Just another "guiri"

Last Saturday I went out shopping. It's true that I needed a new coat. I still do, since I did not buy it. The winter sales frenzy had taken over my fellow "Barceloneses", (tourists included) and I was soon fed up with trying to enter stores packed with people, sweating just to manage to grab the item I had spotted and then queue all the way to the dressing room and to the cashier's. And though there are people that still find this an amusing way to spend their Saturday mornings, I don't.

I soon found myself, wondering around the crowded streets around the old port. I saw the flocks of British tourists -the "guiris" as the locals call them-, stretching out their tummies to face the sun, having their beers with shrimps instead of the traditional fish and chips, casting their lazy shadows all around the Rambla del Mar. I went on, up the Rambla, on a winter afternoon that felt like spring, with the sun showering the poplars with its coppery light, watched the kids passing by, adoring their huge cotton candies, the street-theater heroes, some performing restlessly, other still, motionless human statues covered with body paint.

I stopped at a second-hand bookseller's bench and bought a collection of Julio Cortazar's novels for 2 euros, put it under my armpit and strolled by Plaza Reial like the fake boheme intellectual I would like to be, stopped and read the opening part of "Rayuela" at my favourite Plaza del Rei, had a cup of coffee and headed towards Passeig de Gracia.

It was getting dark when I arrived at Plaza Catalunya. The shoppers, beaten and exhausted, were flooding the streets outside Corte Ingles and around Portal del Angel. The shoplifters and the pickpockets were calling it a day, while the tourists were just getting ready for Saturday night and as the last light of the day was brushing off the golden rooftops of Casa Rocamora, I felt ridiculously happy, satisfied and complete, silently amazed by the city I am -sometimes uselessly- spending my days and eventually realized, that although almost a year has passed, I am still, just another guiri.