Barcelona Bon-Bons

Hi folks, sorry for the long silence but I needed the break. There is nothing quite like travel to a totally different place to soothe over grief so my trip to Barcelona helped a lot.

I went to Barcelona to attend the 19th International Harm Reduction Conference where I had been invited to speak at a plenary session. This is an annual conference which discusses the harms related particularly to drug use such as HIV/AIDS, TB, Hepatitis and other diseases. About 1300 people attended the conference including a tiny delegation of Malaysians comprising myself, two colleagues from UM and UKM and three people from our Prisons' department. The Prisons officers had come to present a paper on the recently-begun programme to provide methadone-substitution therapy in our prisons to drug-using prisoners. I missed their session but I have to say that, as is sadly typical for some of our government people, the enthusiasm to learn anything new from others was minimal. My colleague from UM had pleaded with the conference organisers for a place on a visit to a Spanish prison for one of our Prisons' people which they finally agreed to as long as she could also arrange an interpreter for him. After much trouble she did, but despite all this, the Prisons' officer turned up late for the bus and missed the visit altogether.

Later on, an attempt to get them to meet with the Iranian delegation who have done great work with prisoners using drugs was brushed off in favour of a visit to the Barcelona football stadium instead. I wonder what report they will give back home on their attendance at the conference, if at all. The head of the delegation was funded by the UN but the other two was funded by our Prisons Department (ie with taxpayers' money) and after Barcelona, they were off to Paris. Doubt if they were visiting Parisian prisons.

To be fair, Barcelona is a hard place to have a conference in. It's a beautiful city and as luck would have it, despite forecasts for bad weather, in fact we had beautiful weather, cool and sunny which made it difficult to stay indoors. It's got many attractions from palaces, churches,museums to great food to good shopping. The vibe is cool and creative which is not surprising given that this is the hometown of Picasso, Miro and the incomparably eccentric Gaudi.

It says a lot for Barcelonans that they nurtured geniuses like Picasso and tolerated and supported nutty architects like Gaudi. A visit to the Picasso Musuem which showcases the artist's early works ( some from age 8) confirms that this was a man born to paint. Looking at his evolution from the conventional portraits that he painted at the age of 15 to his later abstracts, you get to understand better why he painted the way he did and how the political landscape shaped him. And the Spaniards actually celebrate artists like these. I was in Spain in the '80s when his masterpiece about the Spanish Civil War, 'Guernica' was returned to Spain. It made the headlines. At Madrid airport, Customs officers insisted on opening the canvas to make sure it was the real Guernica that was returning to its homeland and not a fake.

Inside of the Sagrada Familia.

Gaudi is another cattle of fish altogether. His buildings look completely crazy but all of them are architecturally sound with many innovations. His Sagrada Familia church is still being built and won't be done until 2026, the 100th anniversary of Gaudi's death. It is an Alice-in-Wonderland building filled with symbols taken not just from Christian religious history but also nature, with flowers, fruits and animals sculptured onto the walls and towers. The inside of the church is glorious high-ceilinged space that looks as if you're in a jungle of tall flowers.

My favourite was the Casa Battlo which was a residence that Gaudi designed for a wealthy family. It is as quirky as any home could possibly be. Door frames and staircase handles are curved wood, walls and floors are curved and flowy and chimneys are mad splashes of colour. Yet everything works and makes sense in terms of letting in light and air. Still, you have to wonder about the conversations Gaudi must have had with his clients when they must have wondered if he was completely off his rocker.

Rooftop of Casa Batllo.

Casa Batllo chimneys.

As a city, Barcelona strikes me as very livable. People are friendly and despite warnings about pickpockets, I didn't feel unsafe. (Mind you, one of our Prisons guys got pickpocketed on the metro). Public transport is very good with buses plying the wide boulevards very often. A new environmental-friendly initiative by the city is Bicing. Under this system, you can buy a prepaid card (1 Euro a week or 24 Euro a year) which you use to rent a bicycle from the city to cycle everywhere. At your destination there is a place to park and lock your bike and your card ensures that it is always you using the bike. It's still an experimental system but you see many people riding the white and red Bicing bikes everywhere and the traffic jams are never as bad as any of ours. Barcelona has a great website that explains its sustainable transport policies as well as everything else happening in the city. By the way, at pedestrian crossings, a reminder painted on the road reminds you that most accidents in Barcelona involve pedestrians crossing roads without looking. It sure makes you check for cars before you step out.

I'm convinced a First World city (or any city) of the best kind is the type that gives equal access to all of its citizens. At the Fondation Joan Miro museum, I saw teachers taking groups of little kids and explaining Miro's art to them to enthusiastic response. Even more astoundingly I saw a guide take a blind man around the exhibits. He wore white gloves and was encouraged to touch Miro's sculptures while the guide explained the art.

Barcelona is in the Catalunya region of Spain and the people proudly call themselves Catalunyan and speak Catalan. Catalan is their first language, it is taught in schools alongside Spanish (Castillian) which is the national language and all signs are in Catalan first. It's a bit like going to Kelantan and having all signs in Kelantanese first, followed by Bahasa Malaysia. For those expecting to practice their Spanish in Barcelona (like my hubby), it can be a bit of a shock because Catalan is quite different. Having said that, people are very welcoming when you do try to speak Spanish and nowhere near as snooty as the French when you stumble and stammer.

As for food, I only have one recommendation to make: just go to the Mercat de la Boqueria (Boqueria market) at La Rambla and have the seafood. It's fresh, varied and just out-of-this-world delicious.

Hope you enjoyed this little travelogue. I will get back into things Malaysian once I've caught up with everything.