Barcelona was, of course, different then in the mid-1980s.

Barcelona was, of course, different then in the mid-1980s. It still had a rough, port air to it. Quinquis, small time crooks and pickpockets, were a threat on Las Ramblas and in the old city. Transvestite prostitutes did nightly sentry duty on the street corners of the Rambla de Catalunya, the extension of the Ramblas away from the sea. Gypsies would set up a fold-out tables on street corners and rip you off with the timo de los trileros, enticing you to bet on which of three upturned cups of walnut shells hid a pea or a small plastic ball. You walked carefully, or not at all, through the Barrio Chino – the densely populated red light district on one side of the Ramblas. I spent my first couple of weeks in a rundown hostal in a charming but dilapidated square off the Ramblas. The Plaza Real had palm trees, peeling paintwork, a leaky fountain, a dozen drug dealers and a weekly market in what looked distinctly like stolen goods..
I was looking for a job, I wore my hair short, my shirts almost ironed and a suit. The plaza low life left me alone. In retrospect I realised this was because I looked like one of those clean cut young American evangelists who, even today, pound the streets of Spanish cities seeking converts.
From the book ‘Ghosts of Spain’ By Giles Tremet

At carnival time

At carnival time Las Ramblas ramps up its innate capacity for spectacle. The already colourful boulevard is swallowed up by a long procession of clowns, horse-drawn carts, floats, musicians, mounted police, acrobats, dancers, giants, strange creatures with monstrously large heads – the cabezudos, or ‘big-heads’ – and thousands of costumed revellers. These are accompanied by excited groups of children – and quite a few excited adults – scampering after the boiled sweets that rain down like confetti from carriages and floats. The first time I watched it, I found myself shamelessly fighting with four year olds for my share.
The best place to see the carnival procession when it comes down the Ramblas is from the windows of the Palau Moja. A solid, imposing eighteenth- century city palace, it is now home to the culture department of the Generalitat of Catalonia, the regional government. One year I watched from its wrought-iron balconies as, below my feet, the carnival procession dissolved under a sudden downpour of rain. The heavens rumbled. The skies opened. Sodden devils, tottering giants and wobbling big-heads ran for cover. It was a wash-out.
From the book ‘Ghosts of Spain’ By Giles Tremet

Barcelona’s bustling, tree-lined Ramblas

Barcelona’s bustling, tree-lined Ramblas boulevard is a boisterous fusion of noise, colour, and activity. Herds of pedestrians push their way past, the squawking menageries at the exotic bird stalls and the bright, sweet smelling flower stalls. Circles of spectators form around dancing, juggling and fire-eating street entertainers . Human statues stand silent watch as teenage Moroccan bag-snatchers weave through the crowds and, at the port end, a handful of dumpy, cheap prostitutes pitch for business.
I know of not other city where a single street is so important. From sex shops and souvenir stalls to the opera house and, in la Boqueria, the best fresh food market in Spain.. Las Ramblas caters – in one way or another – for the most elemental desires of life. This is where Barcelona celebrates, protests and riots. Built over the course of a stinking stream once known as the Cagalell – the Stream of Shit – it is, more importantly, where Barcelona meets itself. For it is almost impossible, in one of the densest cities in the Mediterranean, for one Barcelonés to walk down Las Ramblas without seeing another he or she knows.
From the book ‘Ghosts of Spain’ By Giles Tremet

Spanish jails are remarkably modern

Spanish jails are remarkably modern, well equipped and tolerant places. Some boast glass-backed squash courts, swimming pools and theatres. Most of the British prisoners in them do not apply to serve their time back home in Britain’s run-down, aggressive, Victorian built prisons. I’ve seen the inside of Brixton, the Scrubs and a cpouple of other’s , a prison-hardened East End drug trafficker in Salamanca’s Top Jail told me once. ”This is a million times better. I miss my mum, but I’m not going back.’
‘A country ‘s health can be measured by how it looks after its weakest member’s, a Spanish prison governor explained to me. If that is so, Spain in in fine fettle. Amongst other things, prisoners get private conjugal visits from their wives or girlfriends in rooms equipped with double beds. This jail, and others, are mixed, though the different sexes live in separate wings. Some couples even meete and get married in Spanish prisons.
From the book ‘Ghosts of Spain’ By Giles Tremet

