Back from Rome ...

We had a unique perspective on the Champions League Final.

United fans from birth, Ben and I have been Barca season ticket holders at the Camp Nou for two seasons and thus able to witness the full glory of this season of incredible football. We have big hearts, big enough to encompass a passion for two teams of this stature. And then this happened.

Having got our tickets from another Barca member, we sat in the Olympic stadium behind the goal with thousands of other Barca fans, possibly the only two in the entire area who supported United.

We’d agreed appropriate secret signals and gestures to make if United scored and how to react. It was all theoretical. They didn’t score, and after the first flurries of the opening 10 minutes never appeared likely to. United didn’t turn up and for the first time I can remember I felt embarrassed for them.

I’ve seen them well beaten before and seen them play badly on far too many occasions. But I can’t remember having seen them get it wrong so badly, to play so at odds with how they needed to play. Four days on it remains a mystery. Did they underestimate Barca? Did they think their counter attacking power could overwhelm a team lacking three mainstays of defence and with two other key players just back from injury? I’ve no idea. Time to move on...

But if we were going to see United lose, sitting where we were was the best place to be. I’d have hated to be enveloped by the gloom at the United end. To witness the utter delirium of the Barca fans up close and personal was a truly wonderful experience, even for Ben whose bravery despite being broken hearted was incredibly moving. His neighbour gave him a big hug at the end along with a lapel badge from the Mataro Barca supporters club.

The Barca fans applauded every United player as they received their loser’s medals with the exception of Ronaldo, who got widely whistled for being the sullen, whinging genius that he is.

Returning to Barcelona took us back to a city submerged in utter happiness in a way that cannot really happen in most of Europe’s big cities where two or three big teams occupy the hearts of their citizens.

Take what promotion to the Premier League has done for small towns like Hull and Burnley and multiply that by a million to reflect the scale of the achievement and the population and you have a glimpse of how Barcelona and indeed Catalonia (for this is a national team in effect) celebrated the Champions League and the treble.

A million people were on the streets of Barcelona for the open top bus parade with every man, woman, child, baby, dog and shop front dressed in azulgrana. Almost every village in the region had a big screen in the main square for the locals to watch together.

Joy unbounded and indeed joy unprecedented. One is so used in life to people saying ‘you should have been here years ago’ or ‘if you think this is good you should have been here when ... ‘. Well Barca have never won the treble before; to be in the city on its finest day was indeed a privilege.

On related points:

* Sarah now knows the first two and last two lines of the Barca hymn. And she has transferred her designated Dream Man from George Clooney to Barca manager Pep Guardiola.

* Print may be dying but the Barcelona papers have pulled out all the stops for the events of the past few days with El Periodico de Catalunya providing wonderful examples of the power of newspapers to delight on special occasions.

It provided special wraparounds on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, styling itself as El Periodico de Roma, with the first two covers being in a class of their own. Wednesday’s paper recreated Michaelangelo’s The Creation of Adam with Guardiola as Adam while Thursday showed him aloft in the air, pointing to the sky, elevated by the hands of his adoring players. Pure genius.

The Glory Game

The great fallacy is that the game is first and foremost about winning. It's nothing of the kind. The game is about glory. It's about doing things in style, with a flourish, about going out and beating the other lot, not waiting for them to die of boredom.

Danny Blanchflower as quoted by Paul Hayward in The Observer in his piece 'Barcelona's sense of style restores glory to Blanchflower's game'

More to follow on the final but that more or less sums up Barca

Eric has it right

From Eric Cantona in El Pais English edition

Watching Barça is a real pleasure for any soccer supporter,” said Cantona. “As you can imagine, this game is a dream for me. It’s the final everyone dreamed of, the perfect game. Barça is the only team that reminds me a little of Cruyff’s Ajax. Total football.”

Asked to venture a prediction on the outcome though, Cantona’s red roots shine through: “Manchester United.”

JDF Jones

I have just heard the terribly sad news that journalist and author JDF Jones has passed away.

