That image we used to see --- and still see --- in American movies of the beggar drinking from a bottle hidden inside a paper bag comes to mind.
Years ago, we didn't know that there, in that place where they made all the movies and series we watched on TV, it was forbidden to drink in the street. Here we saw ads for Soberano, "which is a man's thing," and "Pilé 43." There was something else that surprised us, by the way, apart from the fact of hiding the bottle. And that was that the bag was made of paper. In these latitudes of ours, bags, if there were any (because everyone went shopping with a basket), were made of plastic.
I remember the series Eight Is Enough, with Dick Van Patten, who was a journalist in Sacramento. Since he had many children and was a widower (later he paired up with Laurie Waters, who was the nanny), from time to time one of the characters would come from shopping with two paper bags without handles, filled to the brim, which he carried as best he could. Those paper bags were surprising. The series premiered in Spain in '79. In the first four episodes, by the way, Dick Van Patten was not a widower; he was married to Diana Hyland, but the actress died in real life.
If I think about the paper bag hiding the drink, it's because I read that "the lifting of the curfew and the Gràcia Festivities have led to street drinking parties and massive gatherings in public spaces." Here, no one would think of covering the bottle with a bag, even though drinking in the street is forbidden. The Mossos have evicted, they explain, 5,500 people in Barcelona (4,000 in the Gràcia neighborhood, another 1,000 on the beach...).
If there were open bars, would these people stop drinking in the street? Well, it depends on how long it takes to open them. Drinking in the street is cheaper. Nowadays, you yourself, with a small speaker the size of a glass connected to your mobile, can listen to the music you choose.
Whoever goes to drink in the street doesn't want a well-made Manhattan, nor do they want a Principia Mathematica in a Riedel glass (the wonderful wine from Alemany i Corrió that The Independent says is the best white in the state). They don't want a live jazz band playing. The two things I mention (the well-made drink and the band) are culture. If we take too long, there will be an entire generation, the one coming up, that will never have seen live music, nor will they ever have sat at a bar counter to read the wine or gin and tonic menu.