Protestors, Pillow Fights and the Police

Extreme Pillow Fighting!

Did you know it was national pillow fighting day last Sunday? Neither did I. That is until I wandered up  towards Plaza Catalunya at about half past seven thinking to myself how wonderful it would be if somebody had written a blog post about the location perfectly balancing the witty and informative to ensure that the reader, while never lost, was always smiling.

Oh, I remembered with what some might see as a ludicrously false grin. Somebody already has. You can find it here

However, I was distracted by this brief happy epiphany by the sight of a lagre group of Mossos (Barcelona's Riot Police) standing in one of the nearby streets. Now the spotting of large groups of Mossos can mean only one of two things. It's either a) Trouble with a capital T or b) Barcelona is hosting this years World Championship of Extreme Angled Beret Wearing. And, as all fans of beret wearing know, that competition is to be held in Beijing this year (China having recently discovered the beret and already made great strides in international competition – despite critics have pointing out that a number of these fast-improving Chinese beret wearers have tested positive for using anabolic strings of onions).

So trouble it was.

Astute readers will have noticed the BigBarcelonaBlog is partial to the odd bit of Rock 'n' Roll and so it will come as no surprise that his response to trouble was to go looking for it. Had he come to the right place?

All the signs were there. There were numerous Mossos riot vans in every sidestreet and the Guardia Civil were in the Plaza itself. The Guardia Civil are the police too but they aren't as dangerous as the Mossos – this is demonstrated by the far more responsible angles at which they wear their berets.

The BigBarcelonaBlog couldn't wait to see what had happened. Had the Indignados returned? Was the city once more to be rocked by the  idealistic fervour of 15-M?

Er. No.

There were twenty kids joyfully hitting each other with pillows. The BigBarcelonaBlog was mystified.   Even Britain, despite enduring more than a decade under the scarily authoritarian boot of New Labour has, so far as I know, not outlawed pillow fighting. On the opposite side of the world it's a similar story -the Taliban, despite banning chess, music and female education and health, have so far yet to get around to prohibiting the pillow fight (it is a little known fact that Mullah Omar defeated Osama Bin Laden when they went goosedown to goosedown during a half time break at the Kandahar football stadium back in 1999).

 N.B. Any Americans reading this please substitue soccer for football. Any American CIA operatives reading this please substitute “I am making this up” for “this is valuable intelligence I should pass on to my superiors”. There is absolutely no need to extraordinarily render me to Guantanamo again. I learned my lesson after the whole Abu Hamza relaxes by entering North London subbuteo tournaments debacle. I mean I'd have thought it was obvious. But nineteenth months in an orange jump suit taught me never to take Langley's sense of humour for granted. 

  

This is a bit more like unextreme pillow holding

Anyway, back to Plaza Catalunya and the tense Mossos/Soft Cushion stand off. At least that's what I  thought it was. Then I realised I'd made a mistake.

The Mossos were not there for the pillow fighters. Standing close to the these doughty down wielders was another group. This group were forlorner than our feather flinging friends. I had initially assumed this was because they had already fought and lost and the feathery residue of their weapons now lay on ground like so many fallen snowflakes.

Fallen Snowflakes. Who says I can't do images? I mean apart from most poets

 

But no! On closer inspection they turned out not to be well plumped warriors at all but instead to be protestors. I suppose I should have guessed this because they were stationary and as we know from this post all Spanish protesters have one thing in common. They never move. Even the marchers. Actually, especially the marchers.

Anyway this was a rather sad and small group of protestors and they were being addressed by a man with a surprisingly quiet megaphone – a minorphone, if you will. The use of any kind of phone wasn't strictly necessary as all the people were quite close enough to hear his normal speaking voice but I suppose when you've gone to all the trouble of bringing it, it feels kind of a waste not to crank it up to get that irresistable British Rail Tannoy announcement vibe going. Whilst adding undeniable authenticity the minorphone did have the drawback of rendering me utterly unable to decipher what the protest was about and therefore give it extended publicity by mentioning it here. It's a problem left wing groups worldwide have run against over the years and frankly the BigBarcelonaBlog despairs. We're never going to bring about global change, comrades, with muffled slogans.

“What do we want?”

“Bwwoooorrrrreeee”

“When do want it?”

“Bwwooooorrreee.”

Bwwooorrrrreeee!

So his fellow protestors were glumly not hearing him while all around them kids were clonking each other with pillows and  all around them was a watching cohort of riot police. I wondered about if the protesters, unexpectedly, decided to join the pillow combat the authorities would intervene as this would constitute  direct political pillow action which would threaten to undermine the structures of the state as opposed to normal pillow fighting which would just undermine the structure of the pillow. But despite my fervent wishing  the protestors refused to oblige me.

So I guess I'll never know. And now thanks to this post neither will you. So you may be wondering why I posted this. Well, you see I've been filling this blog  with long helpful information and in my last post I thought I'd experiment with some short helpful information. But that didn't work out so well...see here . So I thought I'd try some long unhelpful information instead. If you try new things people you don't get anywhere as someone famous once said. Come to think of it – it might have been Icarus.

I'm melting!  

