At the Sagrada Familia, Barcelona
Lijsa and I were standing in line to pay our admission to the Sagrada Familia when a bunch of yellow motorcycles descended upon us.
I've only been to Europe a few times, but the possibility of political violence seems to hover whenever I do: there were labor scuffles in Spain when I first visited as a teenager; I was in Switzerland during the 1991 Gulf War; and in 1995 I passed a memorably pleasant afternoon in the bucolic Northern Ireland town of Omagh, which later suffered the most ruinous terrorist bombing in that country's history. In Spain, the bloodied collective memory of Franco remains fresh; plus, we were in Catalonia, whose firm resistance to nationalist tyranny has always made the province a site for strife. There is also the standing threat of the ETA, the separatist Basque militia that wins attention to its cause by blowing up populous public spaces. So although I didn't exactly fear the yellow motorcycles, a tiny part of me wondered if Lijsa and I had queued up before the Sagrada Familia, Barcelona's most famous tourist attraction, in time to witness (die in?) a Basque attack, an anomalous Guardia Civil eruption, or an anarchist's raid on the grand cathedral of reactionary Spanish art.
The bikes surrounded us. The drivers hopped off, ripped open the saddlebags, and pulled out... 1.5-litre bottles of peach-flavored Lipton iced tea. It was hot, and tourists -- including me -- flocked to the bikers. Now I saw that the bikes were covered with Lipton logos. Within minutes the bags were empty (I scored two bottles) and the promotional stuntmen buzzed away like yellowjackets that have spent all of their stingers. While they went to rearm and then swarm the Barri Gótic or Park Güell, Lijsa and I went into the Sagrada Familia with fruity iced tea stuffed in our backpacks.
This incident provides an exemplary metaphor for Barcelona. The city's identity seems to consist in its clash of highbrow aesthetics with unapologetic tackiness. Getting assaulted by Lipton commandos in the shadow of the most famous building in Barcelona -- perhaps the secondmost in all of Spain, after the Alhambra -- couldn't have felt more appropriate.
The tea was so sweet it hurt my teeth, but I was glad to have it. Our trip to Barcelona was defined by high urban heat: sweaty, dirty, unmoving. But in fact Barcelona had just cooled off; much of Europe suffered a record-setting heatwave a week before I arrived, and 93 degrees was a welcome respite from the murderous triple digits Catalonia had just endured.
