Barcelona terror thoughts

At 8am on Tuesday morning I arrived back at my desk but as is so often is the case after a weekend away, I was here in body but not in spirit.

From Friday evening until Monday lunchtime I had the pleasure of again staying in the Catalan capital of Barcelona, this time for the third time in my life.

As a keen traveller and someone who gets away whenever finances and annual leave allow, I try not to make a habit of going back to the same place, even twice. I’ve now been to 33 countries and believe that the world is a huge place with so much out there to explore and no matter how great a location is, there’s so much unchartered territory around the globe left to uncover.

Yet, despite this there’s something about Barcelona that keeps drawing me back. Perhaps that makes me a hypocrite? I don’t mind.

It has now become clear that 13 people have been killed in an ISIS-claimed terror attack which struck Las Ramblas, the very heart of Barcelona yesterday afternoon.

The attacker, who is said to still be at large, drove a van down the vibrant boulevard mowing into pedestrians along the way. Hundreds were injured, including several more in a separate attack in Cambrils, 120 kilometres away.

Catalan authorities have been left in no doubt that Las Ramblas was targeted for a specific reason, and that reason is that thousands of tourists visit the thoroughfare every day, soaking up the city’s unique atmosphere at the hundreds of bars, restaurants, boutiques and market stalls that line the avenue as it stretches down to the Mediterranean Sea.

Las Ramblas is a hive of activity, from the street performers who draw the crowds during the day, to the prostitutes that frequent the area at night. Las Ramblas really is truly a melting point of cultures in a city I believe to be one of the most beautiful in the world.

Sometimes when pictures of the terror attacks that now all too frequently take place both in Western Europe and countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan are beamed to our 24 hour news channels, we are gripped in a kind of morbid curiosity watching as the death count increases.

Of course we keep our fingers crossed that the death toll doesn’t rise further and the police are able to arrest all those who played their part in the planning of the atrocity. Maybe it makes me a cold person or all this crime reporting at Truro Crown Court has desensitised me, but I usually struggle to truly emphasise with those who are there.

Well I did previously, but all this changed yesterday.

On Monday morning I took one final walk down Las Ramblas before heading to the airport and back to my Cornwall home.

I was tired (no more than 15 hours sleep in three nights), hungover (I lost count of the amount of sangria I drank over the course of the weekend), broke (it’s not the cheapest city), burnt (I was a bit low on funds on our beach day and the choice was mojitos or sun cream), slightly annoyed (FC Barcelona had been trounced by Real Madrid and that tw*t Ronaldo right in front of me) but despite all of this I was still in love with the city and didn’t want to come home.

So when I was driving home from work yesterday and heard the catastrophic events unfolding on the radio, I felt physically sick. What made it even worse was when I switched on BBC news and saw people running for their lives up the exact street I had walked down just three days before.

My heart truly does go out to everybody involved and I’ve been left with one of those feelings that it could have been me. What if the terrorists decided to attack a few days earlier or even last weekend when it would have been even busier and I was sat at one of the bars playing cards over a beer with my friends?

The attackers are cowards, targeting innocent holiday makers trying to enjoy some sunshine in a bid to escape this insult of a British summer. Just as I was several days ago.

What alarms me most is how easy it is to hire a van and cause carnage, I can only pray it doesn’t happen again, however I am not confident that it won’t.

Will this attack stop me going back to Barcelona? No, never. We cannot let them win. As is the case in London, Paris, Brussels and now Barcelona life must go on although we must never forget those who have been affected.

Barcelona is an enchantingly beautiful city. There’s Plaça Catalunya, Park Guell, Camp Nou, La Sagrada Família, the Gothic Quarter and so many other amazing sights to soak up.

Yes it may get overcrowded and some locals resent the huge influx of visitors but this won’t stop me loving the city.

Nor will the acts of a number of pathetic men and I pray that those injured in the atrocity make full recoveries and the city is able to get back on its feet once the natural period of mourning comes to an end.

I don’t care if it makes me a hypocrite, Barcelona, I’ll be back.

Barcelona 2017

Prague, Berlin and Barcelona are all special cases for me.

Personally, I don’t make a habit of revisiting the same places time and time again, and although I don’t like to be one to bash other people’s travel choices, each to their own as my mother always told me, I struggle to see how people can be content with visiting the same resort each year sometimes not even breaking out of the confines of the hotel itself when there is a whole world out there to explore.

I have visited Prague and Berlin on two separate occasions, both for different reasons. In Prague’s case I went firstly with an ex-girlfriend and secondly with a group of friends, two entirely different trips I can assure you, whereas I visited Berlin during my first ever foray onto foreign soil on a college trip and then again as the starting point for a three week rail venture around Europe.

Now, after this weekend’s trip I have visited Barcelona three times, elevating it to the top of the rankings and perhaps even making me a hypocrite, and do I regret my choice? Not in the slightest.

All three trips centred on football and my fondness for FC Barcelona but at the same time all three trips were so much more than that. During the first visit, with my mother, we attended a relatively low-key game against Sporting Gijon in the magnificent footballing cathedral that is the Camp Nou, as well as taking in some of the city’s man sights including the bustling boulevard of Las Ramblas, the beautiful fountains of Placa Catalunya and the former Roman village area that is the Gothic Quarter, a narrow collection of streets that stretch down to the Mediterranean seafront.

