I was last in Barcelona 10 years ago, almost to the day, after having spent the Olympics there chauffeuring (and sometimes translating) for the Belgian Olympic team. Guess which aspect of the job made it to my CV. My parents had been posted here as Consul-General for the previous 4 years, which meant that I had visited Barcelona for most holidays, learning Spanish for 2-week stints at a time, making temporary friends here or importing my own for the duration of my stay, from college in Brussels.
My job with the Belgian Olympic team had not exactly been the result of nepotism: how many French, English, Dutch and Spanish-speaking college-age kids had spent the previous few years tearing through the new highways that had just been built, or the center’s one-way warren? Well, just me, I maintain, and Jan Vlieghe, whom I knew from college.
One thing I like to believe about myself is that I have remained pretty much constant, identity-wise, over the past decade. It occurred to me, as I arranged this 2-day stopover on the way to Sweden, that comparing my reaction to Barcelona now versus my memory of Barcelona then would be a good experiment to test this theory. Not wholly scientific, of course, and let me count the ways why not: Barcelona will have changed too; and I am the sole judge, jury and executioner of this little game. But then, you should always read blogs with a grain of salt. I may not even be Stefan Geens at all, but a clever impostor. Maybe I am Stefan Geens and an imposter. Now there is a thought.
First impressions were not good. The airport terminal is no longer as glossy as it first was–and they’ve given up on the palm trees. The arrivals hall was foggy from the cigarette smoke; halogen lights in the ceiling burned cones of blue-grey into the haze. Of course I no longer smoke; but would I have lit up 10 years ago upon arrival? No. Not without a gin and tonic in my other hand.
I found my hotel in the Barrio Gothico, just off Placa del Pi, my favorite place in the City. I had spent many a late night here sitting by the statue of the man on the bench, or on the first-floor balcony of Julie’s room in the hostel, smoking a joint with her and Mathias as we watched the hustle below. If my parents only knew.
Well, they know now. (Hi mum!) Barcelona took a while longer to like this time. It was night as I started off towards Placa Reial, where the poorer and the more down and out (who tend to reposition themselves as Anarchists) tend to loiter. I used to gravitate more towards this aspect of Barcelona last time I was here. Not the people, but the nightlife that catered to the more bohemian in spirit–SideCar, Carmen (now gone). Not anymore. Maybe because it was Monday, but there was garbage everywhere, and as it was being hauled away by the garbage collectors after the weekend it leaked and stank.
It was the other Barcelona I couldn’t get enough of this time. The urban planning. The design. The architecture. Gaudi Gaudi Gaudi.
The Sagrada Familia: Last time I was here, Julie, Mathias and I lay on our backs and smoked a joint as we stared up at the towers against moving clouds, and they appeared to fall on us for an eternity (Strange, I just now had a flashback of seeing this optical illusion with the World Trade Center towers a few years ago). But the Sagrada Familia spirals are already a trip. And the cathedral is now once again in full construction, not the husk I saw it as last time. It is spectacular, in its folly, in its madcapness, in its sense of humor. It inspires awe, as cathedrals were meant to do. But sorry, no conversions to Catholicism to report here.
La Pedrera: 12 years ago we’d shout out to the concierge and he’d let us clamber to the roof for a look. Now there are lines–LINES, I tell you–for the guided tour. It must be that global demand for originality is being ratcheted up. But the upside is a free exhibit of Gaudi’s furniture and interior design on the first floor. There are some stunning pieces in there.
Which leads me to my main realization of this trip and the money shot of this blog: That the world’s best cities are there for you for life. They grow with you as you grow up, and offer you different things as you progress in your life’s trajectory. Barcelona and New York do this to a T. While 10 years ago I was above all enamored by the underground nightlife Barcelona had to offer, this time around it was a renewed appreciation of the aggressive city-zenship of the place, of the civic pride in its history as an anarchic force of design and architecture, fiercely independent with its Catalan heritage and with a reputation as Spain’s hardest workers.
This is the Barcelona I fell in love with all over again–the productive and creative outcroppings of its bohemian anarchic tendencies. And I even found the symbol of this realization scrawled on a wall in the Barrio Gothico: The “A” inside a circle that represents the symbol of the Anarchist movement had been improved by some wit with a “(tm)” sign. THAT is Barcelona. I’m sorry, it’s a bit trite, but it’s too true: The rebellious streak corporatized.
The Barrio has been undergoing gentrification too, with designer bars creeping in on where hookers used to hang out, but whereas the forces of urban wealth advance unchallenged in NYC, here, they are fighting a pitched battle, with nighttime graffiti recovering territory it has lost to the day.
My smoking career began here in Barcelona, at the old Cafe Zurich on the Placa Catalunya (now replaced with the new Cafe Zurich–same location, new building). It remains the city’s main meeting place, just as a cortado remains the best coffee I know. I can sugar it as much or as little as I like (unlike in Greece, where it’s a sugar sludge you get to drink) and it’s just the right amount of milk mixed with espresso, without having to wade through inches of foam first. I would sit at the aluminum tables, wearing sunglasses, cortado in the left hand a Fortuna Light in the right hand, watching people or positioning within the Spanish language group (yes I was 20 and not as mature as today–I would not deign to position within a Spanish Language group today–I’m about to position in a Swedish language group instead.)
There is a particular smell about Barcelona: 1 part diesel, 1 part moped fuel, with notes of perfume (I believe there is a lot of eau de cologne used here) and cigarette smoke. Sweet and compelling.
And I’ve seen my first Belgians since being back on the continent! I’ve spied them in bars, discussion the evening’s plans in Flemish–and at the Sagrada Familia (“Da’s nogal iets, ni? Jah, edde gij da kunne filme? Neye, ik heb gene band nimer. Da’s pech hebbe.”) It’s bizarre to find them so far away from home. I had no idea they traveled.
Another thing I felt since I’ve been here but which I only just managed to articulate: There is no dread of possible terrorist attacks in the back of one’s mind here. Sure, the South of Spain has had its share this summer, thanks to ETA, but there is a distinct feeling here (and in Athens) that the locals will escape what’s next. In New York, it’s no use denying, this is a persistent if subconscious hum of a question, left hanging. Airport security was lax in Barcelona. My carry-on, laden with computer and iPod and hard drive, had attracted Israeli and New York airport security scrutiny like vultures to carrion (ha ha). But not in Athens or Barca. They yawned me through.
And finally, I am glad to note that my Spanish has come welling back. Despues instead of dopo, puedo instead of posso, cuenta instead of conto. All it took was immersion into a Spanish environment. I had though I had lost my Spanish forever, exchanged for a knowledge of Italian. It now appears the two languages may be fungible.
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