I’m not a big fan of Barcelona’s mayor, Joan Clos, but it’s only fair to point out that the tide of anger over anti-social behaviour has less to do with reality than with a PR war that his team is losing. Anyone with the faintest historical awareness of the old town knows that it has always been a filthy hole. For example, Nou de la Rambla may seem grim now, but, in the heyday of the London Bar, which opened 24 hours a day and had a terrace outside, it was populated with all manner of knocking shops, venereal doctors, dealers and gangsters. Since kalebeul is going through a fairly smutty phase, I’m sure you won’t mind my mentioning that one of my favourite recent photographers of la vie populaire is a gent who goes by the name of Pep Cunties.
(People keep asking me to do in-town tours, so I hope shortly to launch a couple, provisionally entitled Filth and Formica, for both of which I’m hoping to be able to call on the talents of one of the Barrio Chino’s most notorious figures.)
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