Barcelona’s main streets were lined with trestle tables piled high with books, and gypsy girls peddled red roses from every street corner. It was April 23rd 1986, El Día de Sant Jordi, the Catalan equivalent of Valentine’s Day and I was on holiday in Barcelona with an American girlfriend.

Flushed by the romance of the moment, I bought her a rose on the Rambles and then we looked at books. As they were all in Catalan or Spanish, I decided that music would be an adequate substitute, in keeping with the spirit of the day of the book and the rose. So we wandered in and out of side streets, before finally finding a record shop on Carrer Tallers, where she bought me a Gypsy Kings cassette.

The day was hot and sweaty and we had been trudging around for ages, so once we were back at the top of the Rambles, I was gasping for water. I saw a large ornate iron drinking fountain, and I stopped to quench my thirst. What I did not know at the time was that this was the Rambla de Canaletes, and there is a legend that says that anyone who drinks water from the fountain will always return to Barcelona.

The holiday came to an end and I returned to London, but by the spring of 1988 as legend predicted, I was back for another holiday. My brother was in Barcelona taking a couple of years out after university, and I was tired of trying to make it as a musician in London. So it was not difficult to persuade me that the holiday could be extended. English teaching would pay the rent, and my original idea was just to spend a year enjoying myself – with no plans. I was open to anything and everything, prepared to let life take me wherever it wanted me to go.

My brother was living in an amazing flat overlooking El Mercat de Santa Catalina in the heart of the Ciutat Vella, the old city. It was so primitive it was almost prehistoric. The building had an old wooden door with an enormous iron knocker. He lived on the fifth floor so you had to bang the door, as hard as you could, five times. The problem was, though, that it was impossible to be heard over the street noise generated by the market, so the only way to get in was to shout until you were hoarse. If anyone was home they would finally let you in by hauling on a metal chain connected to a medieval latch inside the door. Then you walked up five storeys in pitch darkness and finally arrived at the attic, sweaty and exhausted. I had a place to stay, though, and its lack of modern conveniences made those first few months in Barcelona all the more authentic.

My Spanish was nonexistent, but as most of the people I met were foreigners, just passing through, it didn’t really matter. I soon learned to ask for beer and for cheese bocadillos, so I had the basics covered. I was also having the time of my life – beaches, bars and parties, and Barcelona was just a great place to have fun. It struck me as a kind of rundown Paris, just as architecturally impressive when it wanted to be, but somehow much more rough and ready – more comfy and welcoming, I suppose. I set about exploring the city in earnest, and was aware that the history of the city seemed to be told by the names of its streets – Ausiàs Marc, Consell de Cent, Bruc, Via Laietana. I had no idea what these names referred to, but somehow they conjured up a magical past that fired my imagination.

It was late spring 1988, and it was a great time to be footloose and fancy free. I spent most of my time with other foreigners who were just as intent on enjoying themselves as I was. So when my brother and most of the people I had met moved on, over the summer, I was left alone with a rudimentary grasp of Spanish and a strong sense that there was little point in making friends with people who would soon be leaving. I think it was then that I also began to notice other foreigners’ negative attitudes to the Catalan language.

Obviously, for all of us, it made sense to concentrate on Spanish – we had no idea how long we were going to stay, and for me at least, a good grasp of it might open up the doors to a few years travelling in South America. But perhaps because I had reasonably good working knowledge of French, my attempts at making myself understood often led me to use Catalan words for things. ‘Farina’ for flour seemed more obvious than ‘harina’, as did ‘formatge’ rather than ‘queso’ for cheese. It was obvious to me even then that Catalan had more in common with French than it did Spanish. One only had to look at the similarity between ‘Si us plau’ and ‘S’il vous plait’, and when we were out drinking the fact that my Catalan friends asked for ‘una birra’ rather than ‘una cerveza’ seemed much easier – particularly after you had consumed a few of them.

However, I was working at my Spanish, and nobody expected me to do anything else. People even translated street names into Spanish. I know they were just trying to be helpful, but it could be very confusing at times. I once got invited to a party – ‘Calle Fernando just off The Ramblas,’ I had been told. I started my search at the top of The Rambles – Santa Anna, Canuda, Portaferrissa, Cardenal Casañas, Ferran, Escudellers. I walked all the way down and there was no sign of it. I tried the other side – Santa Mónica, Nou de la Rambla, Unió, Hospital. As I was having no luck, I went for a drink on the terrace of Glaçiar in Plaça Reial feeling a bit sorry for myself. Luckily, I ran into some people who were also going to the party. ‘Calle Fernando is Spanish and Carrer Ferran is Catalan’, they laughed as we downed our beer and left. How was I supposed to know?

