A few days ago going out to step on your streets was a feat. In Pelai, officially the busiest road in this city before the pandemic, hardly anyone … Had we made a mistake, of place, of name, of time? To the north of the mask, your eyes questioned you. I went down the Rambla, your Rambla that we celebrated with democracy and football and that tourists stole from us. Peace and gel, not a single scream, not a nudge, not trileros or sleepers, zero water trucks, not a statue or a stall. I remember, from this a few days ago.
Every time I see a marquise with the air of a meerkat calling a vice president the son of a terrorist, I get an empathetic hump. Two Asturian grandparents recall the scene today, in Canaletes, while they value the economy in terms of milking and debate about the future … “The cow he’s in Madrid, don’t fuck with me ”, says one. “The pasta, yes, we are a little far …”
Our little happiness in this city at the cost of so much other people’s pain is unworthy
Ten in the morning I arrive at Café Zurich, which this year turns 100, not a noise or a honk or a pigeon sucking. I don’t want to believe it and I know that in a couple of hours this is going to be oozing people and sweat. What a joy, the first coffee in one of your bars, Barcelona, after the blow.
I keep the ticket as a fetishist. Simplified invoice, waiter Juan Baena, table 201, 2.15 euros. I think I will frame it, Mrs. Barcelona, that basically you were never ours, at most for rent.
When I returned I wanted to cross the Gran Via with strides, real, textual and irrational desire. I didn’t feel the need to jump since I was eight years old! And suddenly, an immense bourgeois shame invades me: to recover the adrenaline, has the country had to be blown up? More than 27,000 deceased, so many families without work, so many orphans of Nissan … Our little happiness in this city – about which we hear little birds, etc. – at the cost of so much other people’s pain is unworthy, insulting.
And I don’t feel like running anymore and I slow down while my phone rings What you give me , the last by Pau Donés. At the Vall d’Hebron hospital, four years ago, in the chemo room and for reasons that are not relevant, I saw him put the entire team of nurses in his pocket. For those who are no longer, with that I stay. Pau’s video, because I know what’s behind it, is one of the most exciting things we will take from this hell.
Mrs. Barcelona, you hurt. I could say that Madrid has no sea, so it will not have so many infections either.
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