A Tale of Two Cities

By John Spain

I HAD what people call a significant birthday recently (you’ll have to guess) and to celebrate the milestone event my significant other (a/k/a The Wife) took me on a surprise three day break to Barcelona last week.

With the kids abandoned it was just the two of us in one of the most beautiful cities on earth. In the land of my forefathers.

The Irish for my name is de Spainne, which means literally from Spain — it was the name given by the Irish to those who survived the Spanish Armada shipwrecks on the Irish coast 500 years ago. Mind you, in earlier centuries much of the trade into Ireland was seaborne with Spain, so the Irish also used the generic de Spainne name to describe any stranger arriving here in the ships from that general region, including North Africa.

So my ancestors could be from anywhere over there. I could be more Arab than Irish, which would explain a lot for some Irish Voice readers!

But the supposed family history has always given me a fascination with Spain. I’m less interested in the Costas, where tourism has blighted too much of what was once a wonderful coastline, than in the interior and in the great cities like Madrid or Seville where the real Spain remains largely unspoiled. Somehow, up to last week, I had missed out on Barcelona.

It is a truly magical place, artistic, sophisticated and endlessly fascinating and entertaining. It is also the kind of city that Dublin could have become, but didn’t ... or at least not yet.

They are both ancient cities, about the same size and in wonderful locations beside the sea. But the similarities don’t go much further than that and Dublin fares badly in comparison. A few examples are instructive.

One of the days I was there was gloriously sunny, so we interrupted our exploration of the city to spend an afternoon on the beach. In Barcelona, like in Dublin, you don’t have to go far.

In Dublin you go to the Bull Island beach which is inside Dublin Bay and just a few miles from the city center. In Barcelona you ramble down la Rambla, Barcelona’s famous central avenue, and at the bottom you turn left at the harbor and walk 200 yards to the start of a magnificent beach.

Tourism chiefs in Dublin are fond of boasting about us being the only city in Europe with a beach and nature reserve so close to the city center. Well they’re right about the seabird nature reserve. but Barcelona wins hands down in the beach stakes.

Their mile-long beach (one of several) could not be closer to the bustling center of the city and the commercial port on the other side of la Rambla. Even so — and this is the point I am coming to — the beach in Barcelona is pristine.

The water quality is excellent, the sand is clean, there is no litter anywhere and there are generous boardwalks and walkways and regular clusters of showers on the beach for washing sand off, and regular cafes and restaurants for refreshments.

And of course, being Barcelona, the home of the famous architect Gaudi, there are beach seats and loungers in weird concrete shapes that perfectly fit all kinds of body shapes as well as climbing frame puzzles for the kids.

The day we were there was quite busy, yet there were no problems with bad behavior, no groups of teenage drunks, no beer cans strewn on the sand or discarded rubbish blowing in the wind.

There were no smashed seats or vandalized bins or burned out cars abandoned by joyriders. Above all, there was no intimidating or threatening behavior, no fights, no violence. There wasn’t even much graffiti.

The contrast with what goes on at Dublin beaches on sunny days was striking, both in how people behaved and in the facilities which were available and used with care and appreciation. There are almost no facilities at Dublin beaches, and the few seats that are provided are usually wrecked by vandals.

The same cultural difference between the people of the two cities was even more evident that night. The whole city of Barcelona was in the grip of soccer fever because they only needed a draw and one point from that night’s match to win the Spanish league. In the event, they won and got three points and the city went wild in celebration.

Every bar in the city was full of celebrating supporters, spotlights lit up the night sky over the famous football stadium, the sound of fireworks filled the air and cars with flag waving supporters hanging out the windows drove in convoys up and down the streets for hours with horns honking. Along the city center streets huge crowds of fans paraded up and down singing and laughing.

It went on for hours, just as it did in Dublin in our World Cup glory days. But there was one big difference. Unlike in Dublin after a big event, like St. Patrick’s Day, there were no drunken louts falling around on the streets or getting into fights.

Some of the happy fans celebrating on the streets in Barcelona that night were swigging out of bottles of wine, but no one was falling down drunk and no one was drunk and aggressive.

As we walked back to our hotel in the early hours the party was in full swing on la Rambla. There were thousands of people, mainly young soccer fans. But there was no sense of menace in the air.

This was in marked contrast to O’Connell Street in Dublin where, even on an average Saturday night, the threat of violence hangs in the air after the pubs close, and running fights, muggings and public urinating and vomiting are not unusual.

