Where have all the Spaniards gone?



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Chapter 4: Catharthis at Five
I can hear the shouts of the women in the next street. Their raucous voices cut thru everything else. There is a strong sour smell of olive oil cooking. Someone shouts up the stairs. I must have been asleep for a couple of hours.

I have come to Barcelona on my own this time. Mother thinks I've hitch-hiked with Roger to the West Country.

I roll out of bed, and stick my head under the tap. It's time to see the city again.

I walk idly up and down the streets. Then go down to the port and watch the men arguing just outside the custom house. The sun goes down behind the palace. I walk up towards the building which looms over downtown Barcelona. I climb the hill, stand on a terrace and watch the sun set. It seems odd that the sun sets in that direction. I tend to think of inland being the west, but Barcelona faces almost south across the sea.

The sun disappears into the pine woods just to the west of where I am standing. Barcelona ends just down the stone track that runs along the coast in a gully between two small hills. The town spreads inland for miles, and also spreads out north-east in a vast industrial sprawl. But going west along the coast the town almost immediately drops down into woods, and gradually levels out. In the distance I can see a plane take off from the airport. Tomorrow I will walk down there and watch the planes. Maybe I can hitch a ride to somewhere fun.

The park around the palace is deserted. I walk down the curved road towards the big avenue, and down towards the bullring. I still cant make up my mind whether I should watch a bullfight. It is one of those things which one should do in Spain, but somehow I disapprove. I cant quite accept the Spanish view of this drama.

It is not supposed to be a sport. It is not supposed to be an entertainment. It is a drama enacted with all the pomp and traditional customs and costumes that one would expect to see in a play by Lope de Vega. The characters in his awful plays strut about like total idiots, pontificating about abstruse notions that no-one in their right mind would characterise as anything but arrogant nonsense. I haven't seen a bullfight, but I've read so much about them, they seem to be in a similar class.

Isn't it rather pompous to talk about a noble contest between man and beast? The beast is attacked by dozens of people, all of whom are armed. The bull is on his own, and has no weapons other than his horns. Now, if the matador carried only a cape, and used that to weary and confuse the beast and then wrestled him to the ground that would be some kind of reasonable contest, but to have the animal harried by horses and spears, then jeered at, and poked and prodded by sharp sticks puts the event almost on a par with bear baiting.

There is something in the Spanish make-up that strongly relates to cruelty. They are relating to the cruel side of their nature when watching a bullfight. Maybe this is a good outlet for their socially unacceptable feelings, which are then assuaged, and the bull is their soul's catharthis. Maybe there is some strange cathartic way in which the struggles and pain of the bull are taken on by the crowd. It is almost like a religious experience, a kind of modern day crucifixion. But can one have six crucifixions every sunday?

I stare across at the posters on the wall of the bullring. They dont look as if they are portraying some cathartic religious experience brought about by the sharing of suffering. They look like Hollywood posters. Most of the bullfighters are advertised as coming straight from a triumph somewhere else. What have they triumphed over? Their own smallness? Their own inadequacies? There is nothing in the jubilant texts about a transfer of guilt to the bull. There is nothing about expiation. And yet I have read the religious texts that are used in school to teach the young to read. They are all about cruelty. They are all about pain, and the way in which the saints have entered into the kingdom of heaven after excruciating experiences here on earth. It is as if the church is saying that you can only reach redemption thru extreme pain.

In every church are pictures of the saints being tortured. Christ hangs from his cross covered in blood, but also dressed in frilly starched miniskirts. The matador wears his starched clothes, and fancy coloured trousers, his traje de luces, his suit of lights, dressed up almost like some votary in the church, while the bull ends up in the sand covered in blood.

What is going on here? All these things are so inter-connected. There is the church with its obsession with pain and sterility. There are the children's primers, set to instill the notion that pain is the most fundamental ingredient in life, and that to conquer pain is to enter into the kingdom of heaven. Then there is the public spectacle of the painful destruction of a noble beast. And this destruction is glorified. And the main man in this mess is dressed almost like a saint from one of the chapels in the cathedral.

Lorca's poem on the death of the famous bullfighter, Manolete, says it all.

At five in the afternoon
   there is an expectant hush in the arena
At five in the afternoon
   the high priest offers a sacrifice to the gods
It is five o'clock in the afternoon
   the madonna has been invoked and the congregation are seated
It is five o'clock
   the statue is lit within his alcove
   the statue comes alive and struts in his suit of lights
   and nobody notices we have made a mistake
At five
   we watch as our Christ goes forth to die for us struggling before the twisting horns
At five
   our Christ is an angel come to do for us what we dare not do ourselves
At five
   the angel thrusts his cape aside to reveal the Christ of the Bull
   the Christ that will suffer for the sins of those who watch
   the Christ that will be deceived, and deceived again
   and forced by our shining agent to lie in the sand and bleed
   and we are ready for our communion

Perhaps I should go to a bullfight.

