Drunkenness routes

The meager summer news reports from Barcelona have just informed us that the City Council has banned alcoholic routes throughout the city for twenty-four hours a day. Until now, most Barcelonans (who live disconnected and resistant to the world of tourists) were unaware of the existence of these tours that were based on itineraries through seedy bars ---especially in the Eixample and Ciutat Vella--- where the tourist attraction focused on visiting establishments that offered cheap shots of private label liquor. We also did not know that the City Council had already prohibited this practice in said neighborhoods between seven in the evening and seven in the morning.

The decree will be in force for the next four years, so visitors to our city will have to perpetrate identical routes without the invaluable help of tourist operators. There will still be drunks, in short; now, at least, they will be less remote-controlled. The news surprises us culturally, as most native drinkers ---or former heavy drinkers, as is my case--- have always opted to get drunk in our ancestral bar of a lifetime. This habit of taking an alcoholic tour, I reserved it for those glorious days when I traveled to London and ---fleeing most cultural itineraries--- I focused on calling Uber vehicles to travel compulsively between Oriole, Artesian or Nightjar and spend an appalling amount of money.

Far from issuing municipal decrees at discretion, who knows if it would be much more useful to remind our visitors that we also have very civilized ways of ending up dancing sardanas in Escudellers street. Apart from promoting good mixology, which in Barcelona can already exhibit first-world examples, we could also raise the level of the bet and culturally dignify the alcoholic offer as one of the pillars of our own well-being. For all these reasons, I would not be surprised if tour operators and the establishments themselves were indignant with the measure because, if one is capable of advertising tourist routes through nauseating restaurants or utterly unbearable museums, the scope of individual liberties clashes head-on with a somewhat paternalistic measure.

As I said before, no true Barcelona native would think of spending an afternoon practicing the art of the pub crawl among a horde of zombies; but if visitors from all over the planet decide to perpetrate yet another tacky act in Barcelona, I don't see why it should be forbidden. Our Deputy Mayor for Economy and Tourism, Jordi Valls, has declared that the measure has significantly reduced the nuisance of admiring groups of drunks doing a scavenger hunt through the streets, simply by stating that fines to establishments have skyrocketed. The argument is reasonable but, although disoriented, the groups of drinkers still roam freely through the city.

If I were one of the sleepless baristas who promoted this type of alcoholic route (and I add that you don't have to be very intelligent to reach this conclusion) I would follow the tactic of continuing to offer this service through the lifelong mafia practice of word-of-mouth. I don't want to give clues to wrongdoers ---I insist, they would have already thought of that as soon as the law was promulgated---, but to avoid the issue, four calls to tour operators, guides, and so on will be enough to continue with the identical routes but without advertising them. This dry law may bring calm to politicians and neighbors, but I very much doubt it will generate peace and rest among fellow citizens. To guarantee this noble intention, I would have focused on enforcing already existing but ignored ordinances, such as the regulation of the number of tourist groups, the obligation of guides to use microphones for their explanations, or increasing the presence of civic agents in the streets.

But, alas, we live as prisoners of an unfortunately Roman policy, which thrives on promulgating edicts and not on applying them and, even more, on spewing out decrees so easy to surf that perhaps it wouldn't even be necessary to write them. If our most excellent baristas want to distance themselves from all this delirious dialectic, perhaps the best thing they can do -to foster the good taste of drinking- would be to display a multi-language sign at the door of their establishment, reminding everyone that "here we are decent people and we don't serve shots".