It’s not easy to identify exactly why this should be the case. Why can the people of Barcelona enjoy a night out without wrecking things and getting wrecked themselves, but too many people in Dublin can’t have a celebration without getting out of their heads on drink?

The attitude to alcohol is at the center of the difference. Too many people in Dublin, especially young people, feel a compulsion to binge drink to the point of extreme drunkenness when they are out for the night.

Various theories are given to explain this difference. One theory is that after 800 years of oppression there is a deep-seated bitterness in the Irish psyche which makes people see the state and the police and public buildings and facilities as the enemy or the property of the enemy, and feels no ownership in anything or any pride in anything.

In contrast, the young people of Barcelona clearly feel a strong sense of civic pride and don’t feel the need to destroy what is around them.

Of course I am not suggesting that Barcelona is perfect — they have a problem with petty thieves who prey on tourists in the city center. But this is largely pickpockets and opportunistic bag snatchers rather than muggings with extreme violence, which too many tourists have suffered in Dublin. The grotesque violence we have seen in some attacks in Dublin does not happen there.

Like the Temple Bar area in Dublin, the Old City near the waterfront in Barcelona is being restored, helped by the move of part of the university into a nearby area. The warren of ancient narrow streets is fascinating and the old buildings are being scrupulously restored.

Unlike Temple Bar, you won’t find any superpubs that hold a thousand people. What you will find is Bodegas, ancient one room wine bars where you can sample glasses of a variety of wonderful wines as you chew on bits of Serrano ham. These sit side by side with the most extraordinary variety of specialist shops, covering everything from designer fashion to pipes (for smoking) and all things in between.

There are other lessons to be learned from Barcelona as well. Barcelona is a city of art and architecture and, unlike Dublin, goes to extraordinary trouble to protect and display its heritage.

The way it handles its visitors is also far ahead of the haphazard system in Dublin, a good example being the interlinked tourist bus routes with multi-lingual guides.

Above anything else, however, there are the restaurants. They occupy the same position in life in Barcelona as bars do in Dublin.

Spaniards, you see, do not drink to get drunk, they drink as an accompaniment to eating, to conversation, to enjoying each other’s company. People in Barcelona make a complete night out of a visit to their favorite restaurant without ever drinking too much.

It starts, of course, with the tapas, the appetizer bits of anchovy or ham or all kinds of exotic things on toast you get at the bar before you sit down; they are so good that waiting an hour for a table seems too short.

And the restaurants are wonderful. l could write all day about the ones we visited.

But I will confine it to one, a famous place called The Four Cats where we went for lunch. It’s ancient, with dark wood walls and flagged floor and chandeliers hanging from the ornate high ceilings. It’s noisy and buzzing with conversation and laughter, a clattery cafe like Bewleys in Dublin when it used to serve good food.

Like most restaurants in Barcelona it offered a three course menu with wine for a set price. Rather than starter and main course, in Barcelona they talk about the First Plate and Second Plate, often equally substantial.

My wife had grilled peppers to start and I had a plate with three slices of mousse terrines of salmon, mushroom and ham. For the second plate, she had sea bass baked in salt and I had grilled chicken, two sumptuous chicken breasts, yellow from the corn feeding. All this, including the starters, was beautifully presented with accompanying salads, vegetables, breads, sauces and a killer garlic mayo.

After this much we decided to cancel that evening’s dinner and followed up with a choice of wonderful desserts (one an exotic coconut ice cream) and coffees. We also had sparkling water and a full bottle of a lovely light Rioja, much more suited to lunch than the heavy oak Riojas we get in Ireland.

This was a meal to remember, probably one of the best lunches I have ever eaten. We dawdled for an hour. Eventually, reluctantly, we roused ourselves and asked for the bill. It was &28.20. For the two of us.

A few days before (closer to my landmark birthday) we had eaten out in Dublin with another couple at a restaurant called The Deep in the fishing village of Howth on the north side of the city. It’s new, it’s on the pier and it’s not a bad place but it would not compare on any level with the Four Cats in Barcelona.

We had one or two starters between us, had four main courses which were mainly fish, shared two desserts, had coffee and two bottles of the house wine that were far from spectacular. And the bill for the four of us was around &240 euro.

That’s another difference between Barcelona and Dublin. In Barcelona they’re not so greedy.