Barcelona ‘Bombed’ with 100,000 Poems to Commemorate 50 Years of Democracy

In a poignant display of artistic healing, the skies over Barcelona’s historic Gothic Quarter were recently filled not with explosives, but with over 100,000 bookmarks featuring poetry. 

The event, an artistic performance by the Chilean collective Casagrande, served to commemorate 50 years of Spanish democracy and reclaim the city's airspace, which suffered 1,903 bomb attacks between 1937 and 1939 during the Spanish Civil War. 

These historical attacks, which claimed over 2,700 lives and injured around 7,000 people, left deep scars on the city, particularly in the Cathedral district. 

One of the most devastating strikes in the area occurred in 1938, killing 42 people—20 of whom were children—followed by another three-day assault months later that resulted in hundreds more deaths.

The performance, which took place on June 20, 2026, involved a helicopter dropping bookmarks printed with poems in Catalan and Spanish on the theme of freedom. 

These works were penned by 50 Catalan poets and 50 Chilean ones, chosen to reflect on "freedom, memory and consequences of both of those."

The site of the performance, Plaça Nova near the Barcelona Cathedral, was chosen intentionally to honor the areas most heavily damaged during the 1930s. 

This initiative marks the tenth edition of Casagrande’s "poetry bombing" series, a project that first began in Santiago, Chile, in 2001 to address the trauma of the 1973 military coup.

Since its inception, the collective has brought similar performances to nine other cities worldwide, including London, Berlin, Dubrovnik, Warsaw, and Gernika. 

The project focuses on cities that endured historical aerial bombardment, aiming to "remember the past trauma and redefine the airspace with something good."

A recent article by Rachele Gusella and Ann Peeters in Audioliterary Poetry between Performance and Mediatization (2024) noted that "bombing has recently emerged as an artistic practice, where artists occupy the public space to deliver a message," adding that "the influence of guerrilla art is important for the interpretation of bombing since they share the same urgency of delivering a message: guerrilla through communicative inversion and bombing through repetition."  

Following the event, videos posted on social media garnered global praise, with one viewer remarking, "Humans can be so cute sometimes," and another stating, "Raining poems gotta be my favourite weather." 

Others expressed hopes for similar initiatives in conflict-ridden regions like Palestine. 

However, the event’s title drew mixed reactions; while the performance is celebrated for its unifying power, some, such as poet and writer Lena Tuffaha, expressed reservations, writing, "Could we have gone with ‘raining poems’? Unfortunate naming for this event." 

The tradition of the "poetry bombing" has previously seen success elsewhere, including in Rotterdam in May 2025, which marked 85 years since the city was bombed during the Second World War, and in Madrid in 2018. 

Through this repetition of beauty, Casagrande continues its mission of transforming the memory of past violence into a shared, healing experience for city residents.

With Inputs from Agenices and different online portals