Barcelona's Street Performers

Spain is not a place that adheres to deadlines.  This nonchalant attitude toward time lends the land its charm, and this whenever-feeling is pervasive throughout the culture, especially in the tapas bars.  The concept of tapas is to eat little dishes, and you can order each course whenever the mood strikes. 

Ryan and I took our seats at the bar and examined the pictures of food on the paper menu.  A Catalan woman with bright red lipstick and a spunky demeanor handed us a multilingual menu that corresponded with the pictures to their word-equivalents. 

Ryan is an electrical engineer from Vancouver, and he is traveling with his two sisters and his cousin.  They were the first group I met during the rendezvous at the London hotel.  Out of all the men on the tour, I enjoy his company the most.  A very receptive and humble listener, he is full of quiet insight.  He loves his job and looks forward to returning home.

“Most people travel to escape from their jobs,” he told me earlier that day as we strolled down La Rambla, “But I actually enjoy what I do, so I don’t mind going back to work.”

He buys and sells power from electric dams and coal-power centers.  Basically, he’s the middle man between those who generate electricity and the companies who provide power to homes and businesses.  Kilowatts are exchanged like stock on Wall Street.  The price of energy goes down at night because most lights are turned off.  You sell during the evening when day-laborers return home to watch TV.  I didn’t realize there was so much activity behind my electric bill until I ordered tapas with the man who worked behind the scenes. 

Quiero un café con leche, Ryan ordered. 

After conferring with him over the meaning of this phrase, I parroted his words.  He ordered shrimp, and I chose fried calamari.  The seafood is cheap because we are right on the Mediterranean Sea.  The waitress spoke a little English to us.

“OK, for now,” she said, indicating I could order something else in the future whenever it suited me. 

The tapas meal was a mid-day snack to energize our bodies after walking around Barcelona all day.  After visiting La Sagrada Familia, a magnificent work-in-progress began by the famous architect Gaudi, Ryan and I roamed southward down Barcelona’s most frequented avenue, La Rambla.  The street was lined with souvenir shops and only a few beggars.  We reached an arch on our right that heralded Barcelona’s bustling food market.  Fruit vendors, butchers, and take-out cooks crammed their shops together.  You couldn’t walk down the lanes without brushing against strangers.

We ordered one euro fruit juices.  The signs in Spanish and Catalan were largely indecipherable to me, but pictures indicated the main ingredients.  As I sipped my passion fruit drink, we wandered around the labyrinth filled with Spanish spices, mixed nuts, and giant fish pulled out of the harbor. 

We chose an organic Spanish restaurant, and I ordered a spicy taco sprinkled with cayenne pepper.  The dish lived up to its name.  For ten euros, I got a filling meal that also included paella (a rice and pepper dish), neon red rice, neon green rice, and a mixed salad with some unnamed yellow sauce.

As there was nowhere to sit, we ate standing up inside the market at a narrow counter on which we perched our lunches.  Browsers bumped into my backpack.  Since I am unable to eat quickly, the claustrophobic confines increased the challenge of consuming my meal in a timely fashion.  When I ate a light breakfast in a coffee-shop across the street from the Rockefeller Center in New York City, I yearned for a ten-foot bubble in which to sit by myself. 

For some reason, however, I was not uncomfortable rubbing shoulders with fellow diners in Barcelona.  The streets were busy——not as busy as the Big Apple’s——but the busy-ness lacked that impersonal urgency and instead possessed a warm and welcoming energy.  The chaos was beautiful rather than intimidating. 

The meal was satisfying, and the whole experience at the market was unexpectedly delightful.  I didn’t take many photos or visit any major landmarks, unless you count the statue of Christopher Columbus who is pointing in the wrong direction of the New World. 

There was no Eiffel Tower or Buckingham Palace crowded with tourists.  All the pleasure in Barcelona could be found in the streets. 

Visiting the Spanish city was like spending a pleasant day at a public pool while everyone else was at work.  I could stretch out and immerse myself into this refreshing habitat and soak up the novelties the environment had to offer.  Paris is more akin to an overcrowded amusement park filled with obnoxious vendors.  I prefer not to swim in over-populated pools with strangers whose hygienic practices I distrust.

For the evening’s entertainment, we watched Flamenco dancers perform.  Our Spanish host told us there are three instruments in this traditional dance:  the wooden clappers, the guitar, and the hands clapping together.  Three women wearing clunky shoes tapped their heels against the stage and slowly twirled their cupped hands snake-like to the rhythm of the Spanish guitar.  The women stomped on the ground so hard I could feel tremors under my rumbling feet.  The dancers’ faces were intense and confrontational.  For one song, the women flapped home-made fans like they were bird wings beating against the wind.  They spun in blurring motions, and their movements seemed improvised and even mildly uncoordinated. 

When the song ended, this female dancer headed toward the dressing room to change.  To get there, she had to maneuver between the tables where the audience was sitting.  I turned around, opposite of the stage, and saw the dancer poke her head out of the dressing room.  She mouthed something to a bald man on stage who was clapping his hands and maintaining the beat.  He nodded to the dancer and gestured toward the woman seated next to him.  The woman stood up and started dancing to a new beat that changed abruptly. 

Witnessing this subtle, wordless interaction between the performers, I deduced that not all went according to plan, so they improvised.  This moment summed up my experience of Barcelona where the buses may run late but the streets are filled with the unexpected.