This afternoon, it being my last full day here, I decided to make a farewell tour of Barcelona. I shall miss this place, as the streets have become quite familiar. Two things I won’t miss are the crowds of tourists in some quarters and the heat – it was 28° C at 6pm.
Anyway, my walk included a last ramble up La Rambla from the old harbour towards my flat. I thought it looked unusually quiet when I started, but then realized there was a big crowd at the top end (where it joins Plaça de Catalunya). Pride month in Barcelona started yesterday (28th June, LGBT Pride Day, the anniversary of the start of the Stonewall Riots) and goes on for about a month. This demonstration was a kind of counter to the “official” Barcelona Pride events, a protest against excessive commercialization, pinkwashing, homophobic and transphobic violence, among other things. Pride is, and should be, a protest.
