THE HELLFIRE CLUB

La Merce Festival is supposed to celebrate the Virgin Mary, but at times it looks more like a homage to  Baalzebub, no more so than at Les Bèsties de Foc Surten al Carrer (The Beasts of Fire Go Out) Parade. 

The advice to spectators is to cover up, wear a hat and a scarf (to cover your face) and long sleeves. Synthetics are a no no. This is a clue to what is going to happen. 

Fire spitting dragons, Fire Devils and troupes of drummer emerge from the "gates of hell" at the top of Via Laietan, and parade to the Consolat de Mar. Les Bèsties de Foc Surten al Carrer is the night when the devils and dragons are really let off the leash. 

The fireworks seem stronger and longer lasting than at other events, the Devils break ranks, and charge the crowd, sending the masked onlookers scattering and tumbling as the gunpowder smoke and drumming fills the air.

The Dragons spray the skies and the ground with torrents of flames and sparks, in which the brave, stupid and drunk dance like dervishes. 

LET THERE BE LIGHT

The last weekend in September sees the Merce Festival take over Barcelona. 

Nominally a religious holiday, it is really the goodbye to summer. One last blast before the autumn wardrobe is unpacked.

Falcons

Across the city there are parades, concert, fireworks, concerts and all manner of events, local teams of “Falcons” (human Pyramids) and Devils  (firework wielding dervishes) pop up all over the place and giants and fire dragons parade the streets.

Giant Tetris 

Merce is really too big to fully get your head around, it is best just to go for a wander and see what you find.

One event this year was drawing large crowds, a light show at the Sagrada Famila by Canadian company Moment Factory.

The Sagrada Famila is a storage enough spectacle as it is, and the addition, lights planted about the building, projections and even a crane scattering glitter, give the building an utterly surreal quality. Like a Grimm fairytale the lights bring the seem to complete Gaudi’s weird vision with the ornate stonework coming to life, growing and crawling,

Cybermen dancing in Parc Ciutadella

Zydeco band, with samba drum troupe and fire Devils in Placa Catalunya

STRIKE A LIGHT

As Olympic legacies go, Barcelona’s is better than most. 

The stadium and diving pool complex may now be a bit underused, but the 1992 Olympics were the shot in the arm that revived the city’s fortunes and propelled it into the first rank of international cities, a tourist hotspot and regional hub for multi-national commerce.

One legacy is a however a forgotten curiosity the giant matches are the Olympic site of at Vall d’Hebrón, uphill on the Barcelona’s eastern side.   

Swedish artist Claes Oldenburg produced this massive metal monument, a book of matches on the side of a road, with others scattered around the nearby pavements. It was a area that was greatly improved for the Games, and at the time with all the excitement a visitors the matches must have been marvellous to behold.

But the pop art styled statues have not stood the test of time as well as other Olympian public artworks works and now look forlorn and incongruous in the middle of a housing project, in an area that features on few tourist trials.

If you want to have a look at them the address is Av. Cardenal Vidal & Barraquer Cantonada Pare Mariana on buses 10, 17, 112 and 185.

NOT A PRETTY POLLY

Does anyone have a recipe for parrot pie?

OK they are parakeets, or to be precise, Monk Parakeets, also known as the Quaker Parrots, the smaller more belligerent cousins of the pirates’ colourful companions, but the noise they can make belies their stature. 

 

Flocks of the little green critters are to be found all over Barcelona, usually they sit in high palm trees, squawking away at each other, at people, at other birds or just for the sake of squawking. The important thing is that they are constantly squawking, and that parakeet squawking is loud but not a pleasant noise.

Other birds have learnt the hard way to leave the Parakeets alone.

They may look like clowns, but they fight like mobsters. 

Last year there was a turf war between the Parakeets and the Magpies in lower westside Barcelona, it was a noisy and bloody affair. Magpies are a very rare sight in these parts nowadays! 

Occasionally they slum it and come down to ground level to scavenge crumbs from tourists amongst the pigeons. 

They also put on impressive  aerial displays, forming little V-shaped squadrons that zoom down the streets just above head height, squawking as they go.

