The coming weeks could make for quite the adventure. I am due to land at Paris Orly on Brexit day and, after three days, continue on to Barcelona. I’ve been frequenting both cities for just under a decade now. But this trip presents some potential new obstacles. Brexit may shut down infrastructure all over Europe but especially in Britain, Ireland and northern France. Disruptions in air and train services and basic supplies may present very real problems at least for a while. The status of Brexit seems to vary from day to day. It now sounds like there will be a deal and the date will be postponed until early next year. But who knows? It could all be different tomorrow. None of this is entirely new, I’ve been stranded in Paris because of transportation strikes. Also, I spent an extra day in Girona Spain because of a French air-controller strike. Both situations turned out well, for me anyway.
Gare to Everywhere
Gare de Lyon in eastern central Paris is my go-to place when the planes stop flying. Being stranded in Paris is actually much more common than one would presume. There could be worse places to be stuck.
On the occasion of my first stranding I found myself visiting Gare de Lyon each day for a few days trying to buy a rail ticket to Spain. Gare de Lyon specifically because they had installed machines to allow customers to purchase tickets using a touch screen. Ironically these machines were the cause of the strikes. The French seem to be very quick to strike with nice civilized protests and they see the usurpation of employment by machines as cause of great concern. Feeling a tad guilty, I bought a ticket when the staffed-booths in Gare de Lyon and all of the other stations were closed. I ended up on a high-speed train to Barcelona when only one of four were running. I never figured out why the garbage collectors, food deliverers, taxi drivers, subway booth-workers, train conductors and pilots were striking in support of the national train company booth-attendants.
On the second occasion, I found myself in a Girona hostal seeking another train ticket, this time to Gare de Lyon. The French air controllers were on strike and not just flights with French destinations but all flights that crossed French airspace were grounded. Sensing that the Barcelona train stations would be a zoo, I headed for Girona, just north of Barcelona along the high-speed rail corridor. I found cheap accommodation where I had stayed before, and was able to leave the next day. In Paris I found an extraordinary room, thanks to hotel tonight, for little because the Spanish national football team was due to play against France in Paris and the airports remained closed.
Spain is a more serious country and Barcelona is a more serious matter. The unrest related to Catalan independence dates back for a thousand or so years. Several Barcelona museums are at least in part dedicated to it. It played a major role in the Spanish Civil War. Hitler sent planes to bomb both Barcelona and Girona. Most people in Barcelona speak both Catalan and Spanish with Catalan dominant in the streets and Spanish dominant in the schools. The Spanish is colloquial and infused with Catalan. Not long ago, under Franco, Catalan was illegal in Catalonia. As a foreigner it is hard to not to get wrapped up in it all and select one side over the other. Barcelona, like Hong Kong, is an international city with a unique status. Almost everyone in Spain is fiercely passionate about Catalan independence either for or against.
When I first visited Barcelona it was for two days at the beginning of a long trip all over Spain during the great recession. I wanted to study Spanish as I had been doing in Mexico, Panama and Costa Rica, and knew that Barcelona wouldn’t be the best place because of the Catalan influence on the language. But something about it struck me. Can you fall in love with a city? I think so. I decided to stay, for a month. I found an excellent Spanish school and survived a week of near-homelessness in a challenging airbnb while a huge tech conference was underway, then found a great hostal that I have visited again and again, made several good friends, and began to learn the city.
Historical Reflections
Contemporary Barcelona building detail reflected against a civil war era graphic in the window of a Raval neighborhood bookshop. Because the feelings for Catalan independence continue to simmer everywhere in the streets, the sense of temporal proximity to the civil war is always present.
Since that time, as I have come and gone once or twice a year, the Catalan government has called for a referendum on independence, the Spanish government has threatened and warned against it, the referendum has been held and won in favor of independence despite a large Spanish police effort that involved an aging Italian cruise ship emblazoned with Tweety Bird, the cartoon chick. The organizers of the referendum, including many senior Catalan government officials, have been arrested or fled to other parts of Europe. The Barcelona police chief has been charged and removed from office. And just last week the verdicts of the Catalan separatist leaders involving long prison sentences were announced and nine days of protests and riots ensued.
I’m hoping that things will have calmed when I arrive. Today’s posts on twitter and Facebook have moved on from independence to storms and flooding. I always stay just a couple blocks away from city hall and the main Catalan government buildings in the oldest part of the city. I’ll be there for a week and am planning on wandering the city, taking photos and practicing my Spanish before moving on to southern Spain. Many photos of both Barcelona and Paris can be viewed in the big red sun photography galleries. Wish me luck. Visca Catalunya.