The New Apple Store in Passeig de Gràcia: here at last!

It is undoubtedly the largest commercial undertaking in Plaça Catalunya since the Triangle was opened along with the controversial Café Zurich restoration. It will be at the other side of Plaça Catalunya where the new Apple Store will open its doors on Saturday at 10:00 a.m. It will be their second store in Barcelona and the largest in Spain, although we’re still waiting to see what will come out of the project in Madrid’s Plaza del Sol

Today I rewatched the legendary 1984 ad, a tribute to the legendary science fiction novel by George Orwell, an author committed to social causes: “In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act“. And that’s that.

The award-winning ad is considered one of the best ads of all time and it has served to consummate Orwell’s prophecy. David against Goliath, united we can! But who is who now? In the beginning, the curious visual image of the brand was linked to the stories of Snow White and the Original Sin, with an image of a multicolored bitten apple, which is not of an icon of the hippie or gay world. The idea came from the Apple II, a pioneer in the use of a colour monitor, hence the bright colours on the logo.

The logo is arguably one of the early cool icons of he 80s. It was able to live in pop culture side by side the Rolling Stone’s lips or Smile. It also rubbed shoulders with the big IT companies like Microsoft or IBM. Since the late 90s, with Steve Jobs back after his detour with Pixar and others, the apple logo started losing ground in favour of the product itself, which became the brand’s best value asset. Apple always believed in design and innovation understood in its broadest sense. Their products are icons of modernity in which technology, functionality and innovative design come together, making what is difficult really easy.

Apple is an example and a role-model to many of today’s startups. The company devised by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in 1971 is now America’s real Big Apple (read World Big Brother). Not in vain Apple has had more cash than the GNP of the U.S. themselves for two years running.

A project that started in a garage, of which much has been said and is growing significantly year after year, as evidenced by its worldwide expansion and its earnings.A few days ago, I read a tweet from the Wall Street Journal: “despite a 21 % raise in Apple’s profits, Wall Street was disappointed, and stock fell by 5.5 %”. Nevertheless many markets analysts still consider Apple a safe investment.

Now that fear has taken over the stock exchange markets, it’s to unsettling to think of the power tech companies have gathered. They possess knowledge and access to databases. The binary universe grows significantly, zeros and ones that hold the story of our modern age. We write and modify every second of our lives with our smartphones or our next-generation laptops. iPods, iPads, iPhones, iMacs and clouds, more and more clouds…

Today we show you the first exclusive photos from inside the flagship store in Barcelona two days before its opening. If you want get the lasted updates, visit our website, Facebook page, Instagram or Twitter. This Saturday morning at 10 am we’ll find out who the lucky first visitor of the store will be. For him or her and many like others, Apple is much more than a computer, it’s a role model, a religion.

Passeig de Gràcia No. 1

It’s a three-story building housed in what used to be the Banesto Bank.

2nd Floor: Genius Bar, Briefing Room, One to One sessions and events.

Steve Jobs’ infamous impossible staircase.

Over 300 local youngsters were hired to work there.

Photographs by Ernest Rupérez