Barcelona, now

ketanketan Warmly booming riffs 3,093 Posts
edited September 2017 in Off Topic (NRR)
Any strutters living in Barca at the moment? (Duder?) In town for the week, staying right down by the water/La Rambla.  Any reccos on super nice (not necessarily expensive) places to eat and events/happenings. Would love to meet up and buy a drink or three if anyone is about.

Bonus: Anyone else going to this Lurv Rave near Girona on the weekend??  



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  • DuderonomyDuderonomy Haut de la Garenne 7,777 Posts
    I'm up the coast for a couple of days but I'll be back by Friday (I think).

    Food.
    Cova Fumada in Barcelonetta for lunch is a very nice tapas/seafood experience (check online for loc and opening times). If you get there and it's closed/full, the bar next to it on the corner is also very good.
    Another place I was going to recommend closed recently but the chef has just opened a new place: My Fucking Restaurant
    http://www.myfuckingrestaurant.com/
    El Disbarat near Fontana metro on carrer Montseny does great Catalan food (meat cooked over a wood fire).
    Carrer Blai for pinchos & beers (Poble Sec metro) is very nice pedestrian street full of bars and outside tables.

    Im a bit drunk right now but more places will come to me! Keep an eye on this thread.

  • ketanketan Warmly booming riffs 3,093 Posts
    Nice, thanks!  

  • DuderonomyDuderonomy Haut de la Garenne 7,777 Posts
    Craft/artisan beer is so hot right now in BCN.
    Garage Bar http://garagebeer.co/en/

    A few others mentioned here: 
    https://www.timeout.com/barcelona/bars-and-pubs/best-craft-beer-bars-in-barcelona

    Gin & Tonic is also something they take very seriously here. Just been at a bar with 130 GnT combos... easy enough to find a bar in BCN offering a good selection.
    One of my favourite cocktail bars (which also has a decent music policy) is called El Ciclista in Gracia
    https://www.google.es/maps/place//data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x12a4a296440b3641:0xc78e8266af82ee37?sa=X&dcr=0

  • skelskel You can't cheat karma 5,033 Posts
    That train line tho

    talmboit Barna Sants like a dude know wtf they mean

    hatef it
    ended up in some random town
    ::doodoo:

  • ketanketan Warmly booming riffs 3,093 Posts
    skel said:
    That train line tho

    talmboit Barna Sants like a dude know wtf they mean

    hatef it
    ended up in some random town
    ::doodoo:
    It's okay to hate a train line. 

    I'm pretty blown away by the city.  It's like a mix between new york and mumbai.

    Are there any good documentaries about the history of flamenco?  I'm finding some interesting flix that demonstrate the culture (incl Latcho Drom and this https://www.nfb.ca/film/flamenco_at_515/) but looking to learn more about the origins.

  • foefoe turo de la peira 196 Posts
    try the croissants at the forn at placa del pedro, only authentic croissants in town. nice as a snack. close to it you have a nice and cozy restaurant called Rabipelao raval. 
    https://www.google.es/maps/place/Rabipelao+Raval+/+Arepas+y+cocteles+tropicales/@41.3800657,2.1648972,340m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m8!1m2!2m1!1sglories+kebab!3m4!1s0x0:0x2d9f0fc6431fc9a5!8m2!3d41.3804398!4d2.1643288

    the indian is horrible here, i've switched to moroccan.

    my budget is usually on the low side, that limits my suggestions some.
    also it is the south american places that impresses me here, not used to it where i'm from. maybe not that exotic to you. there are great restaurants everywhere in barcelona. do as duderomy suggests and get up to Gracia.

  • DuderonomyDuderonomy Haut de la Garenne 7,777 Posts
    It's not very often that I encounter an alcohol that I've never tried before, but the Catalans have a drink called Ratafia you won't find elsewhere in Spain let alone Europe. Sweet liqueur that's great with some ice.

    Also keep an eye out for bodegas that sell vermouth from the barrel - another quintessential Catalan activity (usually around 11am but any time can be vermouth time in my books).

  • DuderonomyDuderonomy Haut de la Garenne 7,777 Posts
    foe said:

    the indian is horrible here, i've switched to moroccan.

    There is a Pakistani place in the Raval that does good curry with heat. Only place I've found so far!

  • ketanketan Warmly booming riffs 3,093 Posts
    FWIW, we bought some legit veggie samosas and chai from a Pakistani man in the park the other day.  

  • foefoe turo de la peira 196 Posts
    foe said:

    the indian is horrible here, i've switched to moroccan.

