Friday, November 19, 2010

Autumn Summer


I knew that coming to Barcelona would be a shock to the system in many ways, one of them being weatherwise. In the back of my mind I knew that I would be living in a place much much warmer than Cork, but I don't think it ever really sank in, because once it hit November I was fully prepared to dig out my boots and my coat and my biggest jumpers and hats and scarves and gloves, only to find that Barcelona in November can hit 20 degrees, easy peasy. Heck, this time last year it was so cold in Cork that I used to layer up at least as well as Mr. Shackleton himself. But in recent times I've found myself eating ice-cream on the Ramblas, and walking down Avinguda Diagonal into the brightest, clearest sunset I've ever seen, listening to Jape (from whom I've stolen the title of this post) and watching the people coming towards me with the sun behind them, like glowing orange ghosts, features hidden by shade.

That said, it gets bloody freezing too, like when you're sitting for an hour and a half in the highest tier possible of the Camp Nou watching Barça beat the crap out of AD Ceuta below, while overhead lightning strikes the rest of the city a little further away. Going to my first football match was an overwhelmingly positive experience, made better by two main factors - i) the presence of Donnacha and Julian, whose enthusiasm for everything to do with the match - from the scarves to the stadium to the players to the opening anthem - made it all the more exciting; and ii) the fact that Messi came on to the pitch late in the game. Now I'm no football expert at all, but I know who Messi is ("we are in the presence of God" Donnacha said to me when he came on to a standing ovation), and I now know he's a pretty good footballer, having seen him set up a goal and score another within a ridiculously short space of time. 5-1 to Barça, olé!

So I understand now why Barcelona is so proud of its football team, but another thing I got an insight into this week was pride in history. I take a class in political theory here, and the course up to now has been your standard Hobbes-Locke-Rousseau-Kant-Hume affair, with overviews of Liberal Conservatism and the Social Contract and all the standard topics that I've covered in UCC. Yesterday, we moved on to Fascism. The lecturer is interesting and engaging, and the material was as well, but what I found particularly interesting was his focus on Hitler and Mussolini. Every point he dealt with - mass mobilisation, the eradication of negative liberty, the lack of pluralism - was explained with detail given about Germany and Italy, and only very occasionally would he mention Spain. This didn't surprise me hugely, but what I noted was that if revolution is mentioned in any class in Ireland, our own example is quickly given, because we're encouraged from a young age to be proud of the War of Independence and the transition to a Republic. But Spain definitely differs in this respect, and oddly enough just today I read a perfect summation of this attitude in Colm Tóibín's excellent Homage to Barcelona:

"In Barcelona, no one talks about the war: it is not romantic or heroic: it is a trauma that everybody went through, everybody fears, and nobody wants to go through again"

So just as there are two sides to every Civil War, there are two ways of reflecting on your own country's Civil War.

Right now I'm waiting for my room-mate and my friends to wake up so I can make pancakes for them, and this weekend is looking pretty sweet, between the possibility of lying in instead of getting up at 8.30 to go to college and study, the likelihood of going out somewhere and having fun, and the definite Arcade Fire gig that I'm going to on Sunday night - my first time seeing them in the 5 years I've liked them, so to say I'm looking forward to it is a little bit of an understatement!

And it's just two weeks until I put my paws back on Irish soil, for the Belle and Sebastian-Donnacha's 21st Birthday Party-Arcade Fire Part II extravaganza, featuring a visit from my Mum, a film with my sister, and hanging out with all my friends.. Again, excitement is an understatement!