Life in Barcelona

It´s nine o’clock on 20th December and the ground in Plaza Catalunya is wet and slippery! The square was waiting for me, to tell me “good morning” and “hurry up it´s a new day!!” I´m sleepingwalking though…….I was so comfortable and warm in my bed….I´m walking like a robot…I am lucky…my legs know where I am going and they take me effortlessly!!

The gardeners are out working. I didn’t realise there were so many trees and birds here in the city centre. It’s a bit cold and it’s quite noisy I must say. I can see Banks - three or four big banks- the ´Hard Rock Café’ – ‘Habitat’, ‘El Corte Inglés’, beautiful modernist houses and buses, many, many buses!! “Alive”, Eddy and his velvet voice walking with me (http://www.pearljam.com/). The square is round and really big. There are many statues and lots of street lamps. There´s a huge fountain that changes shape.Plaza Catalunya is a nice a very peculiar place in Barcelona. It is the centre of Barcelona– with over six ways to get in! One of these ways is via ‘The Ramblas’. Around me other people seem very sleepy too. It is not crowded this morning. There is a man selling bird food and a very handsome boy skating in the square. I’m sure he is a foreigner. The fountain is not working during the early morning.

It´s 2 pm, I am on my lunch break and I am again in the same square, but it is different now! The exhaust fumes from the cars is quite strong and the smell of food and of roast cheasnuts too, but it is fun to experience the life of this place!! She was waiting for me again to say “sit on my knee and I will rock you under the sun!” Catalunya (I told you, we became friends!) is always bustling with different kinds of people. It is a very central and common place to meet. There are people who sit quietly, calmly reading a newspaper, those who walk fast and nervously across the square, those who just stand enjoying the sun on their face (like me!). You always feel fine here, and free, and never alone! A group of older tourists are enjoying the fountain, which is now working. They are actually behaving like children on a school day out! They are complaining about the noise of some colleagues and saying something like “You are too young to understand”…Hmmm…maybe just one or two months of difference between them, I think! There are pigeons and people selling food for them. There is always so much going on in Plaza Catalunya.

6pm - I am going to take the train to get home from here and I have to cross the square once again! It is always there, welcoming me! No longer wet but dry from a hard day. So many people still walking around. The pigeons are tired and feel sick from eating. Too many photographs of people feeding them! Poor pigeons…  and poor people who have to take care to cross the square, as the birds are still desperately looking for more food, crossing your path several times to get something to eat! There are too many pigeons and too many people trying to find a pathway through them or around them! A group is singing; many people are waiting for their friends to come. They are waiting patiently. Time to go home, “See you tomorrow Cataluñya! See you tomorrow pigeons!”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 20th, 2006 at 12:37 pm and is filed under General Barcelona. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.