A general strike with charm

In this country, there is much talk of general strikes, but as for what is called general, truly general, in my not-so-short existence, I have only seen one: that of December 14, 1988. These days mark exactly 32 years.

Don't be alarmed, I'm not going to bore you with a profound, forceful, or even political analysis of that. Whoever wants to know who called that strike, against whom, why, and for what, has oceans of archives at their disposal. And Wikipedia.

I just wanted to talk to you today about how for a small-town girl, a general strike can become a magical day. And also a memory of an almost lacerating sweetness.

I was living in Sabadell with my parents then, and for me, there was no more interesting and tempting metropolis in the world than Barcelona. I was dying to go live there. But I still had a few years of ferrocatas up, ferrocatas down ahead of me. Years of entering and leaving Barcelona not like Pedro in his house, but like Alice entering and leaving the mirror.

Besides living in Sabadell with my parents then, and dying to go live in Barcelona, I smoked back then. And how. I remember that was the first time I showed signs of being an analyst: sniffing out in the air that the strike was going to be a success, that it was really going to be general and total, I took the precaution of stocking up well on tobacco the day before. Not everyone was so cautious, and some scenes worthy of the girl from The Exorcist were seen.

Besides living in Sabadell with my parents then, dying to go live in Barcelona, and smoking, that day I had an appointment with the singer-songwriter Albert Pla, who I don't know why more and more people find it incredible that we are friends. The fact is that we are. Surreal as our friendship has always been from the beginning, well, we had decided to meet on 14-D, no less. I no longer remember if it was to interview him or to simply chat (we used to mix the two a lot), but the fact is that we had an appointment that day.

When on the morning of December 14th Albert Pla called me at home, on my parents' landline, I, who have always been the more sensible of the two (you just have to look at me), took for granted that it was to cancel given the hellish difficulty of doing anything that day. No way. Blessed Albert hadn't even found out there was a strike. What he proposed was that we meet not in Sabadell but in Barcelona, where he had in turn arranged to meet another singer-songwriter, the great Jaume Sisa. Did I want to go to Barna with Sisa and him? That's what I call an offer impossible to refuse, not the one from The Godfather.

Afraid of breaking the spell, I remember barely whispering: "But Albert, you... you know there's a strike, right?" This didn't even go in one ear and out the other for him, because he had already hung up the phone.

I don't remember how we got to Barcelona (in his car?), because what I do swear to you is that nothing, absolutely nothing, was working. So much so that, upon actually meeting Sisa in the lobby of his hotel ---the Hotel Oriente on Las Ramblas---, where we conferred excitedly and grimly like figures from the not-at-all distant Wax Museum, well, the evidence of the impossibility of having dinner there, or in any other establishment, became clear. We were worse than confined. We were in a fascinating ghost city.

"But Pepe Rubianes has invited me to dinner at his house, if you want you can come," Sisa blurted out unexpectedly. And off we went, I bursting with joy. Suddenly I found myself in one of those large old apartments in venerable and at the same time rogue Barcelona, sitting at a large table crowded with charming people, with a still young Pepe Rubianes, far from getting sick and bitter, shining in the center like a kind of talkative Sun King. He wouldn't stop talking, and everything he said was captivating and hilarious. And no one felt envy for this, or frustration for that, or hatred for the other. I don't remember anyone spending a minute talking about politics.

I was so in seventh heaven that when someone offered me a hashish joint I smoked it, breaking my wise maxim of never trying unknown, or barely known, substances in environments that are not of maximum security. Result: I got dizzy and then fainted spectacularly, like a princess and the pea. When I came to, Jaume Sisa was there watching over me and taking care of me with ineffable tenderness. And entirely platonic, I clarify.

I stayed to sleep I don't even know where (my parents had to put up with it, as it was true that trains were not running) and the next day I met Sisa for breakfast at the Cosmo bar, a kind of coquettishly crossed Yellow Submarine on Las Ramblas.

And I went back to Sabadell so cool, convinced that this Barcelona could never disappear, that nothing and no one could ever tear it from my horizon. That I had it within reach.