just wanted to add one thing to the police story, in case you wondered: i was born in barcelona but have german name and surnames, and absolutely look like a guiri. :)

you're mixing things here. drunks get drunk, fireworks are set off mainly by kids with their families and these things happen in separate environments. none of this is a crime so police presence is not needed at all. accidents do happen, though, and even occasional vandalism. i've seen many waste containers light up on sant joan. firefighters tend to show up promptly. no big deal.

if you love this city it's a pity you didn't get a glimpse into the magic and the exceptionality that imbues this very special night. this pagan celebration dressed with a catholic 'cover' for political reasons is (was?) pretty unique and pretty deep in the roots of collective conscience. and although it has been very much 'globalized' and lost much of its charm there is still a lot going on for many. you should have seen it when i was a kid, with bonfires on every beach, on almost every crossing in the eixample, a freaking wonderful ... warzone of fire, love, happiness and magic. you could literally breath it. it was that very special night when you were allowed to do all things usually prohibited, literally play with fire, where generations of catalans have gotten laid for the first time. if you are alive ... what's fucking not to like?? :D it's sant joan!

of course it isn't the same now, partly taken over by the party-till-you-drop industry. the same one that is absorbing new year's revetlla and the festes de gràcia with their top quality product: cheap booze, extremely loud music and a license to piss on the streets. aaaand tourists, of course. you did know that you were coming into an underdeveloped country, did you? :)

but it's still sant joan and i'm afraid you just haven't experienced it in an appropriate environment. it's actually a family/neighboor thing, you won't find it in mass parties, which are just the standard screw up. as a lone stranger you need to be hooked up by some friend into his/her circles. people honoring these traditions are dwindling but should not be hard to find yet. and catalans have nothing against foreigners, you will be welcome, i guarantee you.

escudillers would be the last place i would choose for sant joan! it's probably fine for any other night if you're ok with lumpen and it's sort of burlesque and dissonant ambient. i liked it a lot for much of my youth, i don't go down there much lately but it still is pretty much the same ... in a different way.

i honestly can't see a problem with that. were you forced to buy? :)

hold on. every local is subject to exactly the same process to obtain his dni (the equivalent of your dnie), which is mandatory from age 16. and yes, bureaucracy is nuts. now listen: i once lost my dni. first of all, it had already expired 15 years ago and i never had the slighest trouble (apart from some bank clerk being a jerk and having to call up the director, occasionally), this should already tell you a lot about how things work around here. i wouldn't have bothered to go to the police if i hadn't lost the darn thing. funny thing is that the police officer absolutely refused to issue a new one unless i could deliver ... (get a seat) ... the whole history of ins (altas) and outs (bajas) of the padrons where i had lived for the last 25 years or so. in my case that would cover about a dozen different locations. so i now would have to make a request to each of those places for the relevant documents. lucky me, i had recently made one such request and remembered a crucial detail: you need a dni to be able to request such document in the first place. guess what? confronted with this dilemma the officer just silently issued my new dni, an exact replica with the same 25 year old address. he told me to fix that asap. i never bothered, and you can bet he knew. since the i have renewed my dni once more. it still shows the same address.

i have to ask again. you DID know you were visiting an underdeveloped country, didn't you? this is how stuff works around here. it's no different for local or for strangers. strangers just have a harder time catching up.

there's still plenty i would like to comment, but this is getting too long already. maybe next time. anyway, thanks for sharing your thoughts anyway!

You have to admit, Windows 2.0 benefits greatly from HD displays and millions of colours.
At the time of its initial release, you barely had 16 colours for the whole screen, and you had to convey information with them.
Nowadays, you can have 16 distinct shades of grey, none of which gives you the slightest clue about if some UI element is actually click-able/tap-able or not, but man, aren't these fonts gorgeous ?

come on, it's sant joan ...

this is, of course, bullshit.

and how does this bs match with you admitting ' like 7.5 million tourists a year in Barcelona. The vast, vast majority are well behaved'? care to support it with some facts, apart from the obvious one that bulls do bully?

there's a reason. barcelona is a dense city and living places are scarce. for several years there's been a trend of people buying out flats for short time rentals during touristic seasons, specially in the most sought after quarters. that's good business for some but makes home scarcity worse for locals.

i'm assuming those airbnb listings aren't actually from people sharing a room, but from such 'entrepreneurs'. (this is my speculation, no first hand information here)

and the running naked thing can be a real nuisance for some, too. again, it's a tight city and drunks shouting on the streets at night won't let you sleep, plus you might find out in the morning that they have also urinated on your building's front door. not nice. that's probably exaggerated a bit in the media. however, it's still undesirable tourism.

funny thing is ... local authorities now could just scan those airbnb lists and start dusting off those houses. wanna bet?

lol! iphone, eat this!

For example, there was Czechoslovakia. You're welcome.
I can hear the no true Scotsman fallacy from here, but I don't care.
By the way, Canada / Québec, UK / Scotland are also candidates.

Why do you think they don't ?

Ici, nous les appelons simplement "frites", ou parfois "pommes de terre frites". Et certains prétendent même qu'elles seraient d'origine belge.

well, why i can see the value for society of kids going to school (kind of), i can't see any in promoting crazy consumerism just because we're ready to solidarily pay extra for disposal. that's not a benefit, but a disgrace (and a shitty education btw).

my (somewhat stretched) point tried to respond to someone seemingly 'refusing to pay'. the reason for a public service is not for someone getting to dump fridges for free, but to ensure a proper disposal process everywhere.

this of course has a cost which should not be invisible, and it shouldn't mean that just because society pays for you are free to buy and dump whatever you want. in fact, it would be just fair that the very moment a manufactured product exited the production chain the manufacturer had already paid for its disposal as part of the production cost.

they should, within reasonable limits. 2 years seems way too short, imo. it's also not that much to ask to backport bugfixes and roll updates, these are no small business with no small profit. they should be responsible.

there's probably another way inbetween, we should definitely make companies responsible for the stuff they throw out, with regulations, customer associations and above all educating people on responsible shopping (and manufacturing, disposal, ...). once there is a majority demanding that with enough political backing industry will be eager to comply.

sorry but this is utter nonsense. what if i'd expect that blogger, or the music band, and not some random cosmetics shop?

this problem is usually addressed with a "first come first serve" policy, as in domain names or trade marks. any conflicts are dealt through an arbitrer with the implicated parts knowing. youtube just grabbing peoples' channel names as they see fit is just ... wow.

the real issue here is that youtube is a service and mr.lush is not the customer, he's the product. that's why he has to suck it up.

that's actually fair. if you consume/dispose more volume than me, why should i pay for recycling your stuff?

however, i still prefer having this as a regulated public service. most big cities do, afaik.

try harder (to be a responsible citizen) :-)

security, the old one isn't updated anymore.

industry shoves the responsibility of having compromised devices infecting the net on to the customer, with exactly two alternatives: buy the new phone, or stop using phones altogether. clever business.

we? the cost of disposal should be part of the manufacturing cost. what we are doing wrong is letting corps get away with simply not paying it, albeit making millions in profit.