I was going to start by talking about the Civil War and one of its most terrible euphemisms popularized by the rebel side, especially between the months of July and September 1936. But I will be honest with you. A few days ago, to talk about that game of taking over the beach by our elders and nailing umbrellas, I talked about the Normandy landings and those wonderful people who are our young grandparents and everyone was offended . Being a televised sport – the senior invasion of some beaches -, which has even had to be regulated by municipal ordinances, and, making a comparison so excessive that it could only be understood as ironic, between the invasion of Normandy and that of, for example, Torrevella, this humble little writer did not expect it. That there are people who take offense and dislike what you do, is not a sign that, a priori, seems negative to me, but quite the opposite, encouraging. Sometimes you explain yourself wrong. But the best is when they understand you the worst.
But we are in a quiet period especially for José Manuel Soto so I will not write a word about the atrocious application of the Fugitive Law and, yes, perhaps, in the likeness of the Summer Afternoon Walk and recreation which is given to maximum security prisoners in the movies. Some know that they can walk but not run and that there is no way to escape from there.
Let’s start analyzing this sport without further delay, one of the most popular of our summers. For the practice of this, the participating teams form family teams integrated, on occasion, by players who still do not want to participate or who, even, have been punished to do so – another similarity with prisoners, for example, from Sing-Sing and even Louisiana, with chains on their feet if any irate reader had any relatives in Sing-Sing or Louisiana, please know that I make no apologies).
Be that as it may, today’s summer sport consists of walks of short intensity -never more than 5 kilometers/hour-, from end to end of forests, parks, but especially, along urbanized seashores, in which sports use has finished giving the name of the activity: Passeig Marítim. The first to develop and beautify the city would be those of Santander and Sant Sebastià at the end of the 19th century. And the fact is that taking care of the coast does not enjoy so many years and only from the interest of the aristocracy in what was called wave bathing, that part of the geography of this country began to be valued.
One aspect that differentiates the Afternoon Summer Walk from other sports is that its practice is carried out through matches that you never know when they start and when they end, a bit like spy dates in occupied Berlin: only they know, but always punctual The different teams go to the field of play when they want and during the time they want but always in the afternoon, when the sun is not directly scorching and it never rains. There is no start or finish line, and, in reality, this destroys the lack of competitive enthusiasm in this sport.
A Summer Summer Walk is not a speed race or a marathon, although there are obstacles – manters, other participants, bicycles, skates and people piping. There are no specialists in the mentioned sport beyond a series of children who start running but are quickly absorbed by the always slow and jogging squad. Because the unheard of thing about this sport is that it is practiced by teams that do not compete with each other. That in fact, they act as if the others didn’t exist and hadn’t had the same thought as them. It is a sport whose purpose is to kill time, to make the hours pass as if it did not matter to lose them in an activity with the sea on the right when going and on the left when returning.
The engine of this sport, you will have already discovered, is the most terrible of tedium and boredom. It is practiced because one – in this case, a family – is already bored before practicing it. In a way, it’s about lowering the unbearable frequency of boredom, or doing it in motion, always forward but nowhere like the jelly animals of the abyssal depths of the oceans.
As a sport, it is certainly soporific, I will not deny it, despite the fact that its practice can be done after a nap. Fathers, mothers, grandmothers and grandfathers, children, teenagers, their friends. Many of them inside bodies reddened by excessive hours in the sun that same morning – and the previous one and the previous one before the previous one. A small apartment for so many people – two sitting at the dining table, three in the dining room, four in the bedrooms, two in the kitchen and Uncle Pau on the balcony. A hidden conflict with teenagers and between teenagers. The Karamazov brothers aged nine, ten and twelve. The Macbeth brothers-in-law and Uncle Pitingo. That promise to take your kids up thirty zipline jumps and ruin themselves. In short, a horror and the need that, between lunch and dinner, something happens that is not the usual thing, even if this usual thing is always the same, leading him to play a tournament on the Passeig Marítim, where he will meet with other family members with identical motivations.
As an innovative factor would be the possibility that the team can be integrated by humans and animals, especially dogs and carts with children. Footwear – for humans – ranges from sandals, flip flops or sports shoes. The shirt is usually a little less humiliating than the ones used in the mornings. Stimulants are not prescribed but given the After Sun aroma emanating from the skin of many of the participants it is possible that it works as such or perhaps anabolic. On many occasions, players are rewarded with ice cream, chocolate shakes and lemon slushies. Apart from this, the feeling is always similar to that of the melancholy of beings deprived of liberty but with the right to recreation in the open air who know that they will never be able to escape from that family, from that social class, from holidays like this for the rest of your life.
