“When you see a few taxis standing on a corner, it means that there is a place nearby where you can eat well. That’s for sure.” These are the words of Montse Palomo, a Barcelona taxi driver, who extends that old maxim applied to truckers to the taxi sector as well. It is not surprising: taxi drivers know the city like the back of their hand and due to the peculiarity of their work, which forces them to be away from home but locked in the taxi for the whole day, they need to know which are the best places to stopping to eat is a success and, taking advantage of it, go to the bathroom and rest..z Because time is gold for a taxi driver and having to stop again, either because the menu was scarce and hunger stalks again or because the food It has not gone down well, you would be losing money.
Palomo explains that taxi drivers, if they cannot go home, can choose to take a homemade tupperware or sandwich, or buy one, and eat it in the taxi during a stop. “When we eat in a bar or a restaurant, we do it in strategic places that are convenient for us to work.” Some of these places have names that could be related precisely to the taxi world, such as Bar Stop.
The taxi driver Gabriel Eduardo Pérez agrees with Montse and affirms that the main characteristics that an ideal bar or restaurant for taxi drivers must have is the following: “it must be open until late, it must be a place to go at night and it has practically no taxi rank. at the door or a good place to park, because we can’t go looking for a parking lot and pay for it every time we need to go to the bathroom, have a coffee or eat”.
For the taxi driver Juan Moreno, apart from everything else, it must also be cheap and, he points out, that it is perfect that it is located in one of the abundant corners of Barcelona’s Eixample, such as Baden-Baden, Bassy, ??El Sot, Mesón Los Ancares, Bar Tío Pepe, O’Val Douro 7 or Frankfurt Donildo. Ildefons Cerdà probably did not expect this when he designed his urban plan, but this is how gastronomy also has the potential to shape cities: the offer located on the same corner will take into account a potential loyal customer, that is, the taxi driver.
“At night the most unfortunate in the taxi, the salaried workers, work,” says Moreno, “because the self-employed avoid those hours and usually work from 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., while we have to work from 6:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m.” This forces them to locate places that offer food and, if possible, until late at night. “But there aren’t many places like this,” says Pérez, who believes that as a result of the pandemic they have been closing earlier and earlier, something that complicates the day-to-day life of night-shift taxi drivers. “For us, it would be ideal to be able to have dinner around 10 or 11 pm, but those are also the hours when we have the most work, because people leave restaurants for dinner and want to travel, so we are forced to eat dinner more late to hold the shift well”.
Pérez wants to draw attention to the following: “despite the fact that taxi drivers provide a public service, just like bus drivers, we do not have garages where we can park quietly, or any other space to eat or go to the bathroom” . Moreno agrees: “How can we work so many hours without eating? Because although the agreement only allows working 8 hours a day, wage earners work 12 hours”.
The matter worsens at the Josep Tarradellas – El Prat airport. The two bars that were closed because they were on unlicensed land and currently the taxi drivers only have a few tables in the shade and some vending machines to stock up. “AENA put some food trucks for us, like food trucks, after many complaints. But they only lasted a few months and they were not very efficient: if they didn’t lack bread, they lacked something else, they formed long things that were incompatible with our work and, to top it all off, they closed very early”. The situation has led to street food vendors proliferating in the so-called ‘parra’, the taxi waiting area at Barcelona airport.
“It’s an illegal activity,” Pérez acknowledges, “but the people who only work at the airport have to be able to eat something there.” He comments that there are people of different nationalities with a shopping cart and lunch boxes of prepared food of all kinds. “Except soups, I have seen everything: Colombian, Pakistani, Spanish food…”. The taxi driver expresses his concern about the healthiness of the food, which is usually prepared in the same house as the vendors or, even, “by people who run a bar and extend their business to that point.”
The only legal, but cold, option is to order from the company ‘Bocata va’, which delivers sandwiches and soft drinks. “We don’t even have a microwave,” says Moreno, who hates eating a cold Tupperware at the airport. In his opinion, the street food at the airport is the only option to be able to eat something hot in a wait that goes from 45 minutes in summer to 3 hours in winter. “If it weren’t for these people who sell us food on the street, who even bring the means to heat food and make coffee, we would be abandoned by the hand of God, more stranded than boogers, sorry,” he values. He even receives by whatsapp the menu that one of the vendors prepares every day and has tried everything from salads with goat cheese and walnuts to macaroni with pesto, seafood salad, arepas, rice with chicken, rice with yogurt and chickpeas, ceviche, tea with milk, Moroccan pastries. “They are the foods of the nationalities that we work in the taxi: Ecuadorians, Colombians, Peruvians, Moroccans, Pakistanis and Spaniards.”
The circumstances are not without problems. The competition between legal and illegal vendors has led to calls to the authorities on different occasions, momentarily halting the sale, which has reappeared hours later due to the safe demand for hot food.
