When I was lucky enough to live in Barcelona day and night (whole years returning home down the Ramblas…), I didn't like the Majestic hotel at all. I had a grudge against it. It had me fed up.
Why? My own reasons.
Obviously, I wasn't going to argue, neither then nor now, that it was and is a very powerful hotel. Classically proportioned. Admirably distributed. Above all, admirably situated on one of the best corners of Passeig de Gràcia. When, as is my case, you have lived six years in New York, you can't imagine how much you appreciate it when the pavement tiles fit together like a miracle. Not to mention if they are more or less Gaudí's…
I had already been in Madrid for years when I discovered that the Majestic has not always been called just Majestic. At the time of its founding in 1918, the full name was Majestic Inglaterra. Later, around the 40s, as a result of a certain anti-British bad atmosphere (¡Gibraltar, español!, it seems there were those who entertained themselves by shouting in the middle of Passeig de Gràcia…), they left it as Majestic and that was it. Simply Majestic.
The Majestic can boast of illustrious, even transcendent guests. Antonio Machado spent his last days there before taking the painful road to Colliure. Leo Messi might have his last mate with cacaolat there any day before… León Felipe… Lorca… Picasso… The indefatigable Hemingway (in this country, it's starting to be a shame to run a good establishment with a license to sell alcohol where Hemingway never set foot)… A queen… I myself spent an unexpected and unforgettable sleepless night there some time ago. It turns out I go and surprisingly reunite with my first love fifteen years after breaking up, it turns out we end up at the Majestic, it turns out that…
[subscribe_newsletter_esp]Only for that (well, and for the splendid gin and tonics…) the whole hotel should already be humanized for me. I should already be fond of it. Well, no, I still disliked it. For my own reasons, as I said before. What reasons? Well, when you spend a lot of years covering as a journalist all the election nights of the same political party (or even of a coalition of parties, because one alone doesn't fight even if it wants to…), it's normal to end up slightly intoxicated. Even more so when each and every one of those election nights is always held in that same hotel. Apart from moral considerations, strictly weighing the aesthetics of things, politics has in common with gambling and prostitution that they always seem more interesting and original seen from the outside. Seen from the inside, politics is very sordid. Worse than sordid: it's harshly repetitive, it's an infernal drone…
For a long time, in the backyard of my mind, the Majestic's lobby was the place where I once showed up in camouflage, arm in arm with a journalist colleague from La Vanguardia, pretending to be married. I only lacked the jacket suit and the little hat, if it is, it isn't, of Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca, he seemed perfectly capable of making the entire hotel bar sing La Marseillaise at any moment… I had reserved a table for dinner under the name of Maria Arias (my real middle name and surname), because a little bird had told us that safe-conducts signed to leave the area occupied by the Nazis were being raffled there, sorry, I got confused, I mean that the top brass of two large political parties (and a half) were about to have a secret dinner there, who until then had not been able to see each other even in a painting, but if they managed to overcome their mutual disgust and managed to agree, oh, if they agreed… You can laugh at Ribbentrop and Molotov.
What happened that night is History. Even for me, who had to wrestle with a Mosso d'Esquadra who intended to kick me out, who wanted to kick me out of the Majestic's lobby. Me. Here's the scene:
Mosso: You know perfectly well that you can't be here, today!
Me: Oh, no? Who says so?
Mosso: You know perfectly well that it's forbidden to pass through here today!
Yours Truly: Listen, boss, please tell them, you know perfectly well who, that if they want to meet in secret, they should do it at the Casa dels Canonges, not in one of the best hotels in Barcelona…Because it happens that we are in a public place…And you, I don't know who you think you are to kick me out of a public place…
Mosso: But I know that you are not a client!
Yours Truly: What do you mean, no? I have a reservation for dinner!
Mosso: Oh, really? Let's you and I go see if that can be verified…
I will never forget the deep disappointment of that poor Mosso when they confirmed that yes, a certain Maria Arias had a reservation… It was a disappointment comparable to mine when I saw that, as the night progressed, the place filled to the brim with journalists (goodbye, exclusive…). And on top of that, I didn't get to eat dinner.
In short: I've done a bit of everything at the Majestic over the years, but what I had never done is have dinner there. Until now. Until ten days ago.
Exactly ten days ago, counting backward from today, you see me getting out of a taxi at the corner of Passeig de Gràcia with València and entering that lobby full of dark memories… For now, I have to blink in surprise. Everything looks much more modern and better lit than I remembered. It also looks much emptier. It's not that there isn't a Mosso or a politician, it's that there are no people. Barely any staff can be seen, like in that deserted bar on the spaceship in Passengers, where a robot played by Michael Sheen served drinks…Covid-19 has made us all live a certain astronaut life…I feel a small lump in my throat…I step on a mat that is supposed to disinfect my shoes, I apply hydroalcoholic gel, a gentleman with all the air of being, well, Michael Sheen playing a robot, shows me where I should put my hand so that a sensor can take my temperature…
Yours Truly: I'm here for dinner on the rooftop…But since I've never been, I don't even know how to get up there…
Michael Sheen: (After making sure my temperature is correct) I'd be happy to accompany you to the elevator…
Seriously, nothing is even close to how I remembered it. Has the hotel changed so much? Have I changed? Will the world ever go back to how it was before? Do we want it to?
All doubts, anguish, existential tension, etc., last as long as it takes me to get out of the elevator to go to… My God, the most charming and radiant of rooftops. It's not that I haven't seen charismatic rooftops in my life. New York and Madrid –where I live now, remember?–, are brimming with hotels and venues with rooftops, which are exploited with great critical and public success.
But this is different. The Majestic's rooftop opens up to me like a midsummer night's dream, one of the first where a gentle breeze blows, allowing one to live, allowing one to breathe. The horizon that stretches from table to table is so vast and so clean (I don't know if it's due to the design, if it's due to Covid, or if it's because there are still people refined enough to make a virtue out of necessity, and an art out of social distancing...), that I feel more like a person than usual. As if entitled to greater intimacy. Wood predominates everywhere, it could seem like a ship, an immense flying ship... A magical zeppelin? On one side I see the lights of Montjuïc, and on the other, the Sagrada Familia emerges gracefully as if I only had to extend my fingers to touch it, like a long-lost dollhouse that returns to you when you no longer expected to find it...
And then the details: the gin and tonics that uphold their reputation and legend, dining well, with diligent and attentive service without being overbearing or servile, the pool, the detail of the small bag they give you to store your mask, even the generalized good presence of the clientele, one would say they did a casting of everyone before letting them up... Did I pass it too, without knowing it?
For an intensely spectacular instant, all my senses are soaked in that prodigious power of limitless seduction that one not-so-distant day characterized and defined Barcelona. Without nuances. Without drawbacks. The longing for that power is so great that my whole head spins.
I feel that on this rooftop a new adventure begins, a new love story with Barcelona. I feel that today a completely different future begins to unfold.
To be continued.