The mother from l'Eixample and her delinquent daughter

Now that I live in Ciutat Vella, I ramble very little, and by "rambling" I don't mean the act of walking through Barcelona's old streams, nor, unfortunately, wandering along our venerable Rambla, from Canaletes to Santa Mònica (which has become a tortuous slalom experience between guiris & glovos); I rather think of wandering along Rambla de Catalunya, my street all my life and the idea-producing machine with which I approach the world. The other day I was rambling just before having breakfast with a lady at Can Mauri, an ancestral establishment in my neighborhood that still boasts one of the most appalling services in the world (do I look like someone you should address in Spanish?), compensated, however, by its delicious chicken and lettuce sandwiches, the existential core of sociovergencia, made with that sliced bread that causes the papissot dialect so typical of the Eixample.

All this stuff comes to say that I was rambling and ---in addition to the usual retired bankers walking their pets, dressed in very tacky red pants, or the accountants who walk skipping, feigning a busy face towards their dreadful offices on Gran Vía--- I could see firsthand how the mothers of the Eixample, to whom I have dedicated so many just praises, still maintain the aesthetic dignity of the neighborhood. I am writing this article referring to last Wednesday morning; thanks to the strike of our teachers (who have that very pro-Palestinian thing of taking advantage of any just cause not to work and pretending to demonstrate just when no bombs are falling), the Rambla was overflowing with mothers and daughters who took advantage of educational negligence to go shopping. I am not talking about an isolated case, but about a real multitude of mothers and teenagers thirsty for consumption.

Well, any clear look reveals that the teens of the neighborhood, privileged daughters of what we used to call "middle class," make great efforts to dress like authentic "quinquis" (chavs). Let no one be disturbed; we have all been young and have believed that going through life as a slob made us cooler, more "in"... or whatever the hell they say now. Maximum tolerance, it would be the last straw! But a quinqui is a quinqui, my dear lady, and one cannot help but be disturbed contemplating so many young women dressed as intense hairdressers, contrasting with the noucentisme of the facades on Provença street. This is the first impression of the matter, which, as always, turns out to be entirely wrong; because yes, the girls dress like semi-chorus girls for a Puerto Rican singer (hideous brown leggings, reddish earrings from other continents, and platform sneakers), but what's important here is to observe the salvific intervention of their mothers, God save them.

Because the mothers of the Eixample are well aware of the profound aesthetic deviation of their offspring and know for a fact that so much Colau-esque aesthetic sloppiness, typical of arte povera, will be something transitory that they will laugh about many years from now when, on the other hand, they wear nauseating pseudo-youthful outfits from eseOese. All this, I insist to the point of nausea, is something that the very wise and beautiful mothers of the Eixample know for a fact. Therefore, far from ridiculing their daughters as their fathers always do, they assist and even encourage the transformation of their girls into cheap copies of Bad Gyal. But it is equally true that, among all the absurdities, they use their influence to introduce some trench coat to soften the stuffing or a simple black cardigan, even if it's from Can Boss, to disguise so much unbalanced cleavage and thus recover the Greco-Roman spirit of their daughters.

Blessed are you, mothers of the Eixample, you who provide a service that I and only I can guess. Dear Maria Lluïsa, dearest Meritxell, I can swear to you that you have more than earned heaven, because only the Almighty knows how your concessions to ugliness are the prelude to a change in the vision of life. Because, in effect, all this will last very little and soon the girls will send Aitana to the dustbin of history and everything will return to the aesthetic normality of the Grid. In other happier times of my life I would give you my body (and part of my three ideas) without any reservation. Today I write you this Punyalada so that you know that, while Manel and Josep Maria mock you or even dedicate themselves to despising you for how you dress the female family section, I and only I am aware of the effort with which you save us the beauty of the future, which is the survival of the homeland.

And all this is part of everything I see as I stroll down my street. I have to come back here more often, even if in my usual bakeries they question me with a "Good morning, what will the gentleman have?", bunch of murderers.