Drifting in Barcelona

Just after arriving in Barcelona I realized I came at the wrong time. It was a mix of lack of planning and pure and simple bad luck. Nothing too bad actually, but the main result was that I found myself drifting in Barcelona. Jumping from place to place and bed to bed for two weeks, once again, but this time in the same city. It's incredible how the feeling of not knowing for sure were are you going to sleep the next day, or that night, affects everything else, brings chaos and forces you to live day by day even more. The complete uncertainty of the future. It's the feeling of being really homeless, because, even when you are miles away from home traveling, you make many homes on the journey. Little spaces and things that you can feel sure about and come back to them. That certainty is an important part of what makes a home.

It seems easy to get lost in this city and drift away. It's incredible how many people I saw sleeping on the streets (there are even people who sleep on the street in other countries and come here, like any other tourist, to sleep on these streets). There was a guy sleeping at the front door of the building at one of the places where I was staying in the Barrio Gotico. What caught my attention, apart from the fact that there was a guy sleeping every day at the front entry of the place I was staying, is that this guy had a mattress, blankets, and everything. Didn't seem like a homeless man and was even reading during the day. It was almost like he went out of his flat one day to buy a mattress and on the way back he got tired of carrying it and decided to stay just there, on the street.

The City

Barcelona is a young ultra-trendy city. There seems to be one huge alternative scene that is so big that has become mainstream, where everybody struggles to differentiate itself. Maybe it has to do with the individualistic and proud character that has been attributed to Catalan people, although I'm not who to say since I didn't really get to know Catalans that much.

Barcelona is ridiculously full of tourists, more so now that is summer of course. It would be interesting to see some numbers of how many people come in summer and the rest of the year in general. I'm sure the population of the city doubles itself. Most of them are european looking for the sun, the beach and the hedonistic life in which seems to be like an escape city for Europe.

Barcelona is full of immigrants. From Latin America, Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa. This city is like a magnet for foreigners. Even many of the spaniards that live in Barcelona are not originally from Barcelona. They are from other places in Catalunya and around Spain that come here to study or work. Seems like barcelonians are hard to find in Barcelona.

Barcelona is full of life. The mixture of all the different kinds of people and cultures brings an eclectic and dynamic character to the city, which is already an urbanistically eclectic city. That was another thing that caught my attention. Barcelona 'looks' different from all the other european cities I've been. From Gaudi to the gothic to the beach and everything in between, there is a coexistence of opposites that fits perfectly in this city.

Barcelona looks like a city I could call home, but I guess not this time.

Thanks to Rober, Guille and specially Tomas for giving me a place to stay and helping me when I needed it the most