Why Barcelona needs more police
I was in the centre of Barcelona yesterday morning for a meeting, but beforehand I needed to go to Fnac to exchange a CD that I’d given for Christmas. After Fnac I walked accross Plaça Catalunya and was a little surprised to see a large, much-tattooed man wearing nothing but skin tight briefs.
Aha, I thought, some kind of advertising stunt.
It took a moment longer to register that his skin tight briefs were in fact a tattoo and so he was stark naked in the middle of Barcelona and on very public display - from this I decided he was either mad or bad, and very probably dangerous to know.Â
A very curious thought went through my head at this point - that if I am ever attacked by a madman I don’t want him to be a naked madman.
Anyway, he didn’t, but I thought I’d find a nice friendly policeman/woman while walking to my appointment and tell them that there was a mad/bad naked man in Plaça Catalunya. Of course Barcelona being Barcelona there were no police in sight.
Can you imagine the same situation in Trafalgar Square?
March 30th, 2007 at 13:14
Shame that you didn’t find any police, they would have laughed at you and would probably have told you to stop wasting their time! I’ve seen this guy walk straight past two policemen who merely refused to look at him. Welcome to Barcelona - where walking around stark bollock naked in a shopping centre is fine, but drinking a can or two of your favorite beer purchased from the local supermarket whilst chilling out in a plaza is the work of the devil.
March 30th, 2007 at 17:15
Well it’s true that there’s never a policeman when you want one but there’s always one when you’re stopped in the bus lane for 30 seconds. And that’s the problem with Barcelona police - traffic cops, beer cops, riot cops, but no plod on the beat.