Barcelona’s harbour, boardwalk, sandy beach, sea and sky are full of a panoply of natural and unnatural activities.
The sky is big, a big ocean sky, mostly blue with a light haziness and a distant seemingly immobile ridge of thunderheads. The sky welcomes a new aircraft about every 2 minutes on target for runways at the Barcelona International Airport, while seagulls ride the wind in wild and rather erratic ways – flight for pure joy. Closer to the ground, on the edge of the coastal rocks and just beside the outdoor restaurants cluster the local songbirds, looking a lot like ours, but perhaps more colourful in variegated green hues. Most look like a relative of our wrens one would think.
The diversity of boats, ships and other watercraft is amazing to say the least. Tall ship replicas run routes from one end of the great bowl-beach to the far eastern limit. These graceful ships, run with sails trimmed, no doubt by engines not seen, a matched by a range of medium-sized harbour boats carting tourists to-and-fro along the sparkle of a sculpted beach zone. These ships and boats are accompanied by a range of catamarans, sailboats, high-powered seado’s, tankers, cruise ships, wind-sails, para-sails, lifeguard rafts, and paddle boards. There were many human-powered efforts, either on those paddle boards, wind-sails, or in the water swimming, lolling or just hanging out. The youth of Barcelona crept up onto the huge chunks of concrete used to build a breakwater, just outside the property margin of the W Hotel. The beach security would periodically come to shoe them away, but soon more would reappear again……a delicate dance between propriety and youthful spirit.
The beach and boardwalk are long……..looking like3 or 4 miles in this location. The human species fills up the sandy corridor, and a few local establishments rent umbrellas to protect against the strong sunshine. Those same establishments have a fair offering of food and beverages to quench the appetite and thirst. Young is definitely the average genre but there are numerous older souls as well. The urge to get a tan is a universal drive that brings a spectrum of people, young and old, families and groups and singles to bask. Merchants sell beach blankets with great flourish and nice designs. The police patrol rather obscurely, making sure that all is well in this little slice of paradise.
A few more moving parts are mixed into this interesting scene……motorized and non-motorized scooters, motor bikes, bicycles, and skateboards round out the picture.
The ethnic and linguistic range of peoples here in this small space completes a signature of what peace, harmony and good times can indeed be written…….a vision of beauty that reminds us of the goodness in humanity. The official signage on the boardwalk-beach speaks to the city always having been and always planning to be a city that welcomes all and accepts any refugees struggling to find a new life. It is this special statement that boldly tugs at one’s heart.