February 2008 Archives
So we went to
I was going to take panoramic pictures and write a passionate love missive to the capital of Catalunya, and wax lyrical about the Gaudi, the swanky shopping, the energy of The Ramblas, the iconic museums. But none of that ever happened.
It all that got derailed by The Snails.
Or Los Caracoles as they’re known locally. Given my lack of a Christmas break, a long weekend somewhere fun was always likely to turn into something sybaritic, indulgent, lazy even.
Culture went out the window, we did a gastro tour of the City, and I have to say we probably lowered the national reserves of Cava. (And, as Bill Haley would say, we drank Rioja round the clock.)
Above all, we fell in love with aforementioned bar, Los Caracoles.
Impossibly authentic, the bar is backed onto by frenetic kitchens, the place is always packed, and the atmosphere is utter electricity. You sit perched at the bar, sampling to-die-for Pimientos and awesome prawns, while supping the nectar that is Marques de Caceres.
Your host is the world’s most engaging barman ever – do you know, we never asked his name as he served, entertained, teased and cajoled us? Lord knows why not. He did a fantastic Charlie Chaplin, not surprising given his Doppelganger resemblance.
His English was the rude side of rudimentary, but he still managed to make himself understood to two Philistines who could muster hardly a word of Spanish. A genuine character.
‘Had he ever been to
Well yes. He'd visited his brother who worked in a hotel here. His first full English day was July 1st 2006. The day
Stevie Gerrard, Fat Frank, Super JT and the others wimpily surrendered our
World Cup existence to
He described how he visited a pub in
As our penalties lamely failed, he felt a tap on a shoulder,
then in a couple of seconds of extreme staccato violence he got an elbow to the
face, a kick in the groin, and a sickening punch to the jaw. He woke up in
hospital, where the attention was so basic his family got him flown back to
And that was his experience of
He wrote on a sheet of paper the number of customers annually in his restaurant and bar – hundreds of thousands – and he said there’d never been a single incident like that. Ever.
He bore no resent – his fabulous attitude to us showed that – but it just made us soooooo unbearably sad to think what halfwits us English can be. He literally bears the physical scars too, and we both felt quite ashamed.
Here he is. Would you really elbow this guy in the face for the crime of looking like he might be Portugese, even though he isn’t? And all because we lost a football match.
(Oh, and I do love
