All the perfume counters, each from a specific brand, costume jewelry and handbags, on the ground floor, are cordoned off by a tape. You don't know if you can cross it. You also don't know if you can do what you usually do ---what you used to do--- when looking at clothes. Run your fingers, distractedly and attentively at the same time, over the hanging garments. In the little hat shop, I ask if I can try on a beret, for my daughter, who has to dress up as a 1930s gangster. The employee gives me a head protector, like those transparent ones for lice treatments, and tells me: "Go up to the eighth floor, there are costumes." I go to look for the stairs. El Corte Inglés brings back some memories.
The first, from when I was little. We lived in a village, Santa Eulàlia de Ronçana (it's the first village with a case of Clenbuterol in Catalonia) and going to Barcelona was exceptional. We would go to feed the pigeons in Plaça Catalunya, as a birthday treat, and to see the Christmas decorations at El Corte Inglés. We would look for a while and didn't even enter the building, which intimidated us. Then, we would return to the darkness of the village.
On the costume floor, I also see what used to be the travel agency, now closed. There's a Batman, a Snow White... Not much. Beyond that, heavily discounted garden furniture. Sun loungers, a plastic table with three chairs... I go down to the home goods floor. This brings me to another memory. The European Food Fair, which they always held there. It was my paradise. I always went. In 2003, I wrote a chronicle for the newspaper El País, where I worked then. I titled it The German Polish Cucumbers. Each shelf was marked with the country's flag, but, even so, the workers walked around with maps to guide shoppers. I liked to ask. "Excuse me... Could you tell me where Poland is?"
Before globalization, going to Andorra to buy cheeses, going to London to buy records, going to Belgium to try unknown beers was an adventure. You crossed the border and found yourself in a paradise of unknown food. Now a European Food fair makes little sense, you can buy everything online, there are specialized stores, but I love it, I still love it, I will always love it. I like to see jars and cans from different places in the same place. There were Polish cucumbers, Dutch Heineken beer, Danish poppy seed sticks, Portuguese sardines, Indian food made in England, Greek eggplants, Russian vodka... Fun brands, like the Greek olives Phartenon or the English candies Churchill...
Another memory, the third: I was a young hippie. I played Santa Claus at El Corte Inglés with two other hippies. We were at the door and received children. They paid us very well. So much so that, as entrepreneurs, we went to offer our services, once the Christmas campaign was over, to the Los Tigres Chain. There we played tigers. They also paid us very well.
I'm going to the notebook floor. If I see them, I'll buy them. All kinds. Spiral, checkered, white, travel... Promises of good handwriting and of only jotting down novel phrases and important ideas. This leads me to the penultimate memory. Every year, for Sant Jordi, one of the places where you sign is El Corte Inglés. The one in Catalunya and the one on Diagonal. The beautiful voice that announces the writers is that of the admired radio personality Margarita Blanch (who also announces the Semana Fantástica or the Curso de sardanas). Normally, El Corte Inglés on Diagonal, further from the center, is the last one in the morning, because the displacement to the place to eat is longer. After signing, they always give you a pen in a case. I have them. I keep these kinds of things.
I am, again, on the ground floor. I leave through the door that leads to Portal del Ángel. The last memory: La Cursa de El Corte Inglés, which I have run whenever I could. Will it return?
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