Pedicab drivers were at the top of Barcelona’s submerged trades. You had to pedal a lot of hours, but you earned much more than selling bright flying toys on the Rambla, for example. About 150 euros on a good Saturday. Some pedicab drivers even had papers.
Until a year ago, the then first deputy mayor, the socialist Jaume Collboni, pulled an ingenious administrative trick up his sleeve that banished them from the city. These days, maybe you come across someone late at night… One of the objectives of the new mayor for this summer is to finish off this task, to stop street vendors without permission. In the hardened city it has no place. Ada Colau never raised this issue in these terms. What happens is that we already know what happens when you squeeze a balloon… There are hundreds of people.
“Well, those who made a living with the pedicabs who had papers started turning mainly to construction, as they realized that the pedicab no longer had a future,” says Javed Ilyas, from the Associació de Trabajadores Pakistanesos de Catalunya –, and the rest to other ways of peddling, especially beer cans and sarongs. People dedicate themselves to this because they don’t have papers. When he gets them, he leaves it.” The sale of beer cans and mojitos is more lucrative than that of sarongs. In summer you can earn 60 euros a day. What happens is that many Muslims are embarrassed to sell alcohol, so they settle for the sarongs.
“And selling roses seems simple, but it’s very complicated,” Ilyas continues. You have to be very clever. If not, you can spend the day going around and not sell a single one. Also, anyone can buy cans in a supermarket and sell them on the beach. Everyone finds a place on the beach, and there are more tourists willing to pay more. In the streets people haggle more and the best corners are already occupied. Beer can mafias do not exist. In addition, fewer and fewer warehouses are operating, those that supply at any time, due to police pressure. Most go free. But if you put yourself in the corner of another, they will tell you to go higher or lower. Also, lately people try not to attract attention. They try not to crowd together.”
Yes, lately the cans that are stationed on the corners of Joaquín Costa street, in the surroundings of Macba, in the Raval neighborhood, stack their cans a few meters apart, as if they were not theirs… or they keep them in boxes of cardboard next to it, while they whistle at the people who come and go… They are not so abundant in the vicinity of the concerts either. The city’s beaches, however, are already crowded, indeed unleashed. Here, hiding is more complicated. At the moment the offer of street vendors is spectacular, really varied.
“Things are going better this summer,” explains one of these vendors, with a pair of sarongs on one shoulder and an umbrella resting on the other. More tourists are coming, and they spend more. Last year everything seemed expensive to them. What happens is that we have the police very close, as always. Secrets are everywhere, but we continue to do…”.
With umbrellas and pareos, if you return home with 30 euros, you’ll leave happy. The key is to carry few items with you, so that police seizures are less painful, and to have most of them hidden, in sewers, buried in the sand, under the platforms of the beach bars. Some waiters point out that they already coexist with street vendors, that the sale of beers and mojitos reduces their profits, but that they have suffered from this unfair competition for so long…
Here the prices vary according to the pinkness of your skin, depending on how red you are. In this way, if you look like a foreigner, the can of beer will cost you two euros. The pareos oscillate between five and eight. The rental of a battered umbrella for the whole day between ten and twenty. They also offer braids, massages, fake tattoos again on the beaches. Making braids has always saved many women from sexual exploitation. And on the Rambla, Paseo de Gràcia, Plaza Catalunya, next to the magic fountains, around the cathedral, one can find counterfeit luxury brands, singing bird whistles, wooden toys, remote-controlled cars, dancing dolls, castanets, fans…
