Pablo R. SuanzesCorrespondent, Brussels

Brussels Correspondent

Updated Tuesday,16January2024 - 00:09

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In 2009, a Dutch publication named Charleroi the ugliest city in the world. It was an online survey, without the slightest sociological criteria and no validity. Everyone knows this, but no one has ever questioned the results, no matter how unscientific they may be. It's been 15 years and there's not a week that doesn't repeat the headline, that someone doesn't make the reference. For tens of millions of people, Charleroi (named after our Charles II) was, is and will be solely and exclusively the city of the other Brussels airport. The place, really ugly, which can be reached by taking a bus from one of the ugliest areas of the capital. The low-cost site that looks like the set of a zombie movie. No one ever goes, not sightseeing, not for a walk, not for a shopping. There's not much to do, there's little to see except street art, a basilica and rave clubs. And she even carries the stigma of being insecure.

That is why, when Belgium assumed the rotating Presidency of the Council of the EU on 1 January, taking the Spanish baton, its officials were very clear: the first destination on the press trip for dozens and dozens of international correspondents to get a pleasant impression had to be Charleroi and at 5º below zero. An infallible plan in the capital of the unusual.

Actually, none of them set foot in the city, of course, nor are the Belgians that crazy. But we do want to go around to try to make a deeper and more sustained analysis over time not only of what has happened there, but in the whole of Wallonia and part of Europe in general in the last century. From a reasonably prosperous and industrialized area to a stigmatized wasteland where no one wants to live and where it is very difficult to find any hope.

There, 67 years ago, in the Bois di Cazier coal mine in Marcinelle, 262 people died, almost all of them immigrants and more than half Italians. A wheelbarrow in an elevator hit a gas pipe, a wildfire broke out, and the entire shift in the tunnels, except for two people, suffocated. The region was growing, minerals were coming out, and piecework was needed. Agreements were signed with Italy and Spain a little later, and a huge and fundamental migratory path began for both parties. It was a very harsh condition, but the bonds that have defined today's hybrid country were created. Comics emerged, a certain creativity. But it was a mirage.

From one day to the next he languished as a victim of a virus, decadence arrived, youth without a future, ghost stations, ruined factories and urban safaris to show with blush his greatest and perhaps only virtue: being a relic. In the last decade, however, there has been a modest, slow resurgence.

The government took journalists to a hub that calls itself Europe's biotech valley thanks to a scientific ecosystem for which tens of millions are being invested. Companies such as Google are considering taking advantage of low prices and other multinationals are taking advantage of air infrastructure. It's a complicated bet but if in Spain we have the morale of Alcoyano, the carolos have the strength of the contumaze. The city's beautiful anthem sings to the "Land of Charleroi, the most beautiful corner of the earth". The neighbours have long since given up, but in the Belgian style, without ever losing hope. Unusual splendour, unshakable faith, permanent contradiction.