Escaping from Birmingham to Barcelona, learning to write, and Spaniards who talk about you when you’re right in front of them. (Barcelona)

I have just spent the equivalent of $30 CAD on a sandwich and bad sangria, but such is the price to pay for a table with a view.

I am in Barcelona and I am learning.

When dining alone, always bring a pen and something to write on.  While my neighbour has chosen the safety of postcards, I prefer to hound Barcelonian waiters for elusive pens, beg for scraps of paper on which I scratch strings of words, and pause self-importantly to absorb the Plaza’s inhabitants. Ernest Hemingway? No, just another obnoxious North American stretching out 900 pesetas worth of alcohol for indeterminable lengths.

So far I am deeply impressed by Barcelona’s embrace of innovation its architecture and art.  As for the people, I am less impressed. If you are paranoid that Spaniards are not so secretly talking about you… they probably are.  Trust me. Today as I proudly wore a Covent Garden designer blouse splashed with large yellow daisies I was shot down by two fashion critics on the Metro, one of whom had a lame angel wing tattoo on her back and red tartan flares.  I could only capture fragments of the commentary, being that it was in Català and not Spanish, but the message was clear.  Later, another shirt episode. In fairness, even I was dismayed as I extricated it from my backpack.  But does that justify a complete stranger pointing my way and singing at the top of his lungs in Spanish “you have to iron your shirt…”?! Unvindicated from my former encounter, I turned around, looked him squarely in the eye and snapped “I know, buddy, so back off.”  I can only surmise the reaction that followed was a string of Catalan phrases targeted squarely at my bosom.

This trip to Barcelona was a spontaneous response to the seismic shift my life was undergoing. Within a few weeks I was leaving Birmingham, my freshly-exed contract job and freshly-exed boyfriend of five years to move back into my parents’ in Toronto to try and find a career and myself. England had been difficult.  With a reduced standard of living (do not get me started on the size of the flat’s refrigerator), a string of unfulfilling temp jobs and superficial friendships, I considered it my “Outward Bound” training. I was strangled and lonely.  When I saw a return flight to Barcelona for £99, I jumped on it.

Alas, I have not yet found it easy to meet people in Barcelona. Not to say I have not met anyone, but my options have been suboptimal.  There was Maya from Los Angeles who had never used a book index, and Mike, a plucky guy from London who left Barcelona 30 minutes after I met him. My hotel is a morgue, the only snippets of life ricocheting off the courtyard walls. The metro rumbles below my cell-like room and the courtyard I face is so deep that I have to hang out the window upside down to see if it is day or night.  And the heat! I alternate my one wet washcloth between my face and my feet to trick my body into coolish slumber.

Hold on – what’s a “gallina joven ”*? Did one of the wait staff just call me that?

Oh, I have just been handed extra paper by a very sweet waiter who explained that it was for when I run out.  What a lovely, spontaneous act of kindness! I hope he bails me out when the other waiter discovers I have used all his ink.

Yet again, another reference to the “gallina blanca”. What is it about the Spanish that they think they exist in a vacuum when they comment on the person next to them?  My Spanish friends back in Birmingham do this all the time.

Great, now they are using my extra chair as a parking lot for menus.

I can’t help myself. I am going to confront her.

* * *

When the waitress was by herself I asked in Spanish,

“Excuse me. I speak a little Spanish but I am trying to learn local slang.  I heard an expression recently but I do not understand it.  What does gallina blanca mean?”

The coward pretended like she had no idea what I was talking about and covered up by calling over another waiter and asking him what it meant. The male waiter answered that a gallina is someone who is weak and scared, and boasted that he was no gallina. I asked if I was, to which he responded, liberally fondling my arm, “no, no eres.”  With that cue I returned the empty pen and left.

* young hen