And despite my love affair with Barcelona, I have had my fair share of bad luck in association with the city starting from when my hero, Lionel Messi, missed my first game after being on the receiving end of a very rare suspension.

My second dose of bad luck, came during my second visit, and was this time a little more self-inflicted. The spur of the moment trip was booked just over a week before when over several pints we decided to head out for the title decider between Barcelona and Atletico Madrid, again in the Camp Nou.

At the time, wearing monthly contact lenses (switching to dailies has since been the best choice I’ve ever made), I purchased a bottle of solution small enough to take through airport security only to get into Barcelona, give my contact lenses a scrub before heading out for an evening and the next morning waking up in absolute agony feeling as if I had poured acid into my eye.

After visiting numerous pharmacists and being unsuccessfully handed several antibiotics, my friend belatedly remembered his then-wife was a nurse and picked up the phone and was told that saline would neutralise whatever on earth was going on in my eye.

It did, but only on the last day after I had missed out on a night out and spent an afternoon in the stadium looking like a pirate with an eye patch on, pretty much enable to see the action unfolding on the pitch beneath me.

So, back to the present, last Friday I left home for Bristol a full seven and a half hours before take-off and when I first joined a long tail of stationary traffic making its way out of Cornwall, I was relaxed.

Gradually the delays became increasingly concerning and the hours continued to pass as my sat-nav took me off the A30 and M5 and through a load of towns and villages which were equally congested in a bid to avoid the tailbacks.

My phone battery rapidly drained away and then came the realisation that I would be left in a place I wasn’t familiar with no sat-nav, culminating in me missing my flight. With my battery at less than 4% I finally arrived back on the M5, with little time remaining until my flight and that was the moment I began to really fear the Barcelona curse had struck again.

As soon as I turned off the motorway, with my phone long since dead, I was fortunately met with a relatively straight forward stretch and after following the signs, eventually pulled into the airport with just over an hour to spare after six and a quarter hours of 'driving' under my belt meaning I was left with no choice but to use the express parking right next to the airport at a cost of £150, wasn’t enough to dampen my spirits.

In fact, with blazing sunshine all weekend compensating for this insult of a Cornish summer, the only damp thing about this exceptional weekend was Barcelona’s performance in the El Clasico Super Cup final, a 3-1 defeat against eternal enemies Real Madrid.

As has been documented a thousand times in a variety of literature, the rivalry has intensified over the years following the oppression of the Catalan state by central government in Madrid, with the Camp Nou during the Franco dictatorship being one of the only places Catalan people could gather, speak their language, wave their flags, sing their songs and ultimately express their identity.

These days the hatred and resentment is still there, perhaps fuelled by the fact that along with Atletico Madrid, the pair annually battle it out for the top honours in Spain and on the continent and then there’s also the two aliens that are Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo smashing every record going, driving each other on to new heights. It’ll be a long time until we see anybody like these two again so enjoy them while they’re both still lacing up their boots.

The first half of the game was uneventful with little action to speak of, but it was odd to see Real Madrid shirts dotted among the home support, a sight unthinkable in other European countries where away support in home sectors would have to be disguised and muted to ensure any form of personal safety. Although the atmosphere was good, watching football is Spain is more like going to the theatre than into a warzone.

Fortunately for us, but not for Barcelona who look like they need some serious work if they are to push the back-to-back Champions League winners from Madrid for trophies, the game exploded into life.

First Gerard Pique inadvertently turned a cross into his own net before Messi restored parity from the penalty spot. The game then turned with the introduction of Ronaldo, who scored with a rocket from range before earning a yellow card for stupidly taking his shirt off during his celebrations, and then he saw red after being penalised for a dive. Whether he dived or not looked questionable from our vantage point but he then appeared to shove the ref, for which he has since received a five match ban. Marco Asensio then sealed a 3-1 advantage going into the second leg with an even more breath-taking strike.

All-in-all, we enjoyed quite the weekend. Some fantastic nights out in the clubs and bars of Las Ramblas and the Gothic Quater where we had the pleasure of meeting some great people and even ending up indulging in a spot of late night drunken swimming, ticking El Clasico off the bucket list and wandering the wide open avenues of the Catalan capital in blazing hot sunshine. We also temporarily reached heaven sitting on Barcelona beach, sipping beers in the Sunday afternoon sun.

As always, the city was easy to navigate with its expansive underground rail links, and despite reports of hostility from locals towards tourists, everybody we met was welcoming and hospitable. Especially the friendly staff at the delightfully named Bollocks rock bar, which is possibly now my favourite bar in the world.

My only parting piece of serious advice would be if you are planning on visiting Park Guell to capture that Instagram money shot of the colourful mosaics in front of the city skyline that stretches down to the ocean, make sure you book tickets in advance as when we arrived (reasonably early may I add), tickets to get to the front of the vantage point had sold out until the next day despite there not seeming to be a large amount of people kicking about.

So yeah, Barcelona for a third time, not something I’ll be making a habit of as the world is a big place and I want to visit as many countries as I can while I’m still young and able, but if anybody is pondering over a weekend away which combines electric nightlife, some of the best football in the world (most of the time), and a beautiful city rich in culture and history then look no further than Barcelona, you may even end up going more than once.