Ocho Cuervos Blog

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X I X . T H E L U C K O F O T H E R S

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Barcelona stinks. No matter how many times they clean it, it always stinks. It smells like something way more rotten than the stagnant water on which the boats rest. More disgusting than the cats that live and die on every rooftop. More corrupt than the stone covering of grey the churches. A stench that fills the city streets since even before it was called Barcelona. Because there’s not enough water in the Mediterranean to erase the trace of eight centuries of history in the ancient art of looting.

Land of opportunity for gangsters, mercenaries, hookers and pirates, assassins, smugglers, swindlers and pickpockets, Barcelona has always been a good place for those who have the talent to live from the luck of others. Strangers walking on a board, ignoring that are part of a very old game, with two teams and in which the ultimate prize is everything they carry with them. Victims of the way of life of a city hidden among medieval walls and modernist facades which only those with eyes on the nape are able to perceive. A place I call the the city of thieves.

Unlike other hidden cities, the thieves’ one is scattered in small pieces exposed to daylight and in sight of anyone who knows how to watch. Covered under a cloak of complicity which is the most basic decree of the thieves’s code. Because there may not be honor among them but everyone knows that on the secret depends their own survival.

Those who have grown up among thieves have a different way of walking down the street. With a firm but distrustful step, we always cover our backs. Attentive to any detail, which is where the Devil is hidden. Watching silhouettes on crystals and shadows on the asphalt. Whispers behind the ear and looks that challenge our balls. Seeing opportunities where most people only see coincidences. Raised in a place full of chalked nooks pointing the border between the two worlds, we’ve learned to recognize the limit. A thin white line, very blurred by the trampling of bystanders unaware of the landscape, which sometimes is very difficult not to cross.

That’s why even the ones we’ve managed to just look, though often too curious, the other side, understand all those who, by choice, fate or heritage, one day moved to the dark side of the city, full of streets in the shadow, where in summer it’s way less hot. That’s why, even we respect their code.

So, from here on, you’re on you own. You must go on without me. Take it easy, it’s no trick. I leave you in good hands, knowing that who guides you, will take good care of you. Watch and learn. But not too much. Hear every detail. But don’t talk. You’re about to discover the city of thieves, shelter for outlaws and transgressors, home of the liars and impostors. A place full of traps and in which, however, you’ll find more truth than in the Barcelona you know.

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