The first weekend of county deconfinement in Barcelona

With spring comes the first weekend of county deconfinement and, for the first time in months, I can go to Barcelona on a Saturday. To do what? "To run errands," as my late father would say.

My teenage daughter and I take a train and get off at Plaça Catalunya. It's been a long, long time since we've done this ritual together, a ritual we didn't know it was until now: climbing the stairs of the station exit and finding the Zurich on our left and the newsstand on our right. And seeing many, many people (we, of course, are not "people"). When she was little and we did it, she would exclaim: "Mom, so many knees!", because the first thing she saw were legs. I invented an ---immortal--- song that went: "Knees, knees, knees I have two, and you? Knees, knees, above the foot," which we still remember.

"How many people!", We say (because we are not "people"). The pandemic has made us unaccustomed to crowds, and we have to do, again, that: walk fast and dodge, without losing rhythm, those who hold hands occupying the entire sidewalk, talk in the middle of the street forming a circle or walk dogs with extendable leashes. Let me make an excursus, at this point. I love walking fast, I don't like walking slowly, if I want to contemplate something, I stop, and, therefore, I stoically accept the ironic reproaches of self-help monologists who say: "Have you noticed that people in Barcelona walk very fast? Are they missing the train? Where are they going so fast? To put out a fire?". Anyway, if I were missing the train or going to be a firefighter, I wouldn't walk, I would run. But since we're at it; I walk fast because I don't want to miss any train, I want to arrive when there's still time before it leaves. We have a bad reputation, yes, because walking fast makes us seem less emotionally balanced, when I would like to state that it is just the opposite.

We dodge, we feint, like bipedal bumper cars, like bees, like swordsmen, all the multitude of people (not us, we are not people). We approach Portal del Ángel and, on the way, we see the very long queue for Primark. Pull and Bear is closed, Stradivarius too. Pimkie is open and has no queue. So we go to Pimkie. We just want to look, like before, like when you weren't conscious of bothering the shop assistants if you tried on a dress ---now they would have to disinfect it--- like when you could touch, distractedly, the clothes.

In the middle of Portal del Ángel there is a circle, an immense circle, of curious onlookers. In the middle, a group of acrobatic dancers prepares to perform. One of them, with an Argentine accent, I think, jokes with the audience. "I know some of you don't have coins, but we accept Bizum," he says. And then he warns them that they can start recording with their phones and that they would be very excited if they shared it on social media. Everyone laughs a lot, I understand that those watching this improvised show are eager for live entertainment, to applaud, to comment on what they have seen.

It becomes difficult to dodge, now it does. And I know that everyone watching is wearing a mask and that on the train we are also with strangers for a long time. But that kind of guilty normality, of which, whether I like it or not, I am also a part, because I go there to "look at clothes," will lead us directly to the fourth wave. The colors of spring, from what I see, are orange and lilac.