Bobbies on the beat
25 July 2004. Inspired by .
This afternoon I arrived at the Ciudatella Park to find two of the side entrances closed off. I walked around and counted five police vans, three police cars and several police motorbikes standing guard at various points. I asked a nearby policeman (and almost every point there was a nearby policeman) what on earth was going on. "We're here to stop the bongo players," he replied.
When I first came to Barcelona a few years back, on a short holiday to visit a friend, we went to the park on a Sunday. What I saw, heard, felt, enjoyed there was a major reason why I came back eight months later, this time to stay. Every corner of the park was filled with people sitting, eating, juggling, playing music, throwing frisbees... all the things, in fact, that a park is supposed to be used for. But there was so much ,ore: people were selling home-made jewellery and cocktails, cakes and clothes. South Asians walked around selling ice-cold water, beer, Coca-cola. It was just an average Sunday afternoon, I was told. And, from about 3pm until 8pm, there was the bongos.
Small groups were gathering to drum. Sometimes they were terrible but open to all; other times fantastic but highly selective. The better ones slapped their palms in swirling, tapping rhythms, spinning hypnotic beats in front of which Brazilians would expertly dance Capaouira. People would, clap, dance, move in time while tourists frantically took hundreds of photos. There was dope, too, huge clouds of it - it's as good as legalised in most areas here - but if that wasn't your thing it didn't matter. Groups of dope smokers are not known for getting aggressive at non-users (or anyone else for that matter). You just didn't sit downwind if you had to operate heavy machinery later.
When I returned to live, I was there often. The music and the park life was regular, spontaneous and the best regular thing about the weekend. People got so excited by the percussion that a popular group was formed. It was made up of old people and young, men and women, black, white and all colours in between, some locals, some not. They raised money between them and bought big drums, hired a Brazilian band leader to bring them all together, and then marched every few weeks, carnival-style, around the park, with a female dancing troupe sometimes taking part as well. It was like one big, rowdy rehearsal for Rio.
Unfortunately, their organisation may have been their undoing. Though the music was now much more controlled and rhythmical (thanks to the band leader), it was also much louder. The neighbours began to complain that their Sunday afternoons on their balconies were being disturbed by noises from the park. Whoever it was who did the shouting, someone high up listened. The groups of people, the dancing, the mid-afternoon rhythm, the fun were officially declared as anti-social behaviour. The Mayor promised to find alternative arrangements for those who played bongos. But first he brought in the police. All of them. To arrest anyone who might tap something in rhythm.
I asked the policeman where the bongo players had gone. "Well, it's under discussion. Apparently the council has drawn up a shortlist of possible alternative locations for them and now it's going through the committee stage, before being discussed fully. We have no idea when a decision might be made."
In other words, not this year, not this city, not again thank you very much. The smaller park gates are now remaining closed "for crowd control". But now there's no crowd to control. Under the watchful eye of more than 60 policemen, the once-filled green spaces today are half-empty. I counted three people sitting on the large mound we had sat on, that Sunday a few years ago. When we arrived that day, at around the same time, we had to fight for a bit of floor space, in an area that was holding at least sixty.
Of course, this being Barcelona, officially-endorsed entertainment is not the only kind available. As ever, the local council is desperately trying to flatten one side of the balloon. The liveliness, the music, the people will inevitably pop up somewhere else.
But that doesn't take away from that fact that this neighbour, who lives just five minutes away from the scene of the crime, is very sad that he no can longer enjoy the best atmosphere in the city in his park.