I couldn't describe him any better than the bulletin from the Financial Times does:

[He] was a towering figure in the creation of today's FT ... JDF became foreign editor of the paper in the 1960s when the FT had little coverage of international affairs. He laid the foundations of the worldwide network of correspondents that has allowed us to become such a global paper today. As managing editor in the 1970s he played a huge role in building up the FT talent pool and in the creation of the first international edition of the paper . He was also the founder editor of Weekend FT in the 1980s and Literary and Arts editor.

He was also hugely kind and generous to me, both personally and professionally, when I arrived in Johannesburg in 1982 as a young correspondent for Reuters, fearing the place somewhat and knowing nobody at all there.

Dinners at his magnificent house (which he shared with his then partner Mary and her daughter Polly) were long and liquid affairs which vastly boosted the profits of various Cape vineyards.

Journalism for JDF was meant to be as enjoyable as it was important and his running of the FT Southern African bureau was designed to further such aims.

He employed two extremely able journalists in the bureau to do all the heavy lifting stories on company results, the economy, gold prices etc while JDF concentrated on the bigger picture stories - whither apartheid, whither Swaziland, whither the region as a whole.

Most of these stories seemed to necessitate extensive travel, with beautiful Cape Town a particular favourite during the summer (shurely 'when parliament was sitting'? Ed)

We shared a memorable journey to the heart of the Botswana desert in a Land Rover with two other journalists.

In one unforgettable moment we had just sat down by some rocks to enjoy the magnificent desert sunset when heard on the BBC World Service the of death of the vile and soon to be unlamented South African ex PM BJ Vorster.

We toasted his demise with several cans of very cold Lion lager.

How we watched Barca and United simultaneously last night ...

Words fail me ...

Messi. Again.

Eating out in Barcelona

Chef Aidan Brooks has a very comprehensive, funny and knowledgeable guide to all that is good about eating here. Well worth reading.

It sooooooo quiet ….

Barcelona appears to be subsiding into a crisis-induced slumber.

We have driven down the main thoroughfare of Avenida Diagonal at 8pm on the last two consecutive evenings. This is rush hour time in Barcelona and normally one of fearful traffic jams– people work late here; yet on both nights, we have sailed down a clear road in minutes.

The economic activity of the city and the region is slowing down rapidly. The car industry is coming to a halt; tourism is down and with it takings in bars and restaurants; construction is finished.

Another major leg of the economy – fairs, conventions and congresses – are also in big trouble. Bread & Butter, the fashion tradeshow is returning to Berlin while the Barcelona car salon has been axed – it’s very much a second tier event, the type that get the chop in a climate like this.

It’s not all gloom. We celebrated Rebecca’s 16th last night in the bar of the Omm Hotel and at El Japones restaurant. Both were humming.

The wind in Barcelona

Some of the damage in the park opposite our flat caused by the hurricane winds that whipped through the city on Saturday morning ...

Ben's latest talent ...

... is a hugely impressive impersonation of the Camp Nou announcer, who (and he's done it for the last 50 years) discloses the team lineups before the game in a deep and rich Catalan accent.

Worth asking Ben for a riff next time you see him. sadly, I don't think we can count on this as a career prospect. While the incumbent may indeed retire at some point, the job is an unpaid one.

Idiot wind

The Barcelona Council website runs a very useful RSS news service which updates you on what is going on in the city.

One feature is a Friday update on the weekend weather. Last Friday's called for some cloudy and mixed weather.

what we got on Saturday were hurricane force winds nearing 140kph which did huge damage to the city and region as a whole. Ben and I left the flat at 10am, saw a tree careering down the road and turned back. Huge pine trees were felled in our local park and on the main roads. Many of the suburbs in the hills still have no electricity.

Most tragically, four young baseball players, aged 9-12, were killed when the sports hall they were sheltering in collapsed and buried them. The photos of the boys, so smart in their outfits and caps, are too awful to look at in the papers.

