I was walking down the street in Barcelona as the sun dropped fast out of the sky, a huge bucket of hot Burger King vegan chicken nuggets tucked under my arm, and was wondering to myself why there were so many cops all over the place. The fuzz was EVERYWHERE. Strapping on helmets and shields even. There was a strange energy in the air.

I ducked into a little grocery store to see if they had any nugget-ready dipping sauce. While I was inside, contemplating the merits of various mustards and wondering why sweet and sour sauce wasn’t more popular in Spain, some kind of general commotion broke out outside. Huh, that’s weird. So does Honey Mustard actually have honey in it, or is that just a term of endearment-

Then the commotion escalated. Suddenly and chaotically.

What the- And then, some kind of very loud alarm went off and thick steel shutters slammed down with alarming force over the doors and windows of the grocery store, sealing all of us inside.

Oh.

With my trusty shit Spanish as my guide, I tuned in to the store employees frantically running about and realized there was a riot going on outside.

Oh, that’s what all that commotion was outside. I thought Spain was just like that.

The employees gathered up all of us trapped shoppers and swiftly snuck us through the back office rooms of the store and out the service entrance in the rear, ferreting us off into an alleyway that had not yet been consumed by the riots now swelling all over the city. A police helicopter hovered seemingly only feet over our heads, the rotors deafening and the wind blowing in every direction.

Shit was going crazy, people were yelling and running through the alleys, things were on fire. I mean, dumpsters, maybe a car, not like live chickens or Jimmy Carter or anything. The riot-geared-up police were getting into position to push the rioters back, and I quickly realized I didn’t want to get caught in the middle of this. I don’t even know what they’re rioting about. Maybe they want more meat.

I weaved my way through the narrow alleyways that run through Barcelona like grain in a piece of wood and navigated through the chaos, eventually arriving at the hostel where I was staying. Thankfully the craziness got less intense the closer I got to the hostel, and I noticed, happily, for the first time that the hostel was both tucked-away and a very solid concrete building. I climbed the stairs and waved at the security camera for the front desk dude to let me in.

Getting into my room, the shouting and chaos below was clearly audible through the closed windows. I was late for a Zoom call I’d scheduled to catch up with a friend in the US who I hadn’t talked to in a while, and throughout our conversation I had to repeat myself and apologize for the deafening roar of the police helicopter that was hovering right over the roof of my building, shaking the windows and walls with the impact of the ever-whoosing air and the noise.

“What’s that? Oh, no, that’s just a riot. Yeah I’m having a good trip!”

Once our call was done I brought up the news and learned that the riots were in protest of Spain’s coronavirus lockdowns. And they had actually started the previous night, very shortly after I arrived in Barcelona from France. I thought back to the night before...

Oh, that was what all that yelling had been about! I thought it was just drunk people.

I watched the live feed as protestors clashed with the police and not-Jimmy-Carter things burned. Wow.

People, people, people. This is not how you protest a lockdown. You blunder into the city unawares and ignore it completely because you had absolutely no idea it was happening. This is 2020 101 my friends.

What timing. I feel like I’m back home in Minneapolis. Maybe I’m meant to be here for this? To hold some kind of energetic balance so all of it doesn’t get out of control? Otherwise, it is really weird that this waited to happen until the second I got here. Strange days have tracked me down.

Technically, I wasn’t even supposed to be in Spain, though I didn’t know that until I was already there. I had been on the northwest coast of France when the French president announced an emergency, immediate covid lockdown for the entire country, effective that night. Oh. Well thanks for the advance warning! No one was allowed to be out without written permission for an approved reason from a short list of approved reasons, like you were a costumed crime fighter or you needed a baguette. Surprisingly, being an American who had loopholed his way into Europe and was just dicking around for months on end was NOT on France’s list of approved reasons to be out and about.

Clearly I couldn’t just stay in France, I only had about five Schengen days left before I’d be overstaying my legal permission to be in Europe. I decided my best bet was to get up early and make a mad dash for Spain, all the way on the far diagonal opposite corner of the entire country, and hope in the confusion of the hastily-announced lockdown that I’d get through. Clearly I couldn’t be the only person who was away from home, there have got to be Frenchers who were out buying baguettes when the news dropped.

My biggest concern was that my French was plenty good enough for getting around the country and not getting into bar fights very often, but not so excellent that I’d be able to talk my way out of trouble with the cops. One of my friends suggested I have the hotel receptionist write me a note in French saying “Hello my name is Sean. If found, please return to Spain” that I could pin on my jacket.