The Barcelona City Bus Tour

Occasionally the BigBarcelonaBlog finds himself in conversation with his readers (otherwise known - at least to the BigBarcelonaBlog) as The Globbies. These lucky people are fortunate enough to have the golden nuggets of invaluable tips and hard gleaned insight brought to their living rooms merely for the cost of an idle click of a button. So you would expect that the Globbies when encountering the BigBarcelonaBlog in person would respond in kind to this selfless generosity and insistently ply him with a combination of cool compliments and cold cervezas.

        You would be mistaken.

        I will pause here for you to be astonished.

        (Pause)

        For instead of the cool compliments and the cold cervezas the BigBarcelonaBlog is usually rewarded for his pains with the following...

       

        “I read your blog. It’s good but...it's a bit long.”

       

        And when you are repeating this statement to yourself because it is so incredible that only a number of iterations will render it comprehensible to the human mind please remember when restating the final part to do so with a tinge of  whining toddler in your tone.

        I mean I could point out the clue is in the title...BIG being the bit I’m referring to.

        Just so you know, the BigBarcelonaBlog's entries come in at about 1000 words -  it's hardly War and Peace. It's not even War and Peas (Tolstoy's much shorter, greener and less successful first draft which saw Russia’s conflict with Napoleon through the eyes of a greengrocer).  And yet some of its readers are so stretched by the discipline of reading a full entry they feel the need to take a break halfway through, recharge their optic batteries and come back later. What, I ask you, does it say about contemporary society when adults can't take more than three jokes about modernist architecture, Gaudi and the irrationality of Spanish verb rules before they need to lie down with a cold compress on their foreheads?

        Is it any wonder we are in a crisis? The BigBarcelonaBlog thinks not.

        Nevertheless after hearing an increasing number of “It's a bit long”s (don't forget the toddler whine) the BigBarcelonaBlog has decided that though it goes against all his prinicples he is going to have to take the criticism on board. I am resolved to pander to these short attention spanned spammers and their minimal desires by producing a brief, punchy, pointed entry that will take no longer to read than it took Puck to put a girdle round the Earth.

        Here goes..

        The tour bus...

        or to be more accurate the tour buses.

        These set off from Plaza Catalunya at regular intervals offering to show the newly arrived traveller the very best of Barcelona. The BigBarcelonaBlog has one sentence of advice for you on the subject of the tour bus:

        Don't blink or you'll miss it.

        One..two...three...

        Ready...steady...go...

        Do not get on one! Ever!

        The End.

       

        Happy now?

        Of course you're not. Now you “it's too longers” see what you were mssing. Would you cut the Fool from Lear? Satan from Paradise Lost? Alan Shearer from the Match of the Day panel (OK there's a case for that one).

        Of course you wouldn't. You want the BigBarcelonaBlog's justification. You want his extended views. You want a joke about Gaudi. Anything else would be Hamlet without the prince. Or at least without Osrick.

        So why shouldn't you get on the tour bus?

        Because Barcelona is the very last city you ever want to go round in a bus. You will miss the following things: the Barri Gotico, El Borne, the Raval, Gracia. In exchange for missing these highlights you will receive the following: Plaza Espanya, queues and the opportunity to appear in a number of extended shaky handheld videos made by baseball cap wearing middle aged men channeling their inner Spielberg. You think the BigBarcelonaBlog is long? Try watching someone's unedited video of their recent mini-break.

        True it goes to some places the BigBarcelonaBlog recommends. But it does so in the least Barcelona way possible. Contradictory as it sounds, people who use the Tour Bus want to see Barcelona without actually seeing the city.

        But if that's not enough there is an even greater reason not to get on the bus. Hold off with that cold compress for a moment while I tell you. Because every time you get on a tour bus or the like you are betraying a lack of faith in yourself. You are saying “I cannot explore, I cannot discover” - I want someone else to do it. Somebody who knows the right answer.  But cities are not Maths problems (except for Milton Keynes). There is no right answer.  Everybody sitting on the open top bus as it painfully inches its way up Via Laitana is crying out “I want to see the same Barcelona as everybody else. I want the approved version, the tried and tested version, the one without any surprises.” But what you get is the unimaginitive, the safe and the stodgy.

        Now, BigBarcelonaBlog I can hear you crying, you are being too harsh. What is one soulless bus ride between amigos?

        Ah but there's the rub. Because the choice to take one bus ride now will have repercussions further down the line. I will say but one word.

        Cruises!

        You think you can just step on and off a bus but you cannot step on and off a state of mind. Bus rides lead to coach tours lead to guided tours lead to cruises. And if you don't want to find yourself in thirty years’ time standing by an all you can eat buffet at midnight discussing the merits of elasticated pants while forcing down a bread roll you have no real need for then the time to make a stand is here.

        Turn your back on the easy. Turn your back on the safe. Embrace the unknown. Trust yourself.  This is Barcelona. You’re not clever enough not to find something worth seeing. So what if it isn’t in the guide book. So what if Time Out don’t claim it’s a must see. This is your trip and your life.

        So live it!

        There you are. The all new ShortBarcelonaBlog. What do you think?

        I’m worried it might be just a bit long.