But what on earth were they doing even going out to play on that morning? The winds had been wll signalled, having battered the Basque country on Friday and tracked down from there.

Why didn't the Generalitat cancel all sports as the Basque government had done?

Christmas updates

I know since my first post three years ago about the Caganer Christmas tradition in Catalonia that you are on the edge of your seat every year to know who we have chosen. I can put you out of your misery.

We have broken with the tradition of Barca players to go with the US President elect - and there he is the picture, dumping with Eto'o, Puyol and, er, Messi.

The other tradition here of an annual pre-Christmas lunch with my friends Orland, Pepon, Ramon et al was also purused this year with a very fine boavante y arroz fest at Ca La Nuri which is right on the Barceloneta beach.

Que bueno, as they say here, as we drank our post-prandial gin & tonics on the terrace as a chilly winter sun set over the port.

Finally why is it so cold in Madrid right now? because they are -12 ....

High times

‘I’m still on a high’ said Ben as we walked back from the party last night.

That was some high, almost 24 hours after the end of el clasico, the thrilling encounter between Barca and Real Madrid, that we were privileged to attend.

I can’t remember a football game I have seen with so much atmosphere, tension and excitement and the wonderful denouement of course of the Barca victory with two late goals. .

Virtually full, the Camp Nou was packed with some 96,000 cules wanting revenge against their fiercest enemy – revenge for the humiliation of last April when Barca applauded Real on to their own pitch after they had won La Liga and then swooned to lose 1-4 in a spineless pathetic display.

Now, Barca, playing some of the finest football of any club team in Europe, were 9 points ahead of Madrid, who had lost 3 games out of 4, had a dreadful injury list and had just sacked their manager. Even the saner papers here were predicting margins of 5-0 and 6-1, all of which were utter nonsense.

The fierce rain only added to the charged atmosphere. We got soaked as we got off the bus, soaked as we ate our sandwiches outside the Rala 2 bar and soaked as we walked down to the ground. Unlike the 70,000 or so fans exposed in the open seats, we were at least under cover for the duration of the match.

What followed was 93 minutes of hyper charged football as Barca totally dominated possession but came up against a Real so obdurate, so determined and at times so dirty that it looked like they would steal a point. No pasaran, the rallying cry of the Republican La Pasionara in the Civil War, had been adopted as the unifying force of Madrid defence. Time again Cannavaro blocked shots with every part of his body, while Casillas made extraordinary saves from Messi and Eto’o, not least from the 75^th minute penalty.

Next to us, a Catalan descended into the depths of despair, fearing that not only would Barca fail to score, but that Real would break away and steal an improbable victory, which they threatened to do more than once.

Finally, scrappily, Eto’o forced the ball over the line from a corner with seven minutes left and the whole stadium went berserk. Ben hugged the Catalan and high fived the Austrian sitting on my right. Madrid, falling 12 points behind, saw their season ebbing away.

Eight minutes later Barca broke away again and, as Messi lobbed Casillas, Cannavaro ended up injuring himself on the post as he desperately tried, but failed, to keep the ball out. The symbolism of one of the world’s great defenders lying on the ground in agony in the pouring rain as 96,000 fans went beyond ecstasy was almost tragic.

Beyond the stadium, Sarah had switched on belatedly at home to watch the extraordinary finale. Bex had watched in a packed bar in Sitges. Around the city, and all of Catalonia, people poured out of bars and homes to celebrate and let off firecrackers.

We walked home amid a cacophony of beeping motorbikes and got soaked yet again. High? We didn’t even notice the rain …

Hello to economic reality and go home please

Spain is even more in the economic toilet than Britain, which is saying something. Property companies and estate agents are going tits up by the day while unemployment is rising at a rapid rate.

Hence on the front page of a local free paper the other day was a story about how Spanish people are now accepting all the crap jobs they previously left to the Columbians, Peruvians and so on, such as cleaning, nannying, portering, washing up and so on.

