Squating Barcelona and Grenada

 

 

So the plan is to get to Ibiza and tend bar for a few months during the tourist season, saving enough money to get to some tropical place like Cambodia or Vietnam. In the mean time, I really needed to sleep long and hard and not get asked to many questions and avoid loud, beer drinking, touristic type...s. The answer seemed pretty obvious, there are a number of squats in Barcelona where i could do a little free construction work in exchange for a mattress on the ground and some heavily cooked food that had been liberated from the local refuse bin.

My traveling friend, Mike, was skeptical, to say the least, as he had live in close proximity to a squat in Copenhagen and his car had been burned durning one of their demonstrations. Eventually we agreed that they were similar to ignorant children but could tolerate the enviroment for a week or so.

Squating is basiclly taking an unoccupied building by force and then making it livable while having much trouble with legal proceedings. La Rimaia sat on a prime block near the center of tourism and admists electronic stores, chocolate boutiques, specility liquor shops and the University. Tje bottom and first floors had, at one point, housed a print shop as evidenced by jugs of aging ink and loose type sets. The large spaces of both has been cleard for social space and a meter high stage had been raised of rubble to complement a bar of the same dimesions. Drinks and food were sold when goods had been liberated from dumpsters. The latter was especially noxious.

Off the stairs, between the 1st and 2nd floors, directly below the elevator and above the water main access, was a conveinetly placed, maintenance shop that now housed floor to ceiling brick rubble. The kitchen, soon-to-be-dead laundry machine, bathroom(singular), dinning room, and first come housing were on the second. The third and fourth were a series of junk piles and beds. There was space on both, but we took to the East wing of the 5th floor because it had a door and reasoned that these lazy, mulleted, malnutritioned give me kids wouldnt be bothered to climb higher than necessary. Even if the stairs were laid with white rose marble.

The wing were mirrors of each other with a large room to the street followed by entry way, kitchen, dinning room, bathroom, and two smaller bedrooms with a common enclosed balcony that faced a covered car lot. Almost every interior wall had beeen demolished and it was a mixture of water, glass, hanging eletrical, and those clay cinder blocks common to hot climite construction. Two lights on the floor worked. The front has a mystery water leak and the electrical vines produced current when switch box was kicked just right.

We took the south facing room to shovel out for our burrow. In one corner salvagable salvage were stacked. The floor was swept and some found mattressed were leaned over our luggage. With the floor clean I took the lightest sweepings and covered the floor surrounding our gear with a light rouge that stood out against the white tile.

"is that to see if any one gets to our stuff?" asked Mike

"Yeah"

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Awoke at 2045 after a nap. Hungry.

Life sounds downstairs and feeet shift in the kitchen.

1) Raid dumpster

2) Cut celery to chunks and place in large bin for 3 days in the sun. Leave other vegs in common area to extrude oily decomposition juice.

3) Boil rotted veg. Artichock is normally a very tough plant. But if you allow it rot for a week, then it will be come soft enough be boiled to a maluable consistancy.

4) Mash boiled rotten veg with celery aka. Shreck's toe nail clippings. Allow to set.

5) Make breast sized pie.

6) Fry in excessively large pan so the oil barely reaches cooking temperature.

7) Serve with some parellely derived junk.

Rubber oil pucks.

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Going out is the easy part, getting back into the building is the trouble. The front door only opens from the inside and sometimes it is hard to get someone to help. Or if not, climb the electrical conduit coming subterrianly to a balcony and slip inside.

Floors 6, 7, & 8 are a mixture of sealed and cohearsed rooms. All unoccupied. Same condition as the beforementioned. 

The modicum of work has been applied to the ninth, last, and most beautiful floor. One large master bedroom facing north to the hills cupping the valley of Barcelona, guest bedroom with bathroom, large kitchen with bar, spacious dining and sitting room opening to an appartment sized terrace with stairs leading to a second terrace.

La Rimaia is the tallest builing on the block. The view? Glorious. 

Death In The Afternoon

06.04.2010
Death in the afternoon

All week Grenada has been engulfed in a rolling festival. What this means for me is that getting from point A to B usually involves running through a parade. It is a nice change of pace, but the tourists are a bit lost and scared by loud noises. Asia has asked me take guest to the carnival each night. It looks just like an American fair but the fat people eating deep fried Twinkies have been replace by amazing women in flamenco dresses. We go on rides, have fun in the discos, and go home well before closing time. 

There should be no responsibilities until night even though the hostel was full of unfriendly French Canadians, massive and amazingly polite rugby Kiwis, a dozen Americans, 2 tiny Kiwi gals, a Brazilian and 18 member from a Spanish bachelor party who brought a mermaid blowup doll everywhere they went. Needing to make this hostel a home had been a challenge at times since at anytime I could be asked to move rooms to accommodate paying guest or I could be out of a bed all together. One time after a heavy night of plastic grins and second hand smoke, I found that my room had been locked from the inside with a security chain. Not being in the mood to kindly request entrance I banged and yelled a bit. The door was pushed closed and then pulled back with the roar of a grotesquely hairy El Salvadorian clad in cheap tattoos, gold chains, wife beater and tighty whities(this is completely true). Sure as the day is long, we were not going to make any meaningful communication and so we proceeded to grunt, gesture, and curse while his lady friend ensured her modesty by lazily rolling over in the sheets and slurping at mixed drink on the floor. The night clerk appeared and explained that my room had been sold and they were low class people that should be ignored. He offered to bring another mattress to the kitchen, but after 4 days of being required to show people to the May Carnival the only desire was sleep.... and the overstuffed, cigarette ash stinking, communal couch would do just fine thank you kindly. 

