Barcelona (15 page)

Wiped out by the flight, and hoping to catch a few hours' sleep before Saturday lunch (which would wipe us out again, and send us down to a deeper level of rest before dinner with Xavier Corberó, whose baby eels with dried red peppers in boiling oil and subsequent paella would at last weigh us down into full unconsciousness), Doris and I collapsed in our room in the Hotel Colon, overlooking the Cathedral square. Colon is the Catalan name of Columbus. Many Catalans firmly believe, as an article of faith almost, that Christopher Columbus really was Catalan, not Genoese: a notion for which there is not a crumb of evidence, though that has never dissuaded Catalans from believing anything they think will redound to their fame and glory. After all, many Catalans are also quite sure that it was some nameless compatriot of theirs who, centuries ago, became the first person in the whole wide world to rub a cut ripe tomato on a slice of bread, thereby creating the
pa amb tomaquet,
which is such a staple of the Catalan table; and next to discovering a dish as fundamental as this, discovering America is not such a transcendental deal.

We slept. Bright buttery patches of morning sun crept across the carpet. Very gradually we were woken by music floating up from the Cathedral square. Not the aggressive grating of rock radio, still less the degenerate thump and jabber of rap (a favorite now with Catalan teenies). It crept into the room with extraordinary sweetness, repetitive yet subtly varied.

Oboes and cornets, no strings, nothing amplified. “Be not afeard: this isle is full of noises / Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.” The Catalans were dancing their national dance, the
sardana.
They had spontaneously formed rings of eight, ten, as many as twenty people, holding hands. In the middle of each ring was a little pile of coats, hats, shopping baskets, set down on the cobbles so that all the dancers could keep an eye on their things.

Their movements were stately and minimal. They did not prance; they shuffled, so that the old ones could keep up with the young. What the sardana declares is cooperation. It is a citizenship dance. It does not highlight individual virtuosity, still less egotism. (If you want those, the Cathedral square is usually zipping with skateboards.) It includes children and teenagers, the old and gray, the slow, the lame, the fat and the whippet thin, the elegant and the dowdy. It brings families and friends together, in sweetness, without a trace of irony. It is a perfect expression of shared goodwill, and lovely to watch. We watched, with delight. Doris and I felt very far from New York City, and we were.

ROBERT HUGHES
has been an art critic for
Time
magazine since 1970. He is the author of many books, including the bestselling
Fatal Shore,
as well as the originator and narrator of the highly acclaimed PBS television series
The Shock of the New, American Visions,
and
Australia: Beyond the Fatal Shore.
A frequent contributor to
The New York Review of Books,
Hughes lives in New York City.

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