|
Biarritz and Trouville, without seeking
to detract from the balconies overlooking the sea on the beaches of
Naples and Sicily, were the models of the 1880s that influenced the
creation of Mar del Plata, the most Argentine of all seaside resorts
and the one that, over the course of time, was to become the country's
most celebrated summer vacation spot. History records its origin with
a family tree of elegant and renowned surnames, including that of
founder, Patricio Peralta Ramos and its French-born urban transformer
Pedro Luro. Up to the 1940s, the city was formed by an ensemble of
splendid summer residences, a seaside boardwalk populated by aristocratic
ladies in their summer cloaks, accompanied by gentlemen wearing finely
woven straw hats, in a semblance of the Belle Epoque that could well
have served Lucino Visconti for his filming of "Death in Venice",
and which captured the romantic spirit of Thomas Mann's great works.
The 1938 census reveals that more than half of the city's 72,000 residents
were foreigners especially Italians, Spaniards and a smattering
of Englishmen. While this non-native influence would appear to contradict
what we said before about Mar del Plata's being the most trADDITIONALly
Argentine of all resorts, this truth is, in fact, quite coherent.
Mar del Plata has become what it has thanks to an ethnic and social
link that is a synthesis of the immigration waves of the era, a demographic
factor which clearly sets Argentina as a whole apart from other Latin
American nations, whose development has been marked to a much greater
degree by their mestizo and native heritage. Back in those days, architect
Marνa M. Oliver would write of the Happy City: "I do not believe that
there exists, anywhere else in the world, a general style that maintains
such stupendous unity...It's style: that of the Argentine Republic."
Today the city has 600,000 permanent residents, and in the South American
summer months of January and February, Mar del Plata's beaches brim
over with some 2 million vacationers. It is the only city, apart from
Buenos Aires that must be included in the legendary traveler's handbook
of the pampas, Patagonia, the gaucho and the tango. In the eclectic
and innumerable menu of personal pleasures enjoyed by the classic
Argentine, including such compulsory activities as the asado (criollo
style barbecue) enjoyed among friends in the open countryside, attendance
at a soccer game between the nation's best known teams (River Plate
and Boca), an evening at the Colσn Opera House or in a more popular
vein a night of tango, no one would dare admit, without feeling
left out and socially embarrassed, that he or she had never visited
Mar del Plata at least once. An Argentine simply can't feel Argentine
unless his or her life includes a swim in the Atlantic from famed
Bristol Beach, a bet laid in the city's stunning casino, a walk along
the now stone "boardwalk" or a photo next to the classic statues of
two seals sculpted by Fioravanti more than half a century ago. It's
that Mar del Plata is to Argentina what Rio de Janeiro is to Brazil,
what Nice is to France or what Acapulco and Miami, despite the tests
of time, remain to Mexico and the United States. They are cities intimately
tied to legendary summers of sun and fun. Born in an era of upper-class
hedonism, Mar del Plata saw the discovery and legitimization of the
sea, not as abackdrop for contemplation or as a watering-hole for
curative baths, but as part of a ritual of physical pleasures. This
was part of the same movement that began in Brighton, England at the
end of the 16th century, when the Prince of Wales, who suffered from
gout, turned his sanitary dips in the ocean the only use given to
the sea up to then besides navigation, piracy and fishing into an
incipient sporting event that everyone else began to emulate. Located
just four or five hours by car or train and less than an hour's flight
from Buenos Aires, Mar del Plata is caressed by a sea that the geography
of these southern climes imbues with a more exciting movement than
may be found in other captive seacoasts. It looks out onto an endless
stretch of ocean that suggests the Patagonian coastline that continues
southward to the Pole. But today this open-seascape, oddly enough,
does not bring to mind the tempestuous waters of the South Atlantic,
but rather, a friendly and familiar scene: that of the "Happy City".
And there is even a song to celebrate this fact. And the "Happy City",
almost candidly revealed in its picture postcard seascapes and its
souvenirs fashioned from seashells, has also been, for the past half-century,
the scene of an international cinema festival. The likes of Marνa
Fιlix, Errol Flynn, Brigitte Bardot, Sofia Loren, Vittorio de Sica,
Alain Delon, Marcelo Mastroiani and Catherine Deneuve, in the company
of such Argentine peers as Tita Merello, Isabel Sarli or Mirtha Legrand,
among many others, have visited and continue to visit Mar del Plata
every time the star-studded festival is held.
|
