Annie on Barcelona
Updated 11 June 2002
In May 2002, Annie Nightingale travelled to Barcleona to DJ with Death In Vegas' Richard Fearless at the Razz Ma Tazz club. Here, Annie reports on the night, and her feelings about Barcelona right now...
The Razz Ma Tazz club. Wow what a club. Loads of different rooms, great lighting --- even in the street outside. I was DJing with Richard Fearless, who has a monthly residency at the part of the club called The Loft. I had not DJed in mainland Spain before, and I had never seen Barcelona apart from the inside of the transit lounge at the airport, usually en route (delayed) for Ibiza. I once started writing a song there in Spanglaise (half Spanish half English):
"Mario Testino
Had a sueno destino
Which turned out to be a disappointingly dull beano
In definitely the wrong end of Reno"
Ola...
Well, that's as far as I got, you can continue it if you want...
Barcelona's a very interesting place to be at the moment. It's a very changed city, I think, in the ten years since the Olympics happened here. It brought enormous prosperity. The hotel where I stayed, Hotel America, has been open for only three months. It's a steely, glass, modern, very well-designed hotel, and Barcelona is quite a centre of design, there are a lot of design schools here.
I was talking to the club promoter afterwards, and he was telling me, "Barcelona's much more European" - as if it always wasn't - but what he meant was that it's more like Brussels. I think he means business-wise. People work from 9am to 9pm, with 1 hour for lunch, where people just grab a sandwich, like they do in London or New York - they don't have the siesta, that has gone.
But the clubs still have their old tradition of opening at 1am, which is creating a problem because people are so tired - except at the weekend - to go clubbing till 6am and then go to work at 9. It doesn't really work! So I said, you must have many students here - they can go partying and clubbing and don't have to worry about getting up in the morning, and he said, "No, they also have to be at their class, because if they don't pass their exams all the way through college, they're not allowed to stay."
I was looking over the shoulder of a young girl here, and I saw the word 'Thatcher' in a heading on a newspaper, so I said, "What does this mean?" It was about the new regulations here, which are such that, if you're unemployed, and you're offered a job and it's within 2 hours of where you live, you must take it. They said, "It's like Thatcherism". And I'm thinking, "Hmm… good luck Barcelona!"
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