Barcelona Cathedral to be bombed with 100,000 poems

A bombardment of poems is set to come flying down around Barcelona Cathedral on Saturday, June 20, at 8:30pm. 

The poetic bombing is an artistic performance by the Chilean collective Casagrande. 

The collective has already gone to nine cities worldwide with similar performances. The idea is to remember the past trauma and redefine the airspace with something good. 

The placement of the bombing, at Plaça Nova, is intentional, to remember the damage caused in that area in the 1930s. 

From 1937 to 1939, during the Spanish Civil War, Barcelona suffered 1,903 bomb hits, resulting in more than 2,700 deaths and 7,000 injuries. 

The Cathedral district was one of the areas that suffered the most damage from attacks, it was the target for two aerial bombings during 1938, the first of which killed 42 people, 20 of whom were children. 

A few months later, over a three-day attack, the Cathedral district was struck again, causing hundreds of deaths. 

This year will be the tenth edition of Casagrande's bombing series, with 100 authors, 50 Chilean and 50 Catalan. 

The poems will be dropped from a helicopter and will be written on bookmark paper for passer bys to collect easily from the air. 

The poems, written in Spanish and Catlan, will reflect on freedom, memory and consequences of both of those.