HOME DEPARTURES

LA CANTINA: I stumble off the train from Barcelona in a half daze. Destination: Mollet Santa Rosa – a town on the out skirts of Barcelona proper and my first real glimpse of what it means to be Catalá. The hassle and bustle of the morning commute does nothing to keep me awake and reminders of the invisible city that lies just out of reach go unnoticed as we fly past the brown tinted landscape of the Vallés Oriental. The air is fresher, colder and the station is the exact same brown as everything else, as if someone were staining wood and forgot to wash out the brush before thoughtlessly running it over the map of catalunya. A colour that in the sun turns gold, bringing warmth and an earthly splendor that is almost smellable, but that in the cold becomes uniform and vaguely uninspired. La Cantina is on the platform. Its existence is slow, punctuated by the rumble of trains and the flow of Mollet’s commuters – its most loyal customers. A set of red plastic tables furnish the concrete -prime real estate on a typical day, for those who wish to relax, down a coffee and be able to keep an eye peeled for the expected, consistently overdue train. Inside it's half dirty, not in the sense that it hasn’t been cleaned, but as if it were once cleaned with shoe polish and since no one has been able to rid it of the dull, sticky extra layer. My eyes wander over the food. Meatballs, baby squid legs or sautéed shelled snails in an indistinguishable sauce. A woman appears and I point at a pastry. Bleached blond hairs stand out sharply against the dark invasion nearest her head.The contrast hits me like a smack in the face and I get the distinct impression that she has just stepped off the set of a Western but had forgotten to change. She smiles, my eyes widen as the leaf thin sheets of pastry disintegrate in my mouth and I am for a moment eternally grateful that the real Catalunya all though elusive under the cloak of Spanish identity will meet you head on, if one goes to find it