The origins of flamenco

The origins of flamenco are lost in history. That does not stop the cognoscenti, a passionate, opinionated and nit-picking bunch, from spending much time disagreeing on them. The Romans were said to be fascinated by the dancing girls of Cádiz, though they predate flamenco and gypsies girls – by centuries. Records show gypsy dancers from Triana being hired for parties in the 1740s though they were also deemed as pre-flamenco. Early nineteen century travellers would watch fandangos being danced. Mi preferred version of the story is of a series of musical forms brought by the gypsies in their exodus from India and their slow crossing, over several centuries, of the Middle East and Europe. They crossed the Pyrenees into Spain in the fifteenth century. They were noted musicians whose services could be bought for weddings and celebrations. Spanish culture was itself a melting pot at the time, with Arab, and Jewish music adding to a stock of romances, traditional poetry, occasionally set to music. Flamenco, it seems, emerged from this stew over the centuries- appearing in a recognisable form in the early nineteenth century. The rhythms inherited from all sides, be they the metre of medieval poetry or the beat of Indian music, created what is , at times, an extraordinary difficult structure. It is not , and never has been, a purely gypsy music. Some of the best exponents have no gipsy blood at all in them. Gypsies, however, have always been at its centre.
From the book ‘Ghosts of Spain’ By Giles Tremet

From Triana the gipsy singers and dancers

From Triana the gipsy singers and dancers would be called across the river for the parties of wealthy señoritos and bullfighters. They would come, too, to the popular cafés cantantes of the late nineteenth century, in the twentieth century, to the tablaos, the tourists shows. Then they were dispatched back across the bridge to their own side of town. Spaniards as a whole have never learned to love their gypsies – who are estimated to number 650.000. Even today polls show that many would rather not live beside them.
There are gypsies left in Triana, but nothing like there used to be. The melody has gone. Las Tres Mil was an excuse for a huge real-state scam. The gypsies were lured away from their forges and houses in the Cava de Los Gitanos and the chabolas on the edges of Triana.
They were promised brand new modern housing. Orders were issued for the demolition of their old homes, many with shared patios that acted as the centre of social, and cultural, life. The Cava of the civilians, the payo non-gipsy part of Triana, remained relatively untouched. Gleaming new blocks – their unimaginative name of “The three Thousand Homes” a giveaway to the bureaucratic nature of the project – way to the south of the city would keep them happy. It would also keep them out of sight and by extension, out of mind.
From the book ‘Ghosts of Spain’ By Giles Tremet

Perched on the west bank

Perched on the west bank of the broad River Guadalquivir, their original barrio of Triana looks across its murky waters at old Seville. From its riverside cafes you look out at the splendours of the gold tower, the white walls of the Maestranza bull ring, the palm lined Walk Cristóbal Colón and a city skyline crowned by the twelfth century minaret turned cathedral bell tower, the Giralda,. For several hundred years this was a part of Seville’ docklands. It was famous for his artisans. Their reputation spread, in the wake of the Spanish galleons, across the New World. Fifty years, or a century ago, this would also have been the place to look for the raw substance of flamenco. Thóphile Gautier, the French Romantic, came across a group of gypsies camped out beside a bubbling cauldron. ‘Beside this impoverished heart was seated a gypsie with her hook nosed, tanned and bronze profile, naked to the waist, a proof that she was completely devoid of coquetry…This state of nudity is nor uncommon, and shocks no one, ’he said.
In the 1950s, flamenco was still part of his everyday life. “In the afternoon one could hear the tune of bulerias and tangos ( two flamenco styles or palos) coming from a cluster of houses. A baptism, a wedding, a request for a woman’s hand in marriage, a son returned from military service, a woman who had just won the lottery… any event set the tribe into action, Triana still had melody,’ recalls Ricardo Pachón, a flamenco producer who grew up there.
From the book ‘Ghosts of Spain’ By Giles Tremet