Today, on Muntaner street, at the corner of Rosselló, there is much more noise than usual in the morning, when students enter, in staggered fashion, the San Miguel school. Today the fences (those yellow fences where you can read, from time to time, creative graffiti expressing controversial feelings towards Mayor Colau) cannot contain all the bipedal teenagers who gather around the door, as well as the parents. From the terrace of the corner bar (where, to the misfortune of coffee drinkers, the coaches have parked) one can guess that the first and second year ESO students are going on a school trip. As we hear, they were almost unable to go, because yesterday a child had a fever, they had to do an emergency PCR. "I would have liked it, look, if they hadn't gone... A week away is a lot... And doing snorkel and biking and everything...", complains a lady, mother of a certain Aina, who you can already tell will start smoking in two minutes.
"Mom, don't even think about coming to say goodbye to me!" Says a girl, with a tiny top, shorts and, underneath, black stockings, like a grandmother from the fifties. "No father has come, only you!" complains a lanky, gangly boy. "Don't say goodbye to me!" Suitcases so gigantic (full of outfits for all kinds of imaginable human activities and situations) that Carles Porta would order them opened to check for dismembered corpses inside, but also backpacks where only a pair of underwear fits. Also a boy with a bag full of balls. The mother of a certain Carla warns the teacher that her daughter has to put on sunscreen, that she will forget, and that she didn't want to take her swimsuit, but that she put it in her backpack at the last minute, secretly, so he knows, because the girl... The teacher smiles.
The bipeds surround the coffee drinkers' table, load the luggage onto the coach, and get on. They greet, indifferently, with a slight nod of the head to the parents, who, on the other hand, comment on the play and look, anxiously, for "theirs." They will return, according to what the adults say, again and again, on Friday at four in the afternoon. "Oh, I'll ask for a day off," says the mother of Aina, who has already started smoking and it is clear that, in a few moments, she will embrace a gin and tonic. And on Friday afternoon they, the children, will get off the coach, tired, indifferent, angry, while the parents will receive them like Beatles fans. Those with hair will pull it out. And that day the pasta stock in the neighborhood will run out, but it will be useless, because the bipeds will declare that, if it were up to them, they would never have returned, and that there, in the summer camp, they did eat well. So much so, that they would have stayed to live.