    There is a Pakistani place in the Raval that does good curry with heat. Only place I've found so far!
    do they have the good naan aswell? i'm fiending for some proper coriander naan.

  • DuderonomyDuderonomy Haut de la Garenne 7,777 Posts
    foe said:
    foe said:

    the indian is horrible here, i've switched to moroccan.

    There is a Pakistani place in the Raval that does good curry with heat. Only place I've found so far!
    do they have the good naan aswell? i'm fiending for some proper coriander naan.

    Yes, but you can also get reasonable naan in Joaquin Costa (near MACBA). The place with blue and white tiling around the door, on the left as you walk downhill - they do kebabs but also curry (although not particularly hot), and they cook the naan there on one of those round stones. It's good.

  • DuderonomyDuderonomy Haut de la Garenne 7,777 Posts
    D'oh - Ketan, I forgot to show you the Cat Zoo round the back of le Boquerria. I really have low weed tolerance these days 

  • DuderonomyDuderonomy Haut de la Garenne 7,777 Posts
    Foe - the Pakistani restaurant I was talking about is on carrer del Marques de Barbera. Let me know if you want to meet up for a meal there as my girlfriend is typically averse to spicy-hot food.

  • ketanketan Warmly booming riffs 3,093 Posts
    D'oh - Ketan, I forgot to show you the Cat Zoo round the back of le Boquerria. I really have low weed tolerance these days 
    Cat Zoo?!  Sounds wild.  Thanks again for the gift, tho. The Love Rave was a bit wet but really, really fun times...  

    In case anyone else in the city/visiting reads this, we tested out My Fucking Restaurant and it was GREAT.  We did a tapas tasting menu and almost everything was revelatory in some way.  Even the olives made me re-think olives.  Only the mussels were .



  • DuderonomyDuderonomy Haut de la Garenne 7,777 Posts
    Ketan, you're missing all the action. It's maybe not headline news ATM with earthquakes, hurricanes and rocketbwoy, but there's a potential revolution/secession on the cards for Catalunya, and if Madrid shows it's fascist roots, maybe some civil war/military intervention to look forward to.

    Few of the opinion pieces I read mention that the shadow of Franco looms large and the constitution drawn up by the military was a joke, both sides respective political establishments have corruption issues that are handily obscured by the referendum issue (office fire in Valencia anyone?), and this referendum could polarise society here whatever the result.

    Whole thing is a bad look, but without question I fail to comprehend how Madrid could deal with it any worse - Rajoy's latest speech admonished the Catalans for being DISOBEDIENT! It's like he's trying to make them more angry. I have to believe he's antagonizing them to justify crushing dissent.

  • ketanketan Warmly booming riffs 3,093 Posts
    We recently spent time in Ille-sur-tet (Catalan France) and Ascain (Basque France), and I was fascinated by how these communities in France had a (seemingly) harmonious form of independence within the state... but those same regions in Spain have been fighting for independence for ages. I was curious why the difference (I'm pretty ignorant of French/Spanish history), but someone explained that it's basically <Franco>. Quite an interesting case study of politics and diversity... and doesn't seem to be over yet!

  • foefoe turo de la peira 196 Posts
    i think france works hard to assimilate everyone, which makes a bad immigrant policy, but maybe is more effective in keeping resident communities?

  • I've been watching the referendum stuff in Spain a bit, surely not as closely as Duder though. I'm in two minds about nationalist/self determination movements. I think the concerns of the people who want independence are often valid, like having some different societal values from the government that rules them (Scotland, Basque) or historical fucked-ness (like Ireland). But at the same time I'd rather the UK became a more just place than only Scotland getting the better governance, and so on internationally. But we don't live in that world. And if anything, the re-emergence of nationalist movements is a symptom of greater problems with the structure of these societies.

    Anyway down to brass tacks: what's this shit about a cat zoo in Barca?? Is that like the cat boat in Amsterdam?
    Duderonomy

  • DuderonomyDuderonomy Haut de la Garenne 7,777 Posts
    Here's a good (admittedly long) article that gives some context:

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/29/national-museum-spanish-civil-war-barcelona

    It's an obviously complicated history, but the present reality for many Catalans is that Spain's elite still carry the family names of people who went to bed as fascist murderers and woke up as law-abiding democrats.

  • DuderonomyDuderonomy Haut de la Garenne 7,777 Posts

    Anyway down to brass tacks: what's this shit about a cat zoo in Barca?? Is that like the cat boat in Amsterdam?
    Animals judged too dangerous to be allowed in contact with humans are kept in the zoo: these cats are stone cold killers, unrepentant and unrehabilitable (possibly with Castilian political inclinations as well).

