emotionalmarkup

Everything seems larger when you are a stranger. Even the sinewy corridors of the area surrounding La Rambla, packed with tourists, Indian men selling cans of beer and Spanish youth sharing cigarettes or urinating on garbage bins gave not the impression of claustrophobia but of an universe expanding into the small hours of Saturday morning.

I took a caña at a few bars, with the salubrious company of Carlo – an Italian gynaecologist whom I’d met in the line to apply for an NIE. Thanks to our mutual frustration we hit it off and decided to celebrate the inadequacies of the Spanish public service by a few tapas and beers. There is no other (graceful) way to cope.

Una caña is a glass of beer, around 300 millilitres I guess but it varies, and is the easiest way to ask for a beer if cerveza is too much of a mouthful for you. All around you there are the party goers, the intimates, relaxed diners, timid backpackers and the insanely intoxicated.

It’s unfair to document such a generalisation however, it is difficult to arrive at any other conclusion than that it is the English who make up the majority of public drunks on the street in central Barcelona. The reality that this city is a weekend retreat for the English hit me like a cold Cornish pasty as, walking past a group of them dining al fresco in Plaza Real, I saw that the only woman among them was painting the pavement with her dinner and presumably the fifty beers she’d have previous to ingesting it. The waiters displayed a comprehensive detachment from it all either demonstrating tacit contempt for the inebriated tourist, or perhaps deliberate omission of duty due to their being privy to the sub-standard level of food preparation in the kitchen. Speculation is all you have when the world moves at lightning speed around you.

Like all tourist magnets, La Rambla is offensively expensive compared to places that are only a few streets away. A beer at the Hard Rock Cafe will sell for at least double the price of something from a smaller, local bar. Same with coffee, food and standard goods like umbrellas, dancing puppets and live chickens: all of which are available for sale on La Rambla all day and throughout the night. Of course, tourists willingly pay these exorbitant prices. Why? Who knows. It happens in Sydney, Paris, London, Rome and anywhere there’s a major international airport. I’m certain of it. It’s clear that it would make an excellent PhD thesis.