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Published: December 25th 2006
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Like the great, grinding gears of some slow-moving machine, like the inexplicable trajectory of Star Jones’ career, the holiday season rolls along with frightful momentum. Though the weeks-long orgy of anticipation passed unnoticed while I was in Morocco, the Christmas spirit hits me here in Barcelona like a Yule log to the groin. The streets of the Barrio Gòtico are festooned with lights; the stores are crowded with last-minute shoppers; the buzz everywhere is that peculiar holiday blend of hope, longing, and inevitable heartbreak. The gift I’ve given myself is a few days of sleeping late and blowing off work - a well-deserved break, in at least one writer’s opinion, that should help to recharge my battery for the weeks ahead.
Which makes the city itself something of a stocking-stuffer. Since the ’92 Summer Olympics, when the gauzy, sepia-toned spotlight of NBC was trained on its photogenic face, Barcelona’s had a special place in my heart. True, it might’ve been a place easily occupied by countless other cities - at the end of the day, it wasn’t much more than a name and a few fuzzy snapshots - but the city’s become something like my personal El Dorado
through the years. While studying abroad in Manchester, plans to visit kept unraveling at the last minute; when I turned my eye toward teaching English in Europe - as guaranteed a slacker’s paycheck as any - Barcelona was at the top of my list.
Of course, while my own quixotic path kept me half a world away, plenty of other tourists came, saw, snapped some pics, and made it the darling of Europe - a city that travel agents will earnestly tout alongside a Venice or Paris. The world has come to Barcelona; and as my first few days have made clear, the world’s pickpockets, bag-snatchers and scumbags have come, too. Along the busy stretch of Las Ramblas - the broad boulevard that’s Barcelona’s most famous artery - it’s more or less open season on unwary tourists. On my first afternoon in the city, just minutes off the airport shuttle, I catch one guy in the act off of Plaça Catalunya - his fingers as swift and sticky as a K Street lobbyist’s. Outside a crowded
gelateria, while an older couple ogles the sweets in the window, a couple of shady Moroccan guys are giving them the same covetous
eye - until, ever the hero, I plant myself in their path and pretend to fumble with my wallet, waiting for the pair to sulk off.
That this town’s notorious for petty theft is hardly news. Later that night, browsing through the threads on a popular travel forum, I read a post from a kid whose pack was stolen just last week. A couple of hustlers had distracted him with some elaborate smokescreen - a variation on the old my-friend-there’s-something-that-direly-demands-your-attention-over-here routine - while their partner snatched his bag and disappeared into the crowd. They made off with the kid’s passport, wallet and laptop; understandably, he was a bit distressed. The readers gave him a sympathetic ear - no small thing, in the bloodthirsty world of travel forums - and one can only hope his sad, cautionary tale - “Thieves in Barcelona” - will remain forever eulogized in the ether of cyber space.
The more you look around online, the more this town sounds like a regular den of thieves. One earnest local - in an epic show of civic-mindedness - compiled a list of the most popular Barcelona scams. As visitors to his site added their
own tragic experiences, the list swelled into the hundreds. An aggrieved woman looking for hand-outs, endlessly claiming to have “just been robbed.” A street artist who unfurls a near-complete canvas of the Virgin Mary every morning - then spends the better part of the day staring at it with a furrowed brow, collecting tips from passersby. Street swindlers and con artists of every stripe have set their sights on this town, as if the Republican National Convention had set up shop on the Passeig de Gracià .
As a New Yorker, I have to admit: it’s only endearing me to this place more and more. You’ve got to admire a town that pursues its hustles with such vitality and ingenuity; it seems to pay homage to some serious, life-giving force. In the same way that the manic inspiration of Gaudà found its eloquent expression in Sagrada FamÃlia, the hustlers of Barcelona - quick-witted, nimble-fingered, their eyes darting and scurrying like field mice - are building their own temples in tribute to the almighty buck. You almost want to shake their hands when you see them at work - though you’d be wise to give your pockets a quick pat-down afterward.
I spend a few days pounding serious pavement: the rabbit’s warren of the Barrio Gòtico, the broad avenues of L’Eixample. My emotions are starting to catch up with me; things that have been brewing for a couple of weeks are causing a tumult in my stomach. The riotous energy of Morocco, the return to Spain, the sudden onslaught of the holiday season. I feel a bit lost this first weekend, not entirely sure if Barcelona’s what I expected, but wildly happy with it all the same.
One night I pass GaudÃ’s Casa Battló - a Modernista masterpiece on a wide, tree-lined boulevard, just north of the Plaça Catalunya. Though the man left his stamp all over the city - as the board of tourism is quick to remind you - it’s the first of GaudÃ’s works I’ve seen this week. It’s a wild pastiche of styles, meant to evoke the legend of St. George battling the dragon. Swooping, curving, practically organic, it seems less a building than a fantasy with the life breathed into it. I spend a half-hour on a bench out front, watching the spotlights on its dazzling face and the dazzled faces of passersby. This
is the Barcelona I’ve imagined for years, the one that Bob Costas described to me in his grave and eloquent tones. It’s like being woken with a start, pulled from a deep sleep into the waking world, where little wisps of dream-stuff still cloud my eyes like frost on a windowpane.
Feliz navidad, Barcelona.
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