Mercadillo in Guardamar: Past and Present of the Urban Space

Mercadillo in Guardamar 

July, 16th. 2019

Jiaxin(Kathy) Li
Hi Kathy it me Ben
Ben stop messing with my blog get your own blog!

Every Wednesday witnesses the rise and fall of an empire. An empire with developed business system and densely populated land. But what makes it particular, from other types of empires, is how ephemeral, and particularly, record-ably ephemeral it is.  

From Wednesday morning around 6 to 8, empty streets are taken, divided, filled, decorated. From 8 in the morning to 2 in the afternoon, commodity occupies space, gets picked up in the air, and subsequently gets misplaced, rearranged, transferred, and finally lands into another person’s private space, away from the public space. People are wandering, going into different store’s territory so that the owner feels appropriate to ask 'can I help you', keeping their feet on the streets while invading other people’s space with cautious eye contacts. 

But the most spectacular aspect about the mercadillo is you can see how it makes an empty street space into urban space and release the urban back to serenity within a day. The past and present of this urban space co-exist and define each other, rely on each other. 

10am, Mercadillo

WHEN THE PAST BECOMES THE PAST

This sentence seems to be nonsense. But what it means is when simple experience is glorified with time, more poetic and beautiful. Memory is different from experience in the same way, because what glorifies it is the fact of how untouchable it is. We can also apply this in real life. To many, industrialization and urbanism have been destroying the beauty of nature for a long time, with pollution, ugly and boring urban structure, hard steel etc. But remember the time we spent in Alcoy in the deserted factory? Time makes it beautiful, or at least brings out the beauty of it.  

PART OF PRESENT IS LOST

Present lacks the quality of untouchable-ness. In this case, present might be more annoying, painful, mundane than the past. This issue circles back to the mercadillo—What’s about it? Mercadillo characterizes urban life in Guardamar. At least this is the most urban you can get out of Guardamar. It is very difficult to portray and capture something that is not special at all, like the common practice of daily life. The mercadillo characterizes ‘urban’ space by summoning lots of people and interactions. To me it was too loud, too messy at times. But that is, to me, the present. 

2pm, Mercadillo

BUT WHAT IS PAST WITHOUT PRESENT

Present is boring. What we would describe the present? 

Buy food, wind splashing the tent, comparing shops, pat the dog, try on clothes, birds flying, kids crying for toy, step on gross rot fruit, checking the price, dropped a pepper, clashing of coins, on the phone, whisper of gossip, scolding the kid, sound of flipflop, teaspoon in coffee. 

Loud, messy, busy, rushing. Present.

What is past without present? 

Nothing. 

Nothing because it stopped in time. Past without present not only means that it does not current exist. For instance, dodo bird does not physically exist now but it still has a 'present' because people recorded it and remember it. In this strict definition then, a past that does not have any trace in present means that it really disappeared from memory, and therefore, it is nothing. 

WHAT IS PRESENT WITHOUT PAST

What about the other way round? If we zoom in onto the napkin on the stone floor, and ask ourselves, what is that? 

Nothing. Nearly Nothing. 

It actually circles back to urban spaces. What makes present urban? With layers and layers of the past, we develop technology, agriculture, currency, clothing … Layers of layers of the past pile up to present—what we see now as urban. One square meter of this urban space is a collection of compressed space, resource, time, effort. 

But with past, the present wall is added with a touch of time and history. Think about the many events, incidents, accidents that happened here in the mercadillo, exactly 24 hours ago. Indeed, the napkin does not change at all, but you can tell, it has a story now. 

Here is my mercadillo video edited, that inspired this post.