They are not, as might be generally supposed, blow-ins from across the Mediterranean, they are probably originated from escaped pet birds and have gone feral and established a sustainable population. 

Apparently they make good pets, but why anyone would want to share a house with one of the noisy little blighters beats me.

Y VIVA ESPAÑA

After winning the European Grand Prix in Valencia, Fernando Alonso slowed down his Ferrari to collect, from an exuberant marshal, a Spanish flag to wave as he completed his lap of honour. 

 Flags and sporting victories, these things matter. 

Here in Barcelona we know that very well. Those who seek independence for Catalunya display Catalan flags from their balconies and make a flambouyant display of supporting Barcelona football club. Spanish unionists generally  tend to keep quiet.

Recently something interesting has been happening: Spanish flags have started appearing around Barcelona.

The Spanish national team is having a successful run in the European ball kicking championships, and while some Catalans still adopt the ABS (anyone but Spain) position, others have discovered their inner Spaniard. “Span is not all bad” while Spanish unionists have become more emboldened enough to show their colours.

NO BULL

“There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.” Ernest Hemingway

Poster for the last bullfight in Barcelona

We still have the mountain climbing, if you drive a couple of hours, and the Grand Prix, albeit now every two years, alternating with Valencia, but there will be no more bullfighting in Barcelona.

Bull fighting ceased in Catalunya at the end of the 2011 season, banned by the Catalan parliament, ostensibly on anti-cruelty grounds, but many people think that the political imperative was really about making a symbolic cultural break with the rest of Spain. 

You can still watch bullfighting from Madrid and Seville on television, but on the rare occasions that I happen across it, the bull always seems to be winning. 

 

Bull fighting was never really that big in Barcelona, though the city did at one time have two sizeable functioning Plaza de Toros. 

There was little mourning over the passing of the sport, even families with long associations with the spectacle, interviewed after the blood and dust from  the final catalan corrida was being swept away said it was an activity that had had its time. 

  

But what will now become of the magnificent Monumental Plaza de Toros?

Arenas shopping centre

I hope that it does not go the same way as Las Arenas Plaza de Toros and  become another shopping centre.

It would make a great music and theatre venue though. 

Is there the market I wonder? A brash over the top Carmen in the Monumental Barcelona would certainly have more appeal than he prospect of another dreary Aida in Verona.

TOGETHER IN ELECTRIC DREAMS

 

“Herman the German” (I call him that because he is a German and his name is Herman) is a decent sort of bloke, but unfortunately drives one of those huge Porsche Cayenne trucks, that makes it very difficult for everyone else to manoeuvre around the car park.

 

Thankfully the problem is being resolved as Herman has now been shown the error of his ways. The local wildlife gave him the hint, in the form of bird droppings all over the nose of the grosser-wagen. Not just the odd splat, but great cartoonish mounds of the stuff. 

Herman had left it at the airport car park in a section where the parking spaces have little roofs to protect vehicles from the sun. Naturally the Porsche was too big to fit entirely under the shade. It is not clear whether the edge of roof was an established evening hang-out spot for Catalonia’s bird population, or if the feathered fraternity gathered especially to marvel at the astounding ugliness of the ungainly Porsche’s front end, but the result is that Herman has concluded that a more compact form of personal transport is in order.

Herman recounted the tale of the airport guano to me in mournful Teutonic tones after he saw me zipping into my parking spot in a Citroen C-Zero all-electric car, the office runabout that I commandeered.

He wanted to know where he could get one. 

For getting to work and back, running to the supermarket and for the vast majority of normal motoring needs the electric car works just fine. The initial sensation is the ordinariness, an electric car drives pretty much like any other small car.

It has a surprising turn of speed off the lights, and while it is no road rocket, neither is it a liability on the streets. It is nippy enough to run rings around many big saloons and “off roaders” and is better drive than many small engined cars. The near silent running gives a flattering semblance of refinement, which goes some way towards compensating for the many features that have been dropped to save on weight and power usage, though it does have electric windows and air conditioning.