I was up early and entirely inconspicuous as the only goddamned person walking down the street in Bayeux at 5 in the morning. I’d loaded up on provisions the night before, right before the lockdown officially began, expecting all of the train station cafes to be closed for my all-day journey to Barcelona. I had a baguette strapped to the side of my bag, which I remain convinced was the talisman that got me through the entire day unmolested. I strongly suspect that it is French law that you can’t fuck with anyone who has clearly just bought a baguette and is on his way to go eat it somewhere.

Once I got out of the sticks and began passing through the big cities of France, I was surprised how many people were on the trains. It wasn’t normal traffic, but clearly I wasn’t the only person who got caught with their pants down when the “Gotcha!” lockdown was announced.

The highlight of the trip for me was sitting in a train station in Paris, waiting for my connecting train, when I noticed that the train station toilet had its own gift shop.

“Love of my life, I've brought you a gift from the toilet.”

“I'm sleeping with your brother.”

“Mon dieu.”

“This is a beautiful necklace, where'd you get it?”

“From the toilet at the train station.”

“I want a divorce.”

“You smell good, what’s that cologne?”

“It’s from the toilet at the train station!”

“...I want a divorce.”

“You’re my brother!”

I had been trying to go to Spain throughout the entire summer, but Spain kept making this impossible by having berserk covid outbreaks all of the time. At one point earlier in the summer I actually traveled from Andorra to Portugal, completely and inconveniently leapfrogging over Spain in the middle, because the outbreak there was just too crazy at the time. Now, Madrid was still going nuts with covid but Barcelona had calmed down enough that I figured I could bop down and check out PortAventura, the last great European theme park on my wish list, for a couple of days. I bought tickets online and booked an AirBnB near the park.

Literally as the train was pulling into Barcelona, I got an email saying that PortAventura was closing due to covid, effective immediately. Dammit Spain.

Walking from the train station to my hotel, I noticed all the strange looks I was getting on the street. Oh! I still have this baguette strapped to my bag! I’ve left France, now my talisman was a liability. I’d better eat this thing.

Checking into my hotel, the receptionist was puzzled.

“How did you get in?”

“The... you just saw me walk through the door.”

“No I mean into Barcelona.”

“Oh! The train.”

“No, I mean the lockdown. No one is allowed to enter Barcelona.”

“Oh really? Well I guess I’m here to tell you they’re not really checking that at all.”

The receptionist laughed and checked me in.

The primary thing you need to understand about Barcelona is that Antoni Gaudi is a big, huge deal here. Gaudi was a Catalan Modernist architect who, in the late 1800s and early 1900s made some real funky shit. And Barcelona said “We are intrigued by your funky shit, sir, please funk up our city to your weird heart’s content.” And so he did.

He made this funky shit:

And since that went so well, he funked this shit as well:

But his masterpiece is Sagrada Familia, a big funky church that looks like God’s birthday cake melted. If you see this, you’re either in Barcelona or you’re asleep and you shouldn’t have eaten those sardines right before bed.

The interior of the church was closed due to covid, which is probably for the best since it’s probably a portal to Strawberry Shortcake World in there and I wasn’t ready to deal with that kind of thing.

There is some non-Gaudi architecture in Spain, but it clearly exists in Gaudi’s wavy, psychedelic shadow.

Even the sidewalk has to work hard to get noticed in Barcelona

If all of this somehow isn’t destabilizing enough for you, don’t worry, you can still visit the Joan Miró museum.

Joan Miró was a Spanish painter and shit-stirrer who was also apparently a man named Joan for some reason.

To be honest I wasn’t quite sure what to make of Miró’s work. Much of it seemed to be anti-art, work that was intentionally ugly or tacky, like this giant wall dog made out of carpet.

I appreciated that Miró was challenging the status-quo, but I’m not sure how much you can enjoy that kind of art long after the statement has been made and the shock wears off.

It was interesting to see Miró’s art start out with fairly conventional Van Gogh and Cesanne-inspired painting and then get weirder and weirder over time.

Possibly the highlight was this mercury fountain. A group of tourists was standing next to me arguing about whether that was really mercury or just water dyed silver, which I did not know was a thing you could do with water.

Downstairs there were exhibits for other, Miró-inspired artists, which I actually preferred to the headliner’s work.

I was walking down the street that night when a little kid walked by wearing a Batman costume. What the- Oh shit, it’s Halloween.

The city was calm. The riots were over. I proceeded to walk all the way across Barcelona singing Thriller on my way to a huge Halloween party in the park ...which ended up only allowing entry to locals with ID. Aww. Rejected, I walked back across the city again and began to contemplate how I was going to get out of a locked-down Barcelona. And I… I actually don’t remember how I got out. Oh my God- you guys. Am I still there? I think I need to take this French note off my jacket.