So close to Woodstock...

Demano als angloparlants que tinguin pietat dels meus errors 

(i als locals, de la meva pedanteria).

As I was wandering around Ciutadella Park last Wednesday afternoon I realized to what extent this city reminds me of a big melting pot. Well, perhaps melting pot is not the accurate definition: we all know melting pot happens only in the States –in AMERICA, as people from the States may call it. Immigration in Spain does not resemble a melting pot at all. Instead, we all cook an awkward soup tasting of chop suey, samosas, tapas and botifarra amb seques. Broadly speaking,social bonds between locals and new citizens do not take place very often here. The Chinese eat with the Chinese,the Arabs sit together with their other Arab fellows (and so on and so on).    

In any case, the Ciutadella Park is as close to Woodstock as you can get. With the arrival of summertime, this old and beautiful green area becomes a cozy nest for urban outsiders. Next to the mammoth statue, a crowd of Brazilian men stand beautifully bare-chested (for some reason, they are always bare-chested) as they practice acrobatics. On the left side of the entrance gate there is a gathering of black youngsters who tend to bunch up around a wooden xylophone; to our (white people) amusement, they assembly in order to sing and dance tribal music -at some point of the afternoon they did even play the original version of Shakira’s Waka waka song, so as to tell us “you see, there goes the African performance, you stupid hippies”. Finally, there comes the Erasmus gang. Erasmus students and similar kinds of good-looking youngsters coming from other Western countries tend to wear a hat and black sunglasses. Most of the time, they carry a guitar as well. This particular phenomena has nothing to do neither with nationality nor skin color.In fact, the funniest thing about them (Erasmus students, attractive and westerner foreign fellows) is they all look completely different and alike in the same time. Most of the time they are talkative and open-minded, they pass the weed and believe life is an exciting issue. And the song remains the same since the sixties.

In the last few months I have had the opportunity to meet Greeks, English, Italians, Portuguese –the list of foreign nationalities is never-ending. All of them are settled.  Most of them organize and take part in many cultural events, and I have been lucky enough to see them (musicians, singers, videoartists)in action. I can be as sarcastic as I want to, we locals can call them guiris over and over again. Still, all of them are part of the city I belong to. My mind-blowing city would not be half mind-blowing as it is without them –the black, the Pakistani, the Chinese, the Erasmus students (even the Argentinians guys who believe they are so sexy and irresistible). It is a small world we are living in.  We should only sit down and try to make it even smaller.