Holidays should improve the mood of those who enjoy them. The usual reports on post-holiday syndrome and other pathologies typical of a society that tends to enthrone any occurrence of the psychology of bread soaked in oil will come in September. But until then we have to assume that whoever has made a sausage of the routine, escaping for a few days from the realm of obligations, must be in an acceptable mood and maintain at least a moderately optimistic view of the passing of the days and his congeners.
It is easy to understand that the waiter of a coastal restaurant can have a bad day in August, coming from serving lunches and dinners uninterruptedly from Sant Joan. Or that August is not the favorite month of the members of the municipal brigades in charge of cleaning the streets and squares of the tourist towns, which visitors turn into a dunghill day after day. Working when others are partying has never been a reason for joy.
But it is difficult to understand why so many of those who do not even budge, the typical activity of the summer visitor, remain faithful to the bad mood and bitterness. If in the summer they are so forced to argue for a parking space or whether the queue at the supermarket has been maintained properly, we don’t want to imagine what the long winter must be like between the walls of their usual home. It must be that the sour character behaves like a self-employed person and knows vacations.
Of all the places, the beach is the space that provides the most alibi and fodder for the angry. In a few days, the current news, conveniently doped up by summer journalistic routines, has given space to various groups revolted for the most diverse reasons.
The nudists are climbing the walls because the textiles – they call what we wear in swimsuits – invade their beaches, without complying with the non-existent rule of staying in balls so they put one foot in the sand.
Non-smokers in some municipalities are complaining about having people who puff on a cigarette even when they are about to dive into the water. The women, some, worried that the new generations do not practice topless with the libertarian enthusiasm of their mothers.
The townspeople, angry because the hidden coves are now crowded because of network users who geolocate and share their paradisiacal photographs.
In the swimming pools, anger spreads among those who consider that the hygiene rules are not compatible with the swimwear imposed by some religions.
Whatever everyone’s reason for bothering, the beach bums are united by a shared dream: a world populated only by duly approved clones of themselves. On one side of the parasol and on the other, photocopies of themselves in an endless expanse beyond the horizon.
In his fantasy the entire coastline is cut to the millimeter. Marked with dozens of pictograms so that everyone knows where they can and cannot soak. Here in balls, there in a swimsuit. Here the healthies, there the dirty smokers and fizzy wine drinkers. Here the sedentary and the bellies, there the shovel players and the vigorous. And, far, far away, to infinity and beyond, the families with tireless scoundrels.
What the busy person does not know is that, once the cause for which he projects his discomfort is removed, he has no other choice but to face himself. Discovering, without excuses, that he is nothing more than a rondinaire. A rondinaire cufflink. And since we don’t want so much misfortune for him, we must commit ourselves to the noble task of continuing to cause him some discomfort.
For all these people who want to turn the beach into a Liceu market, we have a piece of advice that they certainly haven’t asked us: stay at home. Or go to the beach from October. But give up all hope of privatizing public space based on your obsessions.
What they demand is not civility. They aspire to turn the beach into an extension of themselves and their boredom. The worst of them all are the mischievous ones who invoke the non-existent right that there are few people in the place they have chosen to bathe. They never realize that maybe the ones who really survive are, with or without a swimsuit, precisely them.
