Barcelona, now
ketan
Warmly booming riffs 3,155 Posts
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??
Bonus: Anyone else going to this Lurv Rave near Girona on the weekend??
Comments
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.
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
talmboit Barna Sants like a dude know wtf they mean
hatef it
ended up in some random town
::doodoo:
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.
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.
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).
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
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.
Anyway down to brass tacks: what's this shit about a cat zoo in Barca?? Is that like the cat boat in Amsterdam?
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.
Duderonomy said: 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.
...which leaves me screwed as I'm paid by the EU! Nationalist bastards.
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.
Sips.
Gulps.