Noche de San Juan and wooden fridges
23rd June was the midsummer fiesta in Barcelona (and presumably in the rest of Spain, but it’s a big one here). Saturday night saw fireworks spectaculars at the beach and all night verbanas with petardos until dawn. We spent the night down at the beach last year with Isabel’s brother, Juan and his Italian/Canadian friend Frederico. This year we decided to give it a miss and head for our local street bonfire and party. However, it didn’t happen…
We turned up around 10:30pm expecting the bonfire to be in full blaze, but there was no sign of a cinder. We headed into the local corner restaurant Casa Freixo, sat down with a bottle of cava and some tapas and quizzed the owner. He told us that he’d been running the local verbana for the last 20 years, but he had had enough… The Ayuntamiento were looking to charge him 1200 Euros to run the bonfire and I guess that the extra business that it would have brought in wasn’t worth the hassle for him. It was disappointing but understandable - he complained that none of the neighbours ever showed any interest in getting involved in the organisation in recent years. Some kids came in with crates of fireworks wondering where the party was, and had to leave looking disappointed. No big deal in the end as they set them all off in the street outside.
Earlier on Saturday we “discovered” another great little local place for tapas. The Bar Mut in c/ Pau Claris just above Diagonal. The decor is distinctly Paris 1930s, very friendly staff and great quality food with the menu hand-written on a couple of blackboards. They also have a wooden?!? fridge. We just had a plato of ibericos and a sortido de quesos with a couple of cañas, but we’ll be back to try something more substantial.