The names of the streets, then, seemed to tell two conflicting stories, and I resolved to find out more. Another conflict that seemed crucial to the people was centred on football. 1988 was a great time to be English in Barcelona. Terry Venables had recently managed Barça, and Gary Lineker was the star accompanied by Steve Archibald and Mark Hughes. I, needless to say, became a fan, in part because reading about football in the local newspapers was a lot easier than politics.

I used to go to a bar in the Barri Gòtic to watch the games. The great thing about Bar Lopez, or Santi’s as I used to call it, was that they had two televisions. Santi Senior supported Real Madrid so the telly next to the bar always showed the Madrid game, whilst Santi Junior was a Barça fan, which meant that you could always watch ‘el equip blaugrana’ in the back room. On football nights, I actually managed to find myself a position where I could watch two games at once – pure heaven.

Perhaps where I decided to sit, though, meant that I really had not taken sides yet, but it did give me the chance to observe the different ways in which the two groups reacted. Madrid’s goals were celebrated with ‘Olé’ and flamenco twirls, whereas when Barça scored the tables were hit in a way that was full of restrained aggression and pride. The Catalans reaction was less attractive than that of the Spanish, but much closer to how I naturally reacted myself. If a goal was missed or a game inexplicably lost, the back room was full of frustrated expletives – ‘Collons… Me cago en Déu.’

‘Me cago en Déu’ soon became an unanalysed part of my vocabulary. I, like my fellow Barça fans, used it to express frustration at their lack of scoring ability, but it also came in handy when the Metro arrived late or when I suspected I had been overcharged in one of the late-night bars around my Plaça Reial stamping ground. It probably took me about six months to stop and think about it word for word. This came in a kind of Eureka moment, I had in the presence of a couple of rather gorgeous hippy girls whilst sitting outside Glaçiar in Plaça Reial. I knew the expression also existed in Spanish, but overhearing them talk to each other in Catalan, I was stopped in my tracks… ‘Me cago’ – I shit… ‘en Déu’ – on God… ‘Me cago en Dèu’ – I shit on God? What an extreme concept. In English the word ‘shit’ is bad enough on its own without mixing it up with blasphemy. Other swearwords like ‘De putamare’ were just as shocking. It is used to mean absolutely fantastic but literally it would be translated as ‘Of whore-mother’ – a guttural reference to the perfect woman who opens her legs and irons your clothes as well… and I was hearing these words coming from the lips of two apparently well-brought up university students. Culture shock!

The fact that the Catalans suffered from a scatological obsession also hit me in the face quite early on. I remember going to see the nativity scene on display in Plaça Sant Jaume just before my first Christmas in Barcelona. It was presented so beautifully – Jesus’ birth with low level lighting, life size figures of Mary, Joseph, the shepherds and the kings. But at the back was a figure of a man dressed in traditional Catalan costume with his trousers down. He was bent double and the product of his efforts, exquisitely modelled in fibreglass, lay below his bare bottom. For me, this was another moment when what I was experiencing did fit in to the world as I had been taught to see it. What on earth was he doing there? Was it some kind of Dalí-esque joke?

Nothing could be further from the truth - this was El Caganer, an important pillar of the Catalan psyche. He is ‘The Shitter’ who fertilises the ground, and is even present at the birth of Christ, arguably the most significant moment in modern history. What is even more amazing is that he is regarded as a normal and necessary part of the Nativity Scene displayed in almost every Catalan household over the holiday period, and in some circles caganers are collectors’ items.

Along similar lines is ‘Caga Tió’ – the shitting log, which is the centrepiece of pre-Christmas children’s parties. Children go up in turn and hit the log, which normally has a face painted on it, with a stick. Angelic boys and girls can be heard shouting ‘Caga, caga, caga’ – ‘Shit, shit, shit’ – and presents are expelled, as if by magic, from under a tablecloth that covers its backside. I am sure Freud would have a lot to say about this.

I was picking up a sense of these people, but only loosely aware of how they described themselves, which is in terms of ‘rauxa’ and ‘seny’. The latter of these, ‘seny’ is the attribute that the Catalans like to sell to the outside world as their public face, and a very rough approximation is common sense. At the same time, though, it is fair play, amicable reserve and looking before you leap.

