Barcelona Day 7

We are just learning how to deal with the Merce. There are stages and performers all over the city and it's impossible to see everything one wants to see because some stage areas are so distant from others. We decided that the best way to see the Merce is to wander around and hope for the best.

Here's a video of a small sampling of what we saw today. This includes the oriental drummers, the French jazz trio with tap dancers from Chicago, the building video show and the extremely creative brown clay on white tarpaulin show.

And deserving of its own video is the Carrefoc, the provenance of which I know nothing, but I'm sure it goes way back. The idea is that devils parade down the street and shoot fire at the bystanders, which included us. I can't state it more clearly than the Merce states it in the program: "At 8.30 pm the fire crackers, pitchforks and the standards of the groups of demons and beasts (the Ceptrotada) will be lit, the Gateway to Hell will also be lit and the Correfoc fire run will begin. Come and join in, but always remember that the Correfoc fire run is a festival where you need to be careful and where you must never lose respect for fire."

Tomorrow the Merce begins to wind down, and by 9:00 am we will be on a train to Girona to begin our bike ride.

Barcelona Day 6

We have decided that it is a tragedy to only visit Barcelona for three days, which Martha is doing. She's already planning how to come back next year for longer. As she just told me, "I am very happy."

Anyway, the Merce began today and I have nothing to write about beyond what the Merce itself has to offer. So below is a video that's kind of long, but it has some of our highlights from today's Merce, including:

1. The traditional music and dance segment open to the public, which probably has a historic cultural significance that is far beyond anything we have in the United Sates, but nonetheless which sounds like the background music to a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

2. The dance of the giant people and the dragon that shoots fire from its nostrils in a large plaza that was crammed with so many people that the body heat alone made it uncomfortable to stay there, which caused us to go to the . . .

3. Ciutadella Park, where we did the rumba with the large colored people and bought food at the Van Van event, which included food trucks to meet every culinary need.

The video speaks for itself.

Barcelona Day 5

I would like to say that the high point of today is that Martha joined me here in Barcelona. And while this is definitely a significant event and I'm thrilled for her to join me, I think she and I would both agree that other things about today were pretty unique.






We met at the airport and then walked around our neighborhood taking normal couple pictures. In this one, Martha is standing on the street leading to the beach, where approximately 80 - 100 vendors are selling the exact same soccer shirts and beach towels for exactly the same price  right next to each other. My personal guess is that they all also share an apartment.









This evening we were walking around and stumbled into an even bigger pro-independence rally than the one I encountered last night. This one involved many hundreds of people, beer, weed, drumming and accordions. It's really a unique time to be here, what with the arrests, confiscations, police raids and independence advocates. People who care about Spain will be talking about this week for some time to come. This is some video of the rally we stumbled upon.

But then . . . we are here primarily for the Merce - the annual festival in Barcelona that involves hundreds of performers, art installations, food vendors, fire-related fun (like fireworks, the fire run where devils shoot fire into anyone who dares to run in the parade, and the kids' fire run, in which, I assume, the risks of suffering 3rd-degree burns are somewhat less than they are for the adult run).





Anyway, we happened to walk through a park where some performers were rehearsing for the Merce, and in the span of 45 minutes, saw an oriental break dancing act, a video fantasy drama projected on a building, and a guy meticulously and expertly tap dancing to Vivaldi's Rites of Spring. I have summarized each of those things in a video, but really, you had to be there.

I tried repeatedly to upload the video of all of this, but YouTube wouldn't allow me to add it to my blog because YouTube recognized the music the last guy was tap dancing to as Vivaldi's Rites of Spring, which is copyrighted. So I removed the tap dancer and have included below the video of the oriental break dancing and the video fantasy. Please let me know if you would like to see the tap dancer and I'l be happy to arrange a clandestine showing.

And yes, we also had an amazing dinner, the details of which I'll share when there's less about the day to write about.

Barcelona Day 4

I am going to temporarily abandon my theme of  fun observations of Spanish life and focus on the Catalan independence vote, which has taken a pretty serious turn. I mentioned the other day that northern Spain is planning to vote for independence, again. This time, the Spanish government said that such a vote was illegal. Northern Spain said they were doing it anyway, southern Spain said "no you can't," northern Spain said "yes, we can," etc.