And inside? An advert from the Spanish government explaining the new voluntary repatriation scheme for unemployed legal residents from outside the EU. You get your dole money paid (40% on leaving and the rest when you get back) and the right to come back three years hence.

We have a winter

After two very mild ones, it's damn chilly and there's been lots of snow in the Pyrenees where the ski stations have opened two weeks early.

The chestnut and sweet potato sellers, who did no businesses last winter, are having a great time of it. And the Christmas lights, always an understated delight, have been switched on.

Nobody's got any money but .... it sure looks nice

UPDATE: hue hail storm

Goodnight Vienna

All I know about Vienna and I heave learned from The Third Man, very definitely one of the greatest films ever. 

And for my first two days there I learned little more, spending much of it inside the very splendid Grand Hotel (and everything you think a hotel called the Grand in Vienna might be, it is, all brocade, grand rooms, gold taps, kaffee and kuchen etc).  

But the taxis I took through the wet and the grey showed a city straight out of Third Man country, all wrought iron balconies,  smart shuttered shops, large dark front doors and spired sloping roofs. And the two hours I got to march round the centre were delightful, through the parks, the magnificent Burghof, past shops selling Loden and a million coffee shops, including the wonderful Demel where the obligatory sachertorte was purchased. 

It must be time to see The Third Man again. The clip above is the scene where Orson Welles is finally seen for the first time,  on a dark street corner as a pool of light falls on him briefly, and is possibly the greatest scene in cinema. Ever. 

Samuel Eto'o and Nina Simone

Previously on this blog we have recorded the similarities between the mercurial Barca striker Samuel Eto'o and legendary artiste Nina Simone.

Both are/were stunning performers when they are in the groove yet extraordinarily moody and subject to hissy fits of sneering sullenness when not. Both lit up my weekend.

On Friday we went to see 'Nina Simone: the sorceress', a lovingly made, if slightly confused homage to the great diva, featuring her live performance at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1976. And you got the whole nine yards - the grimacing, the cackling, the staring - all conspiring to scare the audience out of its wits. And of course the virtuoso performance ....

... which leads to 24 hours later at the Camp Nou where Mr E played a key role in opening up yet another lame opposing defence with a stunning display of attacking football. Samuel scored a hat trick within the first 25 minutes, all classic 'No 9' poachers' goals.

The good, the bad ...

On a whim last night we went down to the Borne and dropped in at two of our favourite bars, Xampanet - one of the city's oldest and most famous - and Paco, a great cocktail/DJ bar in the same street where we have our flat.

It was a gorgeous evening, both bars were crowded, and the streets were buzzing, although tourists were thin on the ground. It really is a great part of town. It felt very good to be there.

Today has been less good. what i thought was a minor filling job on a tooth turned out to be one that needs an expensive treatment; I then came home and steeled myself to deliver some bad news to a business associate.

Having done that, i heard that a friend needed more major surgery for the second time this year. That's quite enough bad news for one day ...

10 days that shook the world

It's been 10 days since the last post on this blog, a gap that has encompassed the biggest week's stock market meltdown in history.

It's pretty dire and yes there could be worse to come if the powers that be cant think of a way to fix the system this weekend.

Time to hang on to your friends and have fun. and eat well.

They don't make football derbies like that anymore ...

• 19 local players in the squads
• 2 local managers
• a dodgy sending off
• home team takes the lead after opposing goalie is fouled
• away team equalises after lucky rebound from defender 
• away fans lob fireworks on home supporters
• away team attacks non stop but repelled by woodwork and stout defending
• pompous ref stops game for 10 minutes
• away team wins game with last kick of the match in the 104th minute - a highly dubious penalty
• police, football authorities, home team, away team all blame each other for allowing violence to happen
• away team captain says they're not real fans ... deplorable ... shocking, having gone to celebrate with them when winning goal goes in

Oh yes they do. Espanyol vs Barca, 27 sep 2008.  see it here