For the daily commute it needs charged just once a week, which I do in a couple of hours at a fast charger in the office car park, though it could also be done overnight from a regular domestic socket.

The jury is out on the environmental benefits of electric cars. Their manufacture requires some pretty exotic materials which have to be extracted from big holes in the ground and they probably do not significantly reduce overall emissions if your electricity comes from an aging coal fired power station, but it does displace the exhaust gases from city streets. However if you get your power from high efficiency gas turbines, nuclear energy or tidal power and you will be on bounus points in the cleaning up the environment stakes.

One welcome surprise of driving a dinky electric car is that it immediately boosts your popularity with the opposite sex; really it was better than a puppy for attracting female attention.

The most irritating thing about driving an electric car is the constant irritation of people telling you that your car only has an 80 mile range, (“oh really, I did not know that, and there was silly old me planning a road trip to Kathmandu”), coupled with the knowledge that no matter how often you tell them that it is more than adequate for most motoring needs, you know that they are correct. I still need the Mercedes to get up to France. 

IT'S A KIND OF MAGIC

It is maybe the best show in Barcelona, it runs several times every night and it is free.

Every night hundreds of people gather around the main fountain on Avinguda Maria Cristina, the avenue behind between the big square towers at Plaça Espanya, which heads up to the four pointless columns in front to the Palau Nacional on Montjuïc for the spectacular display of choreographed water sprays and jets. 

Sometimes accompanied by musical soundtrack, eighties revivial and movie themses usually, and coloured by lights, candyfloss mists bloom across the fountain while massive plumes of water leap into the sky.

Originally built for the 1929 World Fair, the Magic Fountain has more recently acquired the musical accompaniment, making it one of the city’s top attractions.

From twilight to midnight, give or take, a new Magic Fountain show starts every thirty minutes. In practice the timetable is a bit random.  There are more shows during the summer months than winter.

At the height of the tourist season viewing space is at a premium, with spectators packed around the fountain and crowded onto the terraces leading up to the Palau Nacional, which becomes something of a large open air chill out zone as the night goes on, attracting decent quality buskers, jugglers, skater punks and such like. 

An alternative vantage spot is from the viewing deck of the Arenas shopping mall on the other side of Placa Espana, but it does not have quite the same atmosphere there.

IS JACK SPARROW HIDING OUT IN BARCELONA?

A mysterious black ship has tied up in Port Vell.

The official line is that it is a recently completed recreation of a 16th century Spanish ship the Nao Victoria, moored in Barcelona for educational purposes and tourist visits organised by Fundacion NaoVictoria.

In 1522 the original Nao Victoria became the first ship to circumnavigate the globe, and the only one from a fleet of five vessels commanded by Ferdinand Magellan that completed the voyage.

However fans of the Pirates of the Caribbean films might think differently. The ship bears more than a passing resemblance to the notorious Black Pearl.

Is it possible that Jack Sparrow is engaged in some supernatural time travelling escapade and is in Barcelona to conduct a belated raid upon the treasures of the Spanish Main?

After all there are parts of the city where the Black Pearl’s flamboyant camp captain and motley crew could pass without attracting attention. 

MANCHESTER & LONDON, BARCELONA.

With the Stone Roses reforming to bring loved up harmony back to the baggy trousered masses, it seemed appropriate to pay a visit The Manchester Bar in Plaza Milans, in the Barrio Gotico district.

The Tardis-like venue, much larger inside than the outside suggests, is themed around bands and music from the Mad-chester era.

 

Dominating the bar is a picture of Ian Curtis and the sound system plays back to back baggy anthems, all night, every night.  It is a bit of a celebrity hang out to, with Mani known to drop by and do a shift behind the bar between tours with Primal Scream, The Stone Roses and Freebass.

James says The Mnachester it is a great place to meet ladies

Mani was not in town the night we visited, but James Elliot of cult Belfast alternative popsters, Emily Ryder, was to be found practising his best enigmatic poses by the door. 

So why a Manchester bar in Barcelona. 

Who Knows? And who cares? As Ian Brown (is alleged to have) once said: “It’s not where you are from; it’s where you’re at.”