No. I wont go to a bullfight. I might as well suggest that I go to a service this sunday in the cathedral. I dont need churches. I dont need sacrifices. I dont need catharthis. I'm a fit and healthy teenager. Teenagers just dont need all that crap.

What a fit and healthy teenager needs is some supper followed by a fuck.The Spaniards seem to have got this sorted out. The restaurant is on the ground floor, and the sex shop is upstairs.

It doesn't seem to matter what restaurant you go to, they all end up looking pretty much the same. There is one at the end of my street. As it is in my street I ought to patronise it. It also happens to be in a rather seedy area. If I turn right as I go from my hotel into the street I come to the Ramblas within about fifty yards. This is central Barcelona. If, however, I turn left, I walk past dark buildings and a waste lot on the other side of the road, then after about a hundred yards I come to a very dingy area, and the place looks like some seedy east end zone for prostitutes and down-and-outs in nineteenth century London.

I ought to feel threatened down here, but I am fifteen and walk the street with complete confidence. I dont have a care in the world, and anything nasty will, I am sure, simply bounce off me. I push open the door, and walk to a table. A waiter immediately comes over with a menu, and I order a bottle of red wine.

It is very quiet in here. Breakfast was a noisy business with everybody talking to everybody else, and there were newspapers everywhere to read.

The evening meal is totally different. It is quiet. There are no papers. People come in quietly, whisper, and sit down. No-one seems to want to talk.

After the meal I ask where the guapas are. The waiter makes a face. I have obviously used the wrong word, but he shows me anyway.

I swear the girl is younger than I am. I am very embarrassed, and cant get it together. I cant function in a strange place according to a time-table. I want to flirt. She hasn't got the time. I want to slow it all down. She wants it all to happen as quickly as possible so she can get back to filing her nails. She takes off her clothes, and with every piece of the strip-tease I lose more and more inclination to do anything at all. By the time she is completely naked I have no sexual desire whatsoever. It's as if you go into a room, and have to switch on a button, and then everything happens immediately in a set order one after the other. I shouldn't have pressed the button. This is not what it is all about. She looks puzzled. I give her the money and leave. I had meant to ask the waiter what the proper word was, but realised I didn't need to know.

I walk back to the Ramblas. It is brightly lit. The trees echo the street lights; the birds are making a heck of a din in the branches. This is more like it. I cross over to look in thru the window of a restaurant. I walk a few more paces. A hand reaches out to touch my arm. I look sideways. There is a very attractive girl, but covered in ghastly grease paint. She is wearing a shirt which is only buttoned half way up, and her tits are clearly visible. Her skirt is peculiar. It has a half-moon cut out of it just below her crutch.

I stop and point to her skirt. "Where did you get that made?"

She smiled, then looked very haughtily past me. "I made it up myself. Do you like it?"

"Very interesting," I say and walk on.

"Please yourself." She shrugs, and gets a cigarette out of a pack.

I walk round the square at the top of the Ramblas. It all looks very posh and official, with large buildings, banks, and insurance offices.

I walk back down my favourite street, but I want to go to bed. Something has gone wrong with the day. It'll be better tomorrow.

My dark street now looks thoroughly seedy, and I just want to get to my room. What is happening to this city. It plays tricks on you. One minute it seduces you. The next it excites you, then it slaps you in the face, and then it menaces you. I've never before noticed how a city could have such a personality. It is like an animal, and it will uncurl and play with you, or front you out. Surely it isn't just me. I swear the damned place has some kind of catalunyan soul, and it is capriciously playing with me.

I shove up my window. There is a line of cats on a wall. Oh shit. They are going to howl all night, blast them. I can still smell the fierce pong of cooked olive oil. Suddenly I feel very lonely.

Damn. Why do I do this? Why do I have to run away from home? Why do I hide myself in some strange city? I rush down the stairs again. I refuse to sit in my room and cry. I run down to the docks. I skip down a platform at the station. I go into the station bar and order a cup of coffee. I start drinking it before I realize I have made a silly mistake. I should have ordered a carajillo. I throw up my hands and shout "conyo". The barman turns round. I wave an exasperated hand in the air. "Un coñac por favor."

The coñac arrives. I take a slurp, then drink some coffee, and tip in a little brandy. I drink some more and tip in the rest of the brandy, and my world tilts back up the right way. I drink some more brandy. I giggle. This is the life. He he. I love Barcelona. Who the hell would want to be in Hertford? Ha ha. I love it. I just love every silly minute of it. Ha ha ha. Wonderful.

Someone sits down beside me. He raises his glass. "Okay?"

"Okay? Ha! Estupendo!" And I burst out laughing.
.... to be continued