7-12 They're Crazy. Are They Spaniards?

Location: Kingsbrook

Listening to: Duo Spiritoso (Guitar Recital I found on Naxos)

Yes, it was insane. I'm not going to write too much – this is my last day in Barcelona until the 26^th so I don't want to spend it writing! Just watch the videos. In case you've been hiding under a rock and didn't hear about it, Spain won the World Cup and I was at the big public viewing. You can't tell from the video how far up there I actually was; the distance between me and the big screen up front is less than a quarter of that street, coming up from Plaça España, and the whole thing was full to the point where I almost didn't make it back in after I took a sick friend back to the station. So crazy. I also wish that camera could have taken the temperature down in the train station. If you've ever been here, you know the stations are always about 15 degrees (F) hotter than the streets, but this was more like 30+ – it had to have been above 110 down there. To give you an idea of the heat wave we're having, my alarm clock was reading 89 degrees (f) in my bedroom of my fifth floor apartment at three this morning with the window open and the door propped. I could hardly breathe, let alone sleep.

Una cosa: Hemingway talks in For Whom the Bell Tolls about the Spanish drunkenness. This is Pillar (who happens to be named after a patron saint of Catalonia), talking about the scene I mentioned before where the village is purging the fascists and priest:

“Because the people of this town are as kind as they can be cruel and they have a natural sense of justice and a desire to do what is right. But cruelty had entered into the lines and also drunkenness or the beginning of drunkenness and the lines were not as they were when Don Benito had come out. I do not know how it is in other countries, and no one cares more for the pleasure of drinking than I do, but in Spain drunkenness, when produced by other elements than wine, is a thing of great ugliness and the people do things that they would not have done. Is it not so in your country, Ingles?”

Robert Jordan goes on to conclude that yes, it is the same in the United States. I hadn't really experienced this before last night, and I wasn't experiencing anything like the characters in this book, but I think his description is a chillingly accurate way to describe last night. Rather than augmenting my experience, even in a crazy environment like that, the rampant drunkenness around me was just disgusting. Someone vomited about three meters from where we were standing before the game even started. My shoes probably have enough broken glass in them to make an entire bottle of Estrella, and I'd be surprised if none of the people frolicking in the fountains drowned. It was a mess – a riot where there should have just been a party. After the game, I really felt like I should go out and experience the rest of the night, but I couldn't do it. I was totally burned out from standing, screaming, jumping, and dancing my way through the game. I had a few beers before we got to the plaça, but the thought of drinking more felt like a punch in the stomach from that point on.

Then again, maybe they needed all that alcohol to forget about Saturday, when 1.5 million people turned out on the streets to march for greater autonomy (or total independence) from Spain. As I've said to several people, I'm not sure I would have come to Catalonia (and hence Barcelona) if I had understood their relationship with the rest of the country, but I'm glad I did. This is a people and a story I would have never known, and they have certainly impacted my life in ways I'm sure I won't understand until I've left.

I was going to go to the music museum today, but I'm not going to make it in time (again).  I leave for Cordoba and Granada tomorrow. I should be able to bring the guitar - one of the biggest guitar festivals on earth is happening right now in Cordoba, and I really want to bring it. Anyway I'll be down there all week, then coming back on Friday and flying to Paris on Saturday. I'm so excited for that trip, though for that trip I can't bring the guitar :(

¡Os veo en Cordoba!