The Madrid of neighborhood commercial signs assaults the museum: "The city is a shredder because, otherwise, it would be a village"

• Concert Estrella Morente, Mayte Martín or Rocío Márquez and Bronquio, in the jonda and experimental symbiosis of Suma Flamenca
• Culture Of 'performance' with the neighbors of Lavapiés or meeting to taste the sunrise, in the Festival ÍDEM

There are cultural institutions that are like still lifes and others that strive to dialogue with the present, infecting the public, but also allowing themselves to be disrupted by it. This is how La Casa Encendida celebrates its 20th anniversary, which today hosts an installation of commercial signs since 1930 in the Centro district, recovered by the Paco Graco collective, with a spirit that goes beyond mere fetishism for the past, and that GRAN MADRID has already visited exclusively.

The shoe store of Los Mallorquines, the Esperanza Cabaret, the basketry in Delicias 26, the winery in the Palacio neighborhood, the Fátima Cafeteria in Atocha... Already extinct, but, as Alberto Nanclares, one of these graphic treasure hunters, points out, it seeks to "flee from nostalgia and propose a way of looking to the future", now included in the special programming of the anniversary.

Organized by Isabella Lenzi and Lluís Alexandre Casanova, under the title A prepared piano, it unfolds the artistic and cultural archive of the center (2002-2023), while letting itself be invaded by the neighborhood, to, as unsuspected friends, discuss what happens between them. And, finally, it is the street that takes the museum. "What Isabella and Lluís have done brilliantly is to see how La Casa Encendida has affected its context strongly. This piece [Los rótulos (Lavapiés-Embajadores. 1930-2022)] is commissioned for that, but from day to day, from the urban landscape and the life of anyone who never entered here, "clarifies Nanclares at the foot of the set of luminous commercials, of more than seven meters. And he details vestiges: "It's a kind of magic mirror, because you can't believe that on every corner of the neighborhood there were basket shops or electricity stores or that people bought at Gonza Sport instead of Decathlon."

Paco Graco's project, underway since 2017, tries to show the city that expired, without tears. "The older people we work with walk down the street and explain, 'Here was the shoe store; here my aunt Loli who came.' There is nothing they tell anymore. How do we bring to light what has been left behind?" he asks. This group seeks it from the defense of a heritage at risk of extinction, relics of other times, of all those cities that Madrid has hosted. Like the Lavapiés del Esperanza Cabaret, one of the first signs rescued in 2001, which was opened by the designer Susana Cid, "without permission or license, with the vocation that things happen on Sundays after the Rastro," says Nanclares, a resident of the neighborhood for 10 years. "Then there were junkies and that Lavapiés so wild and crazy, which was also dangerous, is represented there."

Well, more than signs with unique typographies, beyond a desire only patrimonial, they are also supporters of those urban and everyday stories, which make up a country. Because those streets were also those of the Spain of developmentalism, with its Gestoría Alarcón, with its Julifer de Julio y Fernando, landing from a town in Extremadura to open its bar in Madrid and serve coffees six days a week. "It is the certification that that Spain has already passed, because nobody wants to inherit their mother's store even if it is 150 years old," but "that history is still not written," he warns. "A lot of people have left their loins working like a titan in the delicatessen and fishmonger and their children are senior executives now, but they don't know what to do with that memory."

And Nanclares, along with Mercedes Moral, Guillermo Borreguero, Jacobo García Fouz and the rest of the Graco family, because there are also those who warn them of a sign discarded in a container or that subsists on a closure already thrown forever, conceive that negotiation with the past as an inquiry into identity. "In Hong Kong, Warsaw, California, Philadelphia... There are people of my generation doing this and something will be there, like we are looking for a way of having our own memory, "he reflects. "To make our own history, which is difficult for us to explain by the blender in which we have lived. And there's something very emotional about the signs."

Alberto Nanclares, by Paco Graco, contemplates the installation. ANTONIO HEREDIA

They do not hesitate to climb a ladder and unscrew with their hands any poster, from "a purely citizen dynamic, at street level, kicking, asking questions and a lot of talk". Compared to his counterparts in Lisbon, Galería Letreiro, or those of the Neon Museum in Warsaw, with a more official process -with work permit and recovering the significant-, Paco Graco shines for a vocation of neighborhood, on which they also pour a critical analysis. "What can we learn from these signs? That all those people made the city from a purposeful point of view. 'Here I put my name', with that desire to impact his time, to live with your city, to make streets".

A landscape that is far from the current one -as the Graco family experiences in their flesh, mostly residents of Lavapiés-, with globalization, gentrification and touristification through, in addition to the footprint of the Reina Sofía, the National Dramatic Centerand the Casa Encendida itself. "Urban processes are very ambivalent and transformations must be valued. They do not matter, but we must not dramatize with 'it's the end of the world, they have thrown out the old ones'. The old ones have died, it's normal, and no one wants to live in a house without a bathroom. Because we know the process, we know that it is better to exploit it, celebrate it, than deny it. The important thing is that the agents who generate urban wealth, and that can be expropriated and sold, do not stop creating it. Going to the bar, taking care of the old... Maybe we do not have to think about what business I amount, but as a genre another type of wealth: parenting groups, accompaniment to all kinds of vulnerabilities, issues such as public education and health ...».

In fact, although the piece that can be seen until December is an example of that crushing Madrid, Nanclares encourages: "Madrid has to be, because otherwise it would be a village. Next to Mexico City, which we adore, Madrid is a bridge club. That does not mean that every time a neo-Mudejar building is thrown in Tetuán it is a drama, but you have to think that urban processes are more or less manageable. Let's not be nasty: 'Oh, they're going to take away our neighborhood.' We can fight the battles and we can win them." Faced with those Aldi who disembark in dying cinemas – and who guard the old signs, as in the case of the Chancellor – "we must not be cynical," he proclaims. "You can open a cinema in Madrid. Julián and Fernando, del Julifer, were not millionaires either. The one who dreamed of having a room, let it be put. Spain is empty for us to occupy." It is not a simple neon sign that glitters, when it comes to Paco Graco.

The signs (Lavapiés-Embajadores. 1930-2022). Commercial Graphic Common Heritage

Paco Graco was born after the death in 2016 of a great uncle (Paco, a sign maker by profession), with a group from the art world that is known in the old project of Campo de Cebada (Latina). Now, they even form an Iberian Network of graphic heritage. Photos: Antonio Heredia/ P. G.

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