It’s Tuesday and it’s Holy Week. We meet at eight in the evening in the Plaza de la Vila in Gracia (for some it’s still Rius i Taulet) with one idea in mind: to find a chair for our studio. It can’t be just any chair; it will be our chair, the one that will somehow help us bring our business project to life.
They come back and we realize that the material is running out. Why? Because it’s too early, because it’s a special week and people don’t clean up, because maybe they’ve been ahead of us… a thousand theories and hypotheses and no sign of chairs. What we do notice is that we’re not the only ones with a mission tonight. They go alone, in groups, in pairs… Most of them are young people and they’re watching us from behind.
On Tuesdays between 8 and 10 pm, furniture hunters and lovers of old markets have an unavoidable appointment in Gràcia.
Suddenly we find a lot of wood and two chairs, one wedged into the other. We inspect them and verify that they are not suitable for us. They are not “the chair”.
We head towards the northern part of Gràcia to see if there is more luck when, suddenly, a man who had been watching us offers us a kind of old mirror frame for 3 euros. He picked it up from where we two had just left. We politely refuse.
After rounds and more rounds we return to the square. It is already quarter to ten and it seems that there are more choices: old televisions (today analog TV has passed into history), microwaves, sofas, tables… But now we realize that we have a lot more competition. Slowly we are recognizing some faces; we have been meeting them in different corners and they are starting to become familiar to us.
But is it possible what we are seeing? Are two chairs in a motorcycle? As you feel it. A couple has found that the two chairs that are stacked together also fit into their lives! And they take them on a motorcycle… What a danger!
Ep! Look, another container surrounded by junk. We approach it without realizing that a van has been watching it from a distance for a few seconds. Two men get out, open the back door and start loading everything. But if there were broken or damaged things, unusable…! Or maybe not?
It’s almost ten o’clock, we’re running out of time; the City Council van will be here soon and we’re left without the damn chair. We turn a corner and look at each other. We say nothing. We walk towards a bunch of wooden crates, brightly colored, as if they’re in good condition. But no, no sign of a chair. It’s just some boxes that will serve as our tabletops. We couldn’t leave with empty hands!
We won’t tell you which are the best areas; there are many, just as a good mushroom hunter would never do. You’ll have to discover that for yourselves! But we will tell you that if you live in Gràcia, never make a move on a Tuesday night. Otherwise, you might lose a chair…
Tuesday is the day of collecting furniture and old junk in Gràcia, a time when the neighborhood is filled with neighbors looking for all kinds of items. Through the hands of Anna Prats and Vanessa Petit, we will discover how this furniture hunt is lived in the neighborhood and try to find a chair for our new office. Do you think we will succeed?