When I arrived in 1988, the idea of ‘seny’ seemed to be embodied by Jordi Pujol, the president of the Generalitat, Catalunya’s governing body. He was a conservative middle-class ex-banker who was now running the country. He had been arrested during the Franco regime for promoting Catalan culture and language, but was moderation incarnate, capable of pacting with the Castillian right as long as what they had to offer fitted in with his Catalan nationalist game plan.

Although I had no idea of what it meant my life was guided by a kind of happy holiday rauxa, that I only became aware of on the night of Sant Joan, Midsummer’s Eve. It was so amazingly crazy. We went for a few beers in the barri and then took the metro up to Plaça Espanya around eleven, freezing cold bottles of cava tucked under our arms. Corks were popped before we hit the street, which was alive with the smell of gunpowder. Rockets and bangers exploded around us, people dragged us into mad dances. We slugged on our cava exchanging bottles with whomever we came across. People hugged us and offered tokes on their spliffs. I can only remember thinking that in Britain this would be termed public disorder but here it meant joyful happiness, uncontrolled freedom and let’s party. What a paradigm shift that first Sant Joan was for me!

Although run by the civic authority, El Ajuntament, Barcelona’s annual city festival, La Mercé, held in September also has its moments of rauxa. The Catalans’ obsession with fire is exemplified in the Correfoc. This is rauxa with seny. There is a procession of demons called diables through the streets each person setting off a splendid firework at a given time. The impression is wild but everything stays just this side of total chaos, so amazingly no-one gets hurt.


The focal point of La Mercè, as it is with so many cultural events, is Plaça Sant Jaume which is the historical heart of Barcelona, and therefore, of Catalunya. In the years I lived in the Barri Gòtic, I went there on Sunday evenings on a regular basis. Why? Because, on Sunday nights in Plaça Sant Jaume, people dance the Sardana.

Amongst the foreigners I knew, the Sardana was treated as a bit of a joke, perhaps because it is not as explosive and passionate as flamenco, they always saw it as an example of how boring the Catalans were. I did not agree. There is something I find innately attractive about seeing a group of musicians sitting on a small raised wooden platform making acoustic music for people to dance to. And, in actual fact, the Sardana is full of musical complexities, subtleties and eccentricities. The wind instruments are primitive and harsh on the ear, every piece begins with a wild whistle introduction and then a Boom-Bu-Bu-Boom bass, which could almost be heavy metal, kicks in. The tunes and harmonies float from major to minor chopping, at least to the incogniscienti, inexplicably between 4/4 and 6/8.

Even the dance itself balances the complex and the absurdly simple. The dancers form circles that can be as small as five or six people but can grow to include fifty as new dancers arrive. Depending on the rhythmic thrust of the section, there are two steps, and these circular movements are danced almost like individual ripples within the larger collective circle. The dancers raise their hands and move their feet while the caller, usually an elderly man, signals changes in the music by pressing the palm of the person next to him. Within in moments the message has been passed along to all the dancers and everybody changes step on time. It seems to me an incredible example of cooperation and communication; seny in action.

Another folkloric practice also particular to Catalunya, as far as I know, are castells. I first saw these human castles during La Mercè in Plaça Sant Jaume but they are celebrated all over Catalunya. There are three parts to the castle – ‘la pinya’ or base, ‘el tronc’ or trunk and the ‘pom de dalt’ or crown of the castle. Watching them being put together is an amazing and inspiring sight, and the first time I saw it brought tears to my eyes.

At the base, a group of thirty or forty strong men lock forearms, shoulders and heads in what appears to be a disorganised rugby scrum. Four more big men climb on top of these and lock forearms in a circle. Four lighter men now climb up the tower and do the same. There then may two more floors of yet lighter people often adolescents – girls are not excluded. By this time, the castell may be as high as ten metres, and those at the top are a long way from the ground. Legs begin to wobble and brows start to show the strain, but up goes a child of nine or ten who forms an arch over the top pair. Finally, the anxaneta, a tiny child of five or six scales the castle. All the adults look up ready to catch if, as often happens, the tower crumbles and falls. The tension can be cut like a knife, but finally the youngster hitches his or her way right to the top, raises an arm and the castell is counted as valid. Everybody comes down as quickly and safely as they can. The kids are met by hugs and kisses from their proud but distraught parents, whilst the burly men exchange manly embraces with their equally burly companions. It is a moment of victory and emotion, and if this is not an amazing example of what an amazing people are capable of achieving through trust and working together, tell me what is.