Bike taxi drivers were among the most profitable underground trades in Barcelona. You had to pedal for a lot of hours, but they earned a lot more than selling bright and flying toys on La Rambla, for example. About 150 euros on a good Saturday. Some bike taxi drivers even had papers.
Until a year ago the then first deputy mayor, the socialist Jaume Collboni, came up with an ingenious administrative ploy that banished them from the city. These days you might see some late at night… One of the goals of the new mayor heading into the summer is to finish this work, to stop street vending without a permit. It has no place in the tidy city. Ada Colau never raised this question in these terms. What happens is that you already know what happens when you squeeze a balloon… There are hundreds of people.
“Well, those who made a living with bike taxis and had papers moved mainly to construction, as they realized that bike taxis no longer had a future – says Javed Ilyas, from the Association of Pakistani Workers of Catalonia –, and the rest to other forms of street vending, especially beer cans and pareos. People engage in this because they don’t have papers. When he gets them, he leaves it.” Selling cans of beer and mojitos is more lucrative than selling sarongs. In the summer you can earn 60 euros a day. Whatever happens, many Muslims are ashamed to sell alcohol, so they settle for pareos.
“And the sale of roses seems simple, but it is very complicated – continues Ilyas. You have to be very smart. If not, you can spend the day going around and not sell a single one. Also, anyone can buy cans from a supermarket and sell them on the beach. There is room for everyone 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 mobs don’t exist. In addition, fewer and fewer warehouses are operating, those that supply at any time, due to police pressure. Most go for free. But if you stand in someone else’s corner, they will tell you to go higher or lower. In addition, lately people try not to attract attention. They try not to agglomerate”.
Yes, recently the canners who are located on the corners of Joaquín Costa street, around Macba, in the Raval neighborhood, stack their cans a few meters apart, as if they were not theirs… or put them in cardboard boxes on its edge, while watching the people coming and going… There aren’t that many around the concerts either. The city’s beaches, however, are already completely full. Here the thing of dissimulation becomes more complicated. At the moment the street vendors offer is spectacular, really varied.
“This summer things are going better – explains one of these sellers, with a pair of sarongs on one shoulder and a parasol resting on the other. More tourists are coming, and spending more. Last year everything seemed expensive to them. The thing is that we have the police way above us, as always. The secrets are everywhere, but we’re doing it…”.
With parasols and pareos, if you go home with 30 euros, you will be happy. The key is to carry few items, so that the police confiscations are not so painful, and to have most of them hidden, in sewers, buried in the sand, under the platforms of the bars. Some waiters explain that they already coexist with street vendors, that the sale of beers and mojitos reduces their profits, but that they have been suffering from this unfair competition for so long…
Here the prices fluctuate depending on the color of your skin: depending on how red you are. In this way, if you make a pint of guiri, the can of beer will cost you two euros. Pareos range from five to eight. The rental of a damaged parasol for the whole day between ten and twenty. They also offer braids, massages, fake tattoos on the beaches. Making braids has removed some women from sexual exploitation. And on the Rambla, on Passeig de Gràcia, in Plaça Catalunya, next to the magical fountains, around the cathedral, we can find counterfeits of luxury brands, songbird whistles, wooden toys, remote-controlled cars, dolls dancers, castanets, fans…