Today, Spanish police raided election offices and confiscated voting materials. They also arrested 14 elected officials who were in favor of holding a vote, including the Secretary of the Treasury. I walked through several large protest rallies today. It's almost midnight, and people are still making a lot of noise outside. So yeah, things are a little tense here in Barcelona.

This is a gathering at the government building this evening at the Plaza Jaume, where the Spanish and Catalan governments have offices directly across from each other in a small square, ostensibly to facilitate communication.

And on the way back to may apartment, almost everyone on my street participated in an impromptu protest against the Spanish government by banging pots and pans from their windows:

And on a completely different, tone-deaf and insensitive note that I really feel kind of bad about, I had a delightful dinner of marinated mushrooms with eggplant and ceviche of cod with tomato confit and some odd little fruit, at a restaurant highly recommended by the New York Times.

Barcelona Day 3

Today I walked over to the area at Las Ramblas where the van attack occurred about a month ago. I was about to write that looking at it today, there's really no way you would know anything happened there. But on reflection that seems kind of obvious - of course you wouldn't know. That's the nature of these things.








My sentence for today is "That shelf above the outlet holds my chalk and the models of my pets." You think I can't say that? Try me.

I met with one of Kia's friends from college who's here teaching English and she told me an encouraging story. She is working at a school that teaches English to kids, so she's surrounded by Spanish-born career English teachers. During a break, she had a conversation with some other Americans doing what she's doing, and when it was over, one of the teachers came over and said "You were all talking so fast. I have no idea what you were saying." Not that I enjoy the failures of others, it just shows that we're all in the same boat. Why the dog? No reason, I just like dogs.

On a generally more positive topic, Barcelona is starting to get ready for the Merce, the annual blowout celebration that I attended by accident last year and on purpose this year. Stages are going up, dangerous fire parades are being planned, and musicians from Iceland are pouring in. Additional reports to come  . . .

Barcelona Day 2

I am determined to improve my Spanish. I try to take a few new words every day based on things I read or hear, and put them into sentences that I can remember, and say those sentences to myself over and over during the day. Today's is "I would like to nibble the mussels on your rubber roof." I may not ever use that exact sentence, but you never know.

Northern Spain is about to vote, again, to secede from the rest of the country. Most people in northern Spain already don't consider themselves part of the country; this would just make it official. But since northern Spain is much more prosperous than southern Spain . . .

. . . evidenced, for example, by this yacht with its own private helicopter that I noticed today, the government of Spain really isn't crazy about the idea and they've considered many extreme measures, some of which involve the Spanish military, to quell this insurrection. It might be an interesting week.






And speaking of militaries and insurrections, I received an urgent email from the US government today that identified areas in which I should be extra, extra careful because of extremist groups. These are the high-risk areas, copied from the email - "Sporting contests, political rallies, demonstrations, holiday events, celebratory gatherings, hotels, clubs, and restaurants, places of worship, schools, parks, shopping malls and markets, tourism infrastructure, public transportation systems and airports". If you need me in the next few days, I'll be locked in the bathroom.

But on a more festive note, in the Catalan spirit of attributing sentience to inanimate objects, I noticed this year that the beach itself is now asking people to please follow the rules. Not because we're willing to roll over and submit to the government, but because it actually makes the beach happy. How can you argue with that?

Back in Barcelona

I took a train from Valencia to Barcelona today - back to the same neighborhood, in fact the same apartment, I stayed in last year. That's how much I liked it.

On the train, I was sitting next to a big, muscular, tattooed guy who looked like a rugby player in his off season (if there is such a thing - I don't know anything about rugby). About an hour into the 4-hour ride, he pulled his cross-stitch project out of his pack and started working on it: a lovely pastoral scene of a thatched-roof cottage in the woods. Shortly after that I went to the cafe car to get something to eat and stand for a while. I left all my stuff on the seat. There's no way a guy who does cross-stitch is going to steal my stuff.

Then I got to Barcelona and had a fantastic dinner at a bar recommended by a friend. There were two Americans sitting behind me, a couple who looked to be in their 50's. The guy said "Most of this stuff has gluten in it. If I have even a piece of bread in the morning it can take weeks or even months for me to recover. It's a big deal for me. Try being in Sweden for two weeks with all that beer when you can't have gluten." Then they looked at the wine list and he said "It's almost impossible to find wine without sulfites. I doubt they have any wine without sulfites." I had three tapas and two glasses of wine. When I left, he was still dissecting the menu.