You know you’re not in a posh neighborhood. Don’t make that face. You didn’t need that ten-year-old boy, with a rapper’s gold chain around his neck, to come up to you and ask you for “papel de fumar ‘pa’ mi tío” to know that we are not in Pedralbes. You are in Can Dragó, you have traveled along the Meridiana, you have left behind the Hypercore of the attack and you have entered your old domains. You come from there, from Nou Barris, so don’t look splendid now, erase the classist look of superiority. Do not underestimate the fotimer of people who see your eyes, or hesitate to get into the water or not because, wherever you look, everything is bursting. Maybe the radioactive one is you. Go ahead, respect your origins, try to understand what you see, refresh yourself and your memory.
You were the boy who rides in that cart, and also the teenager who smokes, you met the Meridiana Canodrome, remember? You bet on greyhound number six with colleagues, whom you stopped seeing. You played for Viviendas del Congreso, a neighborhood team that challenged Barça, Espanyol, Damm and the team that stood in front. Does the noise bother you? don’t take pictures It is the sound of life. Tokischa’s lyrics can’t shock you, that you used to listen to worse shit: “Déjamelo lleno ‘e leche; let’s not make much noise so my brother doesn’t suspect; that I have a criminal in my leg; that breaks my ass in four, después que me lo mama” . A mother scolding a child (yours?), the lifeguard’s whistle that forbids the use of flip-flops (you again), laughing teenagers (your sister in the 1980s with friends), misfits chasing them with manners pretending to be good people who at the time of truth will turn to evil (bad people, there are always some). South American, Filipino, Andalusian accents, some Catalan speakers (you and three others in an EGB class of 40 children), tattoos everywhere, beautiful bodies in bikinis two sizes smaller; multiform bodies, too thin, often obese… The great mix. That’s the world, not the bubble you decided to live in so you made some money and ran away from your past. Don’t beat yourself up, they’ll want out too. And one day come back to feel authentic again. We can leave the neighborhood, but the neighborhood never leaves us.
You came with your daughter. 19 years, already. He brings his little camera, as always. Study cinema. He is freaking out at what he sees. You took her away from the real world. Maybe not as much as you think. Today you come back as a tourist, but you are an impostor, you were them. And you know it.
The pool is huge, but there are so many people that each bather gets a minimum of space. Order in chaos. This is not a spa. “Jump in, my life, the water is hot”, says a mother to a son who hesitates whether to jump in or not. I would have called him “cool” to convince him, I think to myself. It’s unbearably hot. Fresh is better than hot, of all life, woman.
In the austere dressing room, some friends undress another quadriplegic friend in a wheelchair. I don’t know why and I won’t ask. I do know that there is so much affection in this scene that it could be condensed inside the small room where we are, which smells of ammonia and sweat. There is, in here, a touching spirit of solidarity. They try to put a bathing suit on her and it’s not easy at all. They talk to him without paternalisms, laugh and finally get it.
My daughter and I seek shade on the huge expanse of uneven grass that surrounds the pool. We dodge a few towels until we glimpse a leafy tree. We smile and lie down. I tell him skirmishes from my mid-teens, which are mixed with rumors of conversations taking place around us. We’re looking up, the rays of sunlight filtering harshly through the leaves and our conversation improves, as if we want to live up to what we’re looking at.
We’re going crazy about the lunch we ate at the bar. bad to kill We’re sorry for the bad time the table cleaner had, a fucking immigrant who walks around the bar with a wet cloth, when he discovered that one of the tables had become Saigon. The bad manners of a large local family in the form of chickens scattered across a plastic table without tablecloths, a bone here, a skin there, all mixed with coke, beer and red wine. A disgust
Looking up and taking a deep breath allows you to quickly forget the scene. It’s all mental. Be water, as Bruce Lee would say, the reference of those childhood years.
I remember that my teenage friends and I used to gather every day in the same square, in La Guineueta. There were no cell phones. It was there and always at the same time. An almost old man, extremely thin, lonely and as if he had escaped from a nursing home, always roamed the square. He didn’t speak, he didn’t roll at all. We called it Future. We were idiots and, you see, one day he gave us to be poets.
I’ve lost track of pretty much all of those friends. The time has come to throw myself into the water.
Dive in, put on your best face, you’re Fraga wading into the waters of Palomares beach. You have stood the test of time.
You are radioactive.
The largest outdoor swimming pool in Barcelona.
Depth from 0.10 m to 1.30 m.
Ideal for families.
