A fiesta, where Covivencia is the official policy, is a public assembly of the highest significance at this time. Around the Mediterranean there is a good civil tradition of partying. Tel-Aviv is already on the top three list of global party towns. Unless some of the fiesta and Convivencia spirit soon appears in the United States, and even more important – in Jersualem, we are doomed for a medieval, global manifestation of the Vengeance of the Fathers. Today, partying and festivals are the recommended form of Civil Disobedience!
Barcelona, September 22 – the official poster, hanging all over town, is an artistic design, mixing Arabic, Hebrew and Latin letters, and the official bulletin emphasizes the fiesta as a Mediterranean event. It is not by coincidence, since Convivencia is an officially expressed policy in Barcelona.
With it, Barcelona is trying to recapture the spirit that led some of the cities of the Iberian peninsula to their greatness at a time that Cordova was the largest metropolis in the world, and Toledo was an Arabic/Greek/Hebrew/Latin “FairSearch.org”, in contrast with the sectarian “Googles”.
I took my siesta late, and by the time I woke up it was already late evening. The city, which is normally packed with tourists, is by now super packed with both tourists and locals. Close to midnight I got to the beautiful public space between the modern edifice of Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art and the thousand year old Romanesque monastery. A rock concert stage had been built overnight., and the place was packed with thousands of mesmerized young people. A light cloud of marijuana was hanging all over the place, carried away at times by the sweet mediteranean nightly breeze. Huge quantities of beer were consumed. Not a single policeman was to be seen, there was no need either. Bigote, a local Bruce Springsteen, was singing in English, which sounded like perfect Catalan to me. He even had some ballads, or maybe it was my wishful thinking under the influence... His dance style was a local variation of Pulcinella. I asked a 30 year old woman, dancing next to me, whether Bigote had expressed any political leanings, she was emphatic, no. I insisted, was he in favor of Catalan independence? She brushed me off, I was mixing business with partying…
Towards 2:00am I was strolling down La Rambla, singing ‘Oh Barcelona, Barcelona’ in eastern mediteranean trills to a young street cleaning lady, who seemed appreciative of it. The Barcelona cleaning crews were working all night, keeping the city clean, regardless of the fiesta. There were some medics and a couple of policemen on La Rambla, but they all were all bored stiff, just watching the party scene.
By the time I got to the Placa del Reial, the concert there was over, but the huge crowd was still hanging out. Apparently it was a local equivalent of hard rock performance, since there was no marijuana smell, and the square was literally covered with squashed beer cans.
As usual, by the early morning hours I ended up at Jessica´s – el centro de la vida nocturna de Placa Universitat. Here too, I got into trouble with my big mouth, when I insisted that adding ketchup on top of the empanada de pollo con batata should be prosecuted as a crime. Jessica had experienced a minor setback, when it turned out that the handsome Sasha, whom she was pursuing, already had a boyfriend. No problem, she said smiling, there are others…
LINKS:
[1] springsteen unplugged
[2] 09-12-30 Epilogue by Joseph Zernik for "Nouvelles d'Hebron" byYitzhaq Shami
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