Barcelona Graffiti in Danger?

I have recently posted about how much I love some of the Barcelona Graffiti in and around the city, and I don't mean the scrawls and tags you tend to see around almost all of the old town that are continually being re-painted by the BCNeta teams. I also don't mean some of the great art work you can see at the bottom end of Paralello next to the Plaça Carbon, or some of the stunning images in the 3 Chimney's park, close by. No, I mean I love the shop shutters that are often decorated to depict graffiti style artwork related to the commerce.

Well, this could now be in danger, according to the circular from the Barcelona council received by me this morning. The council has plans to erradicate definitely all graffiti in the old town. Later in the year, an open invitation will be given for various companies to put forward their proposals and costs for the scheme, and a winner will be announced. This company will be in charge of cleaning/re-painting the shutters and walls of the shops, bars and warehouses located in the old town as well as the doors to apartment block buildings. The council has offered to pay 25% of the cost of this, and will include a maintenance of 2 years. In the case of the living community of an apartment block, this 25% donation is subject to the community also taking on a further 2 years service of maintenance.

I think this means big bucks for the company involved. As I move around the old town most of the time, I always see the current BCNeta vans spraying away on walls with those high pressure hoses, or painting over scrawls and other useless graffiti. In the same article, there were comments from local citizens and although most welcomed the move, one guy commented that he thought it was useless, as the graffiti will always come back as soon as it's been cleaned. I'm inclided to agree, and even 9 years ago when I first moved here, I noticed almost immediately that Barcelona had a problem with "useless graffiti". What was not clear about the article was if they would allow those with "art" on the shutters to remain so, or if this was a real wipe-out of the whole genre. Let's hope not.

What do you think? Do you think it will work? Comments welcome as always guys...