Back from my wanderings through the land of straight roads and windmills and at home in a Barcelona distinctly less happy from the one I’d left behind, I noticed how high the number of beggars had risen. Before, I had known them all, or rather it never surprised me to see one, because they either looked familiar or it were about time a beggar would emerge. The accidental beggar, you could say, was part of the scenery, and it was in this tranquil and touristic manner that I had learned to endure the classic portrait of a young gypsie woman, sometimes not all that young, with a sleeping baby on her arm, drugged they are, some say, picturing a devoted mother Mary in faithful trust that her lord will have decided what’s best for her. Some fall for this image and spend their guilty money, some ignore it and some, like myself at times I must admit, get upset from what we see, not always able to accept the mockery that is made of feelings we still value sacred and true, even though our parents left their churches for us a long time ago.
When I left town to set out on adventures which have been described in detail on ondertusseninbarcelona.blogspot.com, the first kneelers had been appearing in the streets. You’ll probably know them, they are standing on their knees on the sidewalk with a piece of carton in front of them or sometimes hanging round their neck. No tengo trabajo y tres niños enfermos, the cards normally read. Their posture is just as devotional and a lot more painful than the gypsie women‘s, but since they seem prepared to truly suffer and they usually are of the prescribed faith, they seldom provoke outrage. I suddenly saw a whole lot more of them upon entering what during my absence I realized had become my hometown.
Then I went underground and I saw a man of northafrican descent who prostrated himself between stations in the manner of the brethren, lamenting and smashing his hands on the floor where other people just had put there shoes, and although his speech was well-delivered and equally understood (he had just been released from prison and hadn’t been able to find work), he attracted positive reactions only from some pakistani, accustomed I guess to this particular mode of submission.
I saw begging musicians as well, or musical beggars perhaps, either way you couldn’t call them real musicians. Their trade was not to evoke pleasure or admiration, but pity. They were a man and a woman dragging behind them a dirty shopping bag on wheels, laden with a soundsystem and with a cd player on top. The man sort of accompanied their soundbag on the concertina and the woman sort of asked money for it. They clearly felt uncomfortable about their affairs, and I thought they must be from Donetsk or somewhere.
All of this made me wonder how many beggars the streets of Barcelona would bear. Although there still is a lot of it around, la ciudad condal is not the best place to go asking for money. We expect people to have regular paychecks and full access to all services here. Even a simple tip in a bar is sometimes too much asked for. This is, after all, the best city in the world to live in. I remembered what la chica crisis had said when she left me behind on the cobbled streets of tiny windy Tarifa: not everybody gets to meet me, but you did and I hope you’ll think fondly of me. Would the unfortunate ones who end up on the pavement recall earlier times when others took it hard here, I asked, and would those stories yield the inspiration needed to rise up against arrogance and complacency? Or would they be happy with barely escaping alive, letting themselves be shoved aside by a society that can’t find means for them any longer? I had seen economic hard times before, but in a different place and in a different mood, as careless and easily motivated as I was and still so unimaginably young. Now I felt old, even middleaged, like I were no longer ready to accept the stupidity of this world and at the same time not having the taste to fight it. And I longed for reason, but there isn’t much of it around these days when money is the only thing that’s counted.
