Calle de unas manos

If you want to see something woeful, look no further than Barcelona's most famous attraction.

The Champs-Elysees is truly as chic and wide as the poets say. Oxford Street in the rush hour is indeed a journey into quietly reserved insanity without parallel in the known world. Edinburgh's Royal Mile in August genuinely is paved with student flyers.

But with La Rambla, whatever people expect, it will almost certainly disappoint. Lorca once called it "the most beautiful street in the world". Lorca clearly never had a man dressed as a gorilla ruffle his hair and then demand money.

If I ever meet the person who first thought it was a good idea to paint themselves bright and stand incredibly still, I'll give them a damn good shaking. And since when did 'hiring a fancy dress costume and standing on a crate' deserve reward?

A special mention and paragraph of his own (along with our pity) is reserved for the unerring logic of combining three "hilarious" comic characters to create a guaranteed winner. Yes, you sir: the irritating man I see most days, dressed as Manuel from Fawlty Towers, with the bottom half of Rod Hull's Emu and waving Ken Dodd's ticklestick, I am indeed talking about you.

If you suddenly feel the need to be hassled by talentless pratts, overcharged for a newspaper and spat at by a large bird in a tiny cage, La Rambla is indeed the place to be. Once you've jostled and shrugged your way past the crowds, you can finally make it to the statue of Columbus, who is balefully pointing in the middle distance at the current location of your wallet. How we laughed.

But. No sooner you've written it off on your website in a suitably pithy and witty fashion, things suddenly turn on their head and your scornful gaze meets the twinkling eyes of EJ Malinowski, el Vagabondo del Verso.

Originally from Buenos Aires, he's been a roaming poet since the age of 25 and has a beard to aspire to. Now based in Barcelona, a book deal has done nothing to dent his enthusiasm for the freedom of a squatter's life - while remaining smart enough to know that the tourists on La Rambla will love his bohemianism enough to buy his books. Of course, with my pidgin Spanish, I have no idea if his poetry is inspirational or insipid, but either way he's a genuinely nice man with a gently mocking sense of humour. Yesterday he revealed to me that his favourite English poets are Keats and Shelley. I'm prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt and suggest he was taking the piss.

In fact, if you get away from La Rambla to a main street that actually has some useful shops on it, genuine artistic skill is a more common sight and sound. Dixieland plays 20 yards from expert breakdancers. Freeform jazz sits alongside professional flamenco. Artists draw inspiring sketches and, if there's nothing else going on, people sit and play bongos just for the hell of it.

On pretty much any street except La Rambla, you'll also find political graffiti (or increasingly a stencilled silhouette... Banksy we need you). The slogans are smart and considered, sometimes warming ("There are 5 billion people in the world but only one you"), other times informative. The only thing I (repeatedly) learnt from London's scrawls was the sexual generosity of Kelly.

As for the walls themselves... leaving aside both La Rambla and Gaud - who was sufficiently loopy to deserve a barçablog post of his own - the buildings here are as befits a city that benefited from Moorish influences without suffering any of the nasty trends in hand amputation. Going back further, the Romans built fortifications that still form the basis of the old city; more recently, with remarkably prescient timing, the new part went expansionist just at the height of modernism.

Not surprisingly then, despite enough whitewall exhibition space to drive Laura Ashley to smack, the most popular form of artistic expression here is architecture. Students in particular are fanatical about it. There are schools and advanced studies; there are museums of devoted to cities and eclectic fanzines a-go-go. Discussion groups and collectives, libraries and schemes for renewal... you can't throw a brick here without hitting someone who'll take it home for later.

The other thing that artists and anarchists alike are renowned for attacking with fanatical gusto is political demonstration. For any kind of insight on that, you'll have to wait until after the global anti-war march on February 15th. Don't forget your ticklestick.

Posted by Andrew Losowsky at February 9, 2003 04:01 PM | TrackBack