It wasn’t long after arriving in Barcelona that I thought I may have made the wrong choice. In fact, the thought occurred to me on my first full day. This probably had something to with it being my first day at my internship, and being slightly work-averse, but, still, the thought happened. After leaving a 35ºC - 6 metre square - tiled box (see picture), which I was temporarily calling my bedroom, at 8.15, I undertook the supposedly 15-minute walk to the metro station. I am accustomed to halving Google’s suggested walking times, but the friction between myself and my sweat-drenched clothes meant that these mathematics were unnecessary. The platform, at which the time until the next metro is excruciatingly displayed to the nearest second, was even hotter. After 2 minutes and 58 seconds, the (pleasantly air-conditioned) metro had arrived and I boarded, graciously offering the humidified space under my armpits to fellow travellers.
However, I still had yet to feel like I had made the wrong choice. Moving to a new country is always going to require some kind of adaptation, and, with heat, I was going to have to “aguantar” (roughly equivalent to “deal/put up with something”). This word has informed many of my decisions while adapting to new places. But no, my first suspicion that I might have erred in choosing Barcelona was the fact that, of the three people I asked for directions on the short walk from the metro station to my office, not only were none of them spaniards (or, indeed, Catalan - a topic that requires a blog post of its own), but none could speak Spanish. Suspicion soon became mild horror as I discovered that my new office was entirely English-speaking: I was there to learn Spanish, but so far English had been the only necessity. The rest of that day was spent in the office, half on classic new-person-in-office tasks, most accurately described as “things”, and half searching for a new internship and panicking.
As it happened, I ended up staying in that internship (and enjoying it) for two months (I have now moved to a Spanish-speaking office, for those interested). I was lucky enough to have a Spanish friend studying here, who introduced me to her Spanish friends, and given that I quite enjoyed the first internship and my Spanish was still improving, the panic remained at almost totally ignorable levels. But anyway, the whole point of rattling on about all the English-speaking and the reason it was relevant to other people was that, in summer, Barcelona is ridiculously touristy. So touristy, in fact, that the mayor has banned giving out any more tourist licences (allowing buildings to have paid guests for less than 1 month) - not that that has stopped people illegally renting out rooms for a quick buck. Walking around the central areas of the city, and even the not-very-central areas, was like being on the tube in London at rush hour, except everyone was wearing less. For someone who had come to learn Spanish, the amount of English being spoken was claustrophobic: I would enter shops of cafés and instantly be greeted in English, or find myself speaking to groups of French or Germans, also in English. I felt cramped in the city, and was making every possible effort to speak any Spanish at all.
And then gradually, towards the end of August, the holiday makers started to disappear. The jungle of selfie-sticks began to thin, and through it I caught my first glimpses of an amazing city. By this point I had really begun to wonder what it was that everyone loved so much about Barcelona - it wasn’t that I hated it but I just didn’t see the charm that attracts so many millions of people every year. But now, the spaces that had once felt tight and lacking air began to feel intimate and exciting, and what had once seemed corporate and faceless felt spacious and airy. Now living in a new flat with Spanish flatmates, and working in a new office with Spanish colleagues, I buckled my seatbelt for some classic year-abroading.
Now that I’m a bit more settled, I can say with confidence that my favourite area is Gracia (where I’m living). Of course, it has many great features - there are bars on pretty much every street, all sorts of small live music venues, and a load of interesting shops, but I think if I had to choose one feature through which to describe it, it would be the plaças. In my humble opinion, these really come into their own on the weekends, where they seem to serve some function for each and every member of the neighbourhood.
The earliest I have arrived at one was 8.30am, so I will describe their transformation from then. At that time, the plaça is almost empty: the day’s preparations begin as café workers set up their outside spaces and the sun slowly rises, easing me into the day with a dappled light through the surrounding plane trees. A few people walk through, some cycle or rollerblade, but the first group to appear in earnest is young families. My head had been in my sketchbook for an hour or so, when suddenly, with seemingly no warning, I was surrounded by young voices chattering in Spanish or Catalan, and occasional thumps and wails as they fell off stuff. Their reign lasted until lunchtime, when they ceded the space to older families - teenagers and parents talking to cousins, aunts, uncles and any other relations - gathering for lunch and tapas. By this point the sun was high, but the plaça retained an air of freshness thanks to the perennial refreshing breeze that they all apparently share. This is a great feature, on a par with Marks and Spencers blasting fresh bread smell into their entrances.
Mid-afternoon, a new group entered the fray: ambling with an air of total relaxation, the older citizens took up their places in the cafés to sip an iced coffee and smoke a couple of cigarettes (among the many families and couples already there). At this point, the plaça really is in full swing. Each side is lined with coffee-drinkers and tapas-eaters, and the middle might best be described as an extremely gentle mosh pit of 8-year-old footballers, scooterers, and general frolickers. By this point I’d already spent a pretty long time in the plaça - my bum hurt from the stone bench and I hadn’t had lunch - so I’m unclear as to quite how the next transformation happened. I assume it was with the same strange combination of suddenness, subtlety and joy as all the previous transformations, as when I returned in the evening I found the cafés alive with people chatting and laughing loudly over glasses of Moritz and Estrella Damm (both local beers - neither particularly pleasant). That goes on until 2 or 3, at which point the plaça finally gets a chance to gather its thoughts as its last inhabitants move on to the clubs.
I think it probably then gets cleaned: the city, like many of its inhabitants, seems to be showered twice a day. This is the only one of many confusing quirks that I had intended to mention in this post. I didn’t bother with the others because it’s already quite long and I got stuck into the plaças, but maybe I’ll write another in which I actually stick to my plan. Who knows. But I do think it’s a pretty perfect representation of what is so great about the city: whatever your mood, you can find something you want to do if you walk round just one more corner.