes unnoticed for a mass of pedestrians who speak hundreds of languages like if it where a modern Tower of Babel. Only a slight glimpse or the curiosity of someone returns a fraction of the sparkle that this small jewel, a small shop, had in some moment of the past. A shop that dresses the outside with a haggard facade, while in the inside shows the yellowed wall paper and the worn out furniture aged by time or perhaps simply a passing fashion. Shops that sometimes were inherited generation after generation like the one of Asunción Quevedo, 'Almacenes del Pilar', who remembers how “All my family lived and died in the small apartment of this store, I still remember how the day of my wedding I left it dressed as a bride walking on a long carpet that we laid for the occasion.” But “progress” slowly killed all of what ceases to be profitable. Urban changes in the historic center of the cities, the cancellation of the old rental contracts, the large retailers with long opening hours, and above all, the accelerated life style, the rush that has invaded all and has washed away the good habit of doing things with ease: “The clients who still come are those who want a personal treatment and like to smell the product, something that in a supermarket can not be done. They are mainly elder people from the neighborhood. Now I see how record, tattoo, and clothe shops are installing all around things are changing. It is a changing future where no one knows if they will be able to survive, that is the truth, they are suffering a heavy competence with the Pelayo street (a commercial street nearby). I see an uncertain future.” Says Enric Blasco who was the owner of a small perfume store in the Raval neighborhood of Barcelona.
Size: 3264px × 4896px
Location: Barcelona, España
Photo credit: © Xabier Mikel Laburu / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
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