Sunday is the day

In which the joy of rest mixes with the unbearable anguish of free time. Lately, every Sunday, when I get out of bed, a certain dread assails me –the nerve assails me, as the corny Barcelonans would say– and I spend the first two hours of the morning wrapped around my own stomach, almost squatting. I disguise the pain with the first pill of the day –five milligrams– and a walk to Can Brunells, which continues to give us one of the best croissants in Europe. A few years ago, Sunday was my favorite day: I lived the whole day in the Ateneu library, entangled among volumes of Xènius, oxygenating my head with the New York Review of Books and projecting books I have never written. Now, perhaps because of the repulsive blackmail of conjugal life, Sunday is a day to listen to oneself, do some cultural activity (ugh) or, simply, avoid the tourist mass by staying in the sphere of the independent republic of home.

But this Sunday I sense it differently. Despite some low mists in the northern third, weather forecasts say that climate change will prevail and we will feel a warmth typical of what used to be early July. Now that I feel creative, carinyo, maybe we could go make fools of ourselves at Sitges beach, which with Renfe is more or less three quarters of an hour, visit the Cau Ferrat Museum, its vomit-inducing modernist aesthetic and, immediately afterwards, how about we have a (bad) rice dish for forty bucks a head. Or almost better something simple; we extend breakfast and then we let ourselves fall (ugh) to Barceloneta, passing through Ciutadella, so we can make fun of the runners and reflect for a while on how the city, overflowing with expats and cool people in general, is identifying with its own dystopia. With all this, minute more minute less, you get distracted and we will already consider midday dead.

Every Sunday, right after lunch, my anxiety is already sufficiently mitigated. The only Spanish invention that is optimal to import arrives, therefore. Tomorrow we will treat ourselves to a titanic nap, in pajamas and with a potty, a true tribute from those who wake up with their bangs looking towards Argelers and their skin softened and buttery like a melindro. At home, to make it less vulgar and a little more "from the country," we disguise our desire to disappear for a while by pretending to read. In order to reach nirvana, Catalan authors help us a lot: lately, septuagenarian novelists write tomes of more than a thousand pages that leave you knockout in twenty pages, and our philologists have joined the kilogram party with biographies that even study where Josep Pla bought his underwear. Praised be them and may the Departament de Cultura pay for it. Opening our eyes, we greet the afternoon.

Already awake, it would be time to take stock of the day, who knows if while we perpetrate a second shower. We will not be able to avoid a certain lament for having fallen into the idleness of the nap, commenting with our costella that we could have taken advantage of the afternoon to visit the Suburbis exhibition at the CCCB, an optimal little thing, given that the socialists are about to once again determine the destinies of culture (in fact, they have not left the high chair for forty years). We could also have gone to peek at the Feria de Abril, but we only need the invaluable help of Google to know that they closed it last Sunday, what a shame, with the joy that flamenco brings me. It will be eight in the evening and it's time to get going; some friends are hosting us at their house just in time for the first polls. We must bring a little wine or some decent cheese. Nothing, don't worry, a pantumaca ja n'hi haurà prou.

From then on, everything will be joy, especially when we contemplate the monumental host that our own will get into. The heroes will fall as the hours pass, the gray officials will return to power and, after all, Catalunya will be like a Sunday, deliciously dreadful, adorably ridiculous. And the people of the south of the country, given the probable combination of progressive forces, will finally be able to get rid of this Hard Rock kitsch. As much as they don't understand it, with their predictable failure, our friends will be happier away from the Parliament, and thus they will be able to dedicate themselves to writing beautiful things. We will return home just as Monday begins and the regime (that of '78, not the dietary one) still believes itself to be in force. We will breathe easy, after all, because at least we have saved ourselves the grace of participating in this whole great farce.

 How much I long for Sunday, for the first time in a long time!