  • ketanketan Warmly booming riffs 3,093 Posts
    Talk to me about Barcelona, now, Duder.  Looks WILD from Lisbon.

  • Yeah I can't tell what happens now... I mean, of course, if the central gov doesn't want the result, it doesn't matter how valid it might be, they'll continue blocking it by force, but then what? 

  • DuderonomyDuderonomy Haut de la Garenne 7,777 Posts


    Duderonomy said:
    I fail to comprehend how Madrid could deal with it any worse
    I had to say it.

    Shit's been craaazy in some places, but ultra quiet and chilled in others. Many stories and anecdotes flying around social media about levels of police brutality. The thing that is going unreported is the reaction of (some of) the Spanish. Last week there was news footage of police vans leaving southern Spanish towns to raptuous crowds waving them off as heros... to travel north and oppress (with extreme prejudice) their fellow Spaniards? Right.
    On top of that you have videos of Spaniards showing national pride on Saturday by gathering in a central Madrid plaza (probably many other parts of Spain too), blaring out an old Francoist anthem and performing Nazi salutes. Totally unreported in the MSM as Trump would say.
    Nazi salutes from Franco-ultras have been seen around Barcelona too, but with little media coverage, but it's precisely this, which is easy to dismiss as blind Catalan prejudice until you see it in action, that the independentistas have been saying they want to leave.
    I tried in the past to remain neutral and call out sweeping generalisations about Spanish fascism when I heard them, but any society that permits that behaviour without calling it out and confronting it is sick - the thing is, the video I saw has teenagers who are probably too young and ignorant to fully understand what that symbolizes. Again the blame for this can be laid at Spain's refusal to have a national dialogue about Franco. Sweeping the horrors of it under the carpet and pretending it didn't happen results in antagonism simmering away for decades, and to my friends and facebook adversaries who've said the whole independence movement is just greed - bullshit. The recent history (if you want to dismiss Franco and the injustices of Transition as "ages ago" which is a massive disrespect to anyone over the age of 50) of this is a 2003 attempt to have the exact nature of Catalunya's identity, laws and limits codified into a statute, and the following 14 years of Madrid obstructionism. The Catalans have been trying to voice dissent legally as part of a democracy that just doesn't function as such, and yes, I will admit there is most likely a high degree of opportunism on the part of politicians using current financial hardships to sharpen the debate, but after yesterday I can forgive all that as a means to a justifiable end.

    Anyway, the Catalans are calling a general strike tomorrow. My biggest fear is that they try to enact independence on the back of what was clearly not a democratic process - through no fault of their own - they need to be patient enough to seek their goals legitimately by pressuring the EU while they have the sympathy and attention of a much bigger and easily more receptive audience than the fascist establishment in Madrid. They would be throwing away the sacrifices and hardships of those who were beaten if they gave Madrid any more reason to call into question the legality of their referendum. If anyone is prevented from voting, whether 'si' or 'no', the whole thing is a sham.
    ketan

  • DuderonomyDuderonomy Haut de la Garenne 7,777 Posts
    I guess I don't need to add that yesterday was the beginng of the end for Catalunya as part of Spain. It's no longer 'if' but 'when'...

    ...which leaves me screwed as I'm paid by the EU! Nationalist bastards.

  • Thanks for the updates

  • JimsterJimster Cruffiton.etsy.com 6,883 Posts
    Spexit.

  • DuderonomyDuderonomy Haut de la Garenne 7,777 Posts
    The propaganda war is surreal; Madrid is claiming that hundreds of riot police were injured, and that they need to be protected, which to me sounds like playing the victim card (!?!?) to excuse sending in the army.

    The Spanish authorities haven't explained how heavily armed and armored riot police were hurt by peaceful voters, unless they were using their faces to damage truncheons and boots.


    And to add a further surreal twist, Nigel Farage is the politician to have offered the strongest condemnation of events.

  • JimsterJimster Cruffiton.etsy.com 6,883 Posts
    Nigel Farage
    Ah, never been one to resist a pop at the weak EU, our Nige.  Everyone is better for being out of something.  Man is a xenophobe.  Probably blames the EU for his plane crash
    Duderonomy

  • JimsterJimster Cruffiton.etsy.com 6,883 Posts
    But in this case, he's right.   
    Duderonomy

  • DuderonomyDuderonomy Haut de la Garenne 7,777 Posts
    Pours wine.


    Sips.



    Gulps.
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