They are many adjectives you can use to describe Barcelona, but eccentric and quirky are two that leap to mind. Until recently, nudity was not an offence in the city and there was one guy in particular who liked to walk the streets in the altogether. He had a lot to show off, including tattoos over his arse and an enormously impressive meat-whistle with a large gold ring attached to the end of it. This gentleman inspired me to write about some of the quirky features of the city which I put under the entirely unremarkable heading of Barcelona Sketches.
1. The Pragmatic Porron
The Catalan people and their capital city, Barcelona, are strange opposites. Barcelona is a raunchy, exuberant city with ornate, flamboyant architecture and a dynamic street life. Yet the Catalans are pragmatic, if not phlegmatic and serious.
You’ll see what I mean at any Catalan family restaurant where the greeting is likely to be, “digame!” – speak to me! Often abbreviated to “diga!” – speak. This parsimonious attitude to charm does not mean they are rude, but they can be abrupt.
So you’ve been shown to your table and handed a menu written entirely in Catalan. Before you have warmed the seat, a waiter is standing over you with a notebook and pencil. Realising you need time to decipher the menu, he brings you a carafe of vino de la casa – the house plonk. Only in Catalunya, it’s a trick carafe called a porron, a device the Catalans invented to sabotage your meal.
The porron is a flat-bottomed bulb with a short neck. Sticking out of the bulb is a spout in the shape of an elongated teardrop that comes to a narrow point. Like most novices, I assumed the spout was for pouring. A messy mistake. As I was busy mopping up, I saw the bloke at the next table using the thing as it was intended, like a wine-skin.
The porron is typical of both the pragmatic and the phlegmatic in the Catalan. Pragmatic: why bother with a glass? And phlegmatic: the operation is performed with no more fanfare than the picking of teeth, even though misfiring could devastate an hombre’s ego.
The same pragmatism applies to the food. A Menu del Dia is no-nonsense to the point of austerity: your meat (or fish) will look just like it did in the shop, only cooked.
In the meantime, following another pragmatic Catalan custom, you will retain your knife and fork from the Primero to use for the Segundo.
This lack of flourish is totally at odds with Barcelona’s energetic vibe and florid architecture which, in the case of Gaudi, can border on the pornographic. But Gaudi himself was also a contradiction. The maestro of the ornamental overstatement ended up a religious ascetic whose idea of lunch was probably rice and beans. Any gastronomic excesses were saved for his buildings which are choked with organic effusion and erotic innuendo, cornucopias of repressed sexuality.