  The sheets are pulled off me. Someone is talking Spanish, smells like whiskey, and is a foot from my face. I push him away and pull the sheets back over. He pulls the sheets off again and continues on in Spanish then his friend walks up and is sober enough to realize that I'm not one of their party. He tries to give me a half drank beer. I pull the sheets back up, "No quiero, no quiero." "Hey sorry dude, we are looking for our friend. We're looking for the bachelor. Did you see anyone?" they said in drunk Spanish.
"No, Quiero dormir. DORMIR," I explained.
"Sorry dude, we haven't seen him in hours. Hey dude, you want this beer? I just opened it. Hey we smoke this purro and we wait for him."
"No, va. Soy duermo! DUERMO!"
"Jesus Bitch, this guy is an asshole. Lets go dude, let him sleep. "

I fell back to sleep. Sometime later the sheets were pulled off again and six guys were standing around me speaking Spanish and trying to pick me up. "No no yo duermo aqui." But they are to blasted to realize that I was not their friend. I grab the nearest beer out of someones hand, throw it at the far wall, and lie back down pulling the sheet over my head. They leave without making a sound. At this point I should mention that Spanish bachelor parties make The Hangover look like Sunday school. The norm is to get absolutely bloto, do drugs, talk loudly, womanize and go out wearing the same shirt. Go figure.... 


     The night clerk woke me up at about 6:30. Must have looked pretty rough because he offered to let me go to his house and sleep. Instead I had breakfast and listened to the howling from the bachelor party. Eventually people started to complain and the mousey morning clerk whispered something and then ran into the office and began her routine of rolling enormous cigarettes from extra strong tobacco and smoking only the first third while sipping Coca Cola that had been agitated with a fork to remove the carbonation.
     Feeling in the mood to kick some ass, I went up stairs to ask the guys to settle down. The first door I banged on opened after a minute. There were 5 guys standing around in the front bedroom quietly smoking. I asked them to please try to be quiet because other guests were sleeping. They looked at me sheepishly, the door to the back bedroom opened and a confident looking guy came out. We talked a bit in English, he apologized for his friends, but seemed to be purposely blocking my view into the other room. I thanked him, asked if they needed anything, and then leaned to the side to grab some empty liquor bottles. Looking back at me through the half closed door to the back bedroom was a very tall, cross dressing prostitute wearing a shinny blue dress and sliver heals.
   I was having mixed feeling about confronting the room that was making the noise. I knocked and immediately a very muscular guy with no shirt stumbled out with a cigerrete in one hand, put his arms around me, and began low whispering in Spanish. I'm not sure what he said because I was focusing on the sticky sweat of his shaven chest that he had pressed my face against. Another guy came out and dragged the two of us inside.
   The room was a stale mixture of smoke, beer, cologne, and testosterone. They kept yelling until I had a shot and drank a full beer. After I finished they were quiet and asked what I needed. "Oh we need you to be quiet. Other guest are sleeping," I requested. "No, what do you want dude," and someone pulled out a notebook with lines of white powder. Two people started laboriously rolling 20euro notes with clammy, dumb fingers.
    Back down stairs I reported to the desk clerk what I had witnessed. To which she replied,"They shouldn't be smoking in the rooms" and returned to rolling another cigarette. They continued to yell all morning until I caught them doing lines in the hall. I turned on the flash of my camera and took pictures. They got pretty excited, I yelled, and the sober ones dragged the misfits back into their rooms.

I don't remember any of these people, but they sure were nice.

Isn't McVal adorable.

 I made some coffee, set up the hooka, arranged pillows in bar and pretended I was a caterpillar. Every college student has a friend with a hooka and it had become one of my favorite methods for bringing together travelers with a mutual comfort device. However, this morning it was the only thing between me and assured meltdown. I laid on the pillows reading Catch 22, smoking shisha, and napping for most of the morning. Staring emptly at the passing white clouds in the Summer sky, the book caused me to begin reflecting on the general absurdity of life and finding any meaning in this ocean of chaos when I heard a voice, "Yup and that would be JD." It was McVal from the Excusion Club at UCSB. I had guided a backpack trip for him the year before and knew he was to be studying abroad in Grenada although it took the guilting of a very nice pair of legs to have him seek me out.

       
     Three hours later I was showered, dressed to the nines, and on my way to a bullfight. There isn't alot to say about a bullfight besides there is no fight to speak of.... it is a slow, traditional slaughter for amusement. Think of it like a high class rodeo or the Kentucky Derby, except the goal is a death that is clean but not abrupt. After the first bull, I cried. After the second, I wanted to leave. After the third, I started to enjoy the show. The rest of our group had similar emotions. We were sitting by an older man with a botta of sweet wine. According to him, the first bull that had vomited blood had been the best kill of the day.  Being objective by photographing the event made things easier. Ill let the photos speak for themselves. 

 

 

 

And the crowd goes wild!!!!