Things are a bit more easy-going in the London Bar on Carrer Nou de la Rambla, in Raval. 

Originally a haunt for circus performers who would gather there after hours, the bar still stays open until 5am, this historic watering hole became famous as a hangout for artists and writers including Miro, Dali and Ernest Hemingway. 

It is a charmingly unpretentious bar; in part rough and ready, in part historical treasure chest with circus and other memorabilia scattered to be found around the place. 

Popular with the more relaxed type of ex-pat it is one of the few places where locals and visitors seem to mingle comfortably together. There is a great blues duo on Friday nights.

THE PEOPLE’S FLAG WILL BE DELIVERED PRESENTLY

 
Today is Hispanic Day in Spain, a national holiday marking the arrival of the Spanish supported Genovese explorer Christopher Columbus in the Americas.

In Madrid this is the cause of much national pride, with military parades, regal flag-raising, fighter jet fly-pasts and so forth. This being contrary Catalunya, such displays of Spanish pride are shunned, though people do seem happy enough to take the day off work anyway.

A few brave souls were trying to reignite Barcelona’s dwindling revolutionary fevour, with a rally though the city centre. Quite what they were protesting against was unclear; the shouts were of anti-fascism, though despite the history of Spain and Catalunya, I am not entirely sure that there is really a lurking fascist threat. Though maybe it is best to be prepared in case someone is planning to reintroduce blue shirts and goose-stepping. The ban on wearing bikinis in the city centre could be the thin end of the totalitarian wedge!

Either that or they have just got tired of shouting at bankers.   

Calls for the whole world to take to the streets fell largely on deaf ears, despite the valiant efforts of the diehard protestors who turned up early in  La Plaça de la Universitat to rally the faithful and paint some banners. 

The media threatened to outnumber the motley collection of old hippies, even older commies, radical chic sensation seekers, earnest and well-meaning oddballs and dreadlocked willowy white girls looking for a boyfriend, that wandered cheerfully around town bemusement of shoppers. The locals seem to regard the Marxist marchers with the same sort of nostalgic indulgence that Londoners show to old school punks.

Even the handful of black clad anarchists hanging around the back of the parade in the hope of a scrap with the police scowled with embarrassment at the lightweight nature of the parade.

Barcelona used to be able to field a much feistier breed of protestor; in the good old days McDonalds kept the glaziers on speed-dial.

Update: Catalan friends are now claiming Christopher Colombus, or "Colom", was a Catalan. There is some evidence to support the theory here.

ON YER BIKE

Ever see a mermaid on a bicycle?

We are spoiled for choice when it comes to getting around Barcelona, there is the Metro (underground), and the buses with the super cold air condition, trains , a couple of cable cars and three funicular. If you like being taken for a ride there are the taxis, and for the tree-hugging fitness freaks there is El Bicing.

 

El Bicing’s fleet of red and white bicycles first hit the carrers and ramblas in 2007, when there were just 750 vehicle and 50 El Bicing stations; today there are 6000 bikes and 420 locations.

A €30 annual subscription buys you a Bicing card which allows you to take a bicycle from the rack. You can ride it for half an hour without additional charge, and it is 50 cents per 30 minutes for up to two hours, after which the bicycle turns into a pumpkin.  Well not really, but you do get stung with a penalty charge and if you do that too often you will be banned and sent to languish in the pit of naughty bike-hoggers.

The racks freeze up between midnight and 5 am, to prevent drunks from trying to ride them home, two up with a mate on the handlebars, presumably.

But here’s the controversial bit. Unlike London’s "Boris Bikes" which are available to anyone with a credit card, El Bicing is only available to Barcelona residents; visitors still have to go to the tourist rental companies, who argued, successfully, that it would be unfair for a state run enterprise to put them out of business. I get that, but it also seems sort of sad that visitors are not able to access what is become a new Barcelona icon. 

 

Of course you can always choose to look like a complete twat and rent a Segway. 

Semi-relevant anecdote: I was once nearly knocked over by London Mayor Boris Johnson, who, with limbs akimbo, was cycling  down Charing Cross Road in a most terrifying manner.