The longer I live here, the more I am struck by the parallels between daily life in Barcelona (well, for the vast majority that makes up what constitutes a middle class here—but what we would think of as borderline poverty back home) and that of the denizens of Theodor Seuss Geisel (a.k.a. Dr. Suess)'s fictional 'Whoville' of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.While surely no one would attribute the qualities "merry and warm-hearted" (said to be characteristic of the 'Whos') to more than an outlying Catalan, the satisfaction they seem to derive from the most mean and mundane quotidian ritual still puzzles and fascinates me. Maybe there is something to be learned here.
Regimented schedules (betraying a discipline that would make a female prison guard blush: everyone pretty much eats, sleeps, commutes, coffee breaks, farts and fucks* according to some ancient instinctual & internalized clock); perfunctorily prepared cuisine that evokes memories of post-WWII rationing; record levels of chain smoking and coke blowing; near total (often belligerent) isolation from the outside world; unforgivably inflexible work schedules that garner some of the lowest salaries† in the industrialized world; and still they sit down together at some dingy bar/cafe§ and dive into their uninspiring cortados and lunchmeat laden flautas or cardboard croissants as if they were partaking in a virginal and exquisite treat.
Later, at 2:15 or 2:25, as they gobble down their iceberg lettuce salads, day old bread and hearty Arroz a la Cubana (which has nothing at all to do with any dish one would find in Cuba; well, when Cuba had food...), you can almost hear the swelling song in the distance: "Fah who for-aze! Dah who for-aze!"
* Saturday evenings are reserved for the once weekly Catalan coitus, although newer couples are rumored to jump the proverbial gun and linger together in bed on the occasional weekend alba.
† Because Spanish employees are paid once a month (or because quoting an annual sum would shock them into grim reality), salaries are quoted as a monthly figure rather than a yearly sum. Official sources place the median monthly income at 1,600 Euros (19,200 Euros annually). Of that 1,600, a hair over 1,000 appears in one's monthly paycheck after taxes.
§ There are nearly no cafés, as we would think of them, in Barcelona, only bars and bread shops that serve coffee (and beer) at the appointed hours. Even fifteen years after Barcelona's self-conscious launch onto the world tourist stage, most restaurant-bars away from the Passeig de Graçia or Diagonal still sport brightly flashing video games burping Atlantic City style under jaundiced fluorescent lights, the air thick with Fortuna or Ducado fumes.
