"Go, my son, you will get thinner." It's a classic piece of advice from home healers; everyone has one within reach, whether it's the mother who makes you drink lemon water and honey when she hears you cough or the grandfather who knows how to cure back pain. For a while, I half-believed it, and I walked to work (an hour there and an hour back, which is easy to say), but the scale didn't budge. Of course, I discovered corners and nooks of the city I didn't even know existed. Whether for medical, leisure, or pure necessity, walking is one of the few free pleasures we have left, but the 21st century is making it increasingly difficult for us.
In Barcelona, the stroll was an institution, if not daily, at least on Sundays: up and down the Rambla, up and down Passeig de Gràcia, and the tortellet to finish. We had a verb, "ramblejar," specifically for rambling, and there was even a culture of watching passersby, with that extended row of metal chairs that crowded the top of the Rambla de Canaletes, and which for four duros allowed you to sit and watch them pass: "Look at that one, and that other one," the lifelong gossip without having to hide from it. But all this has changed, and today the tourist flood prevents the dolce fare niente in a large part of the capital. We are left, of course, with the other Barcelona, the hundreds of streets and squares that are not in the guides, but these walkable parts have been filled with two invasive species that have arrived in recent years.
The first plague has a thousand faces and names, which we could group under the denomination ORNI (Unidentified Rolling Objects). These are the latest generation gadgets that go at full speed on the sidewalks, transporting everyone from young people to executives in suits and helmets. Here would enter—and take a breath because the list is long—the classic means of human traction (that is, that work with our animal effort) such as bicycles, children's scooters, or the skateboards of youngsters, 20th-century junk, but also the whole string of new electric, digital, and Bluetooth vehicles, from Segways (contigo empezó todo—it all started with you) to Walkers, Hoverboards, Boogie Drift, motor scooters, deluxe scooters with seats, Runs & Rolls (in Catalan we call them Atropella & Fuig—Run Over & Flee), electric scooters, and more or less hormonally enhanced gyroscopes.
Combined, these devices form an even more dangerous combo: the motorized tourist group. Yes, we have all suffered them, they are the Nordic grandparents trying to balance on a Segway (luckily, after a certain age, dentures are already false). The problem is detecting them, because all these locomotion systems are treacherously silent. Once you see them, take it easy and enjoy the scenery, because if you cross in the middle you risk a Gaudian death—Gaudí died run over by a tram. Wheeled suitcases are also a nuisance, but there are no known cases of fatal run-overs by trolley ramming yet.
The other invasive species for 21st-century walkers is less fast but just as dangerous: the mobile addict. We have all done it sometime: come on, I'll answer the message while I go to the subway, nothing happens, I'm in control. Until the WhatsApp-answering dummy doesn't see that he's coming straight and we're about to collide. Absorbed by the mobile, the most alert becomes a zombie, and we can cross on red or step into a flowerbed. When we realize we are stepping on geraniums, we will look up for a second, lest some acquaintance has seen us, but we will immediately look down again to caress the glass of happiness.