Barcelona Independence From Spain - Travel Tunes Tuesday

I lived in Barcelona for 3 months to improve my Spanish, but all that happened was my English got worse instead.

Barcelona isn’t the best place to try to learn Spanish, because a lot of the locals speak a language called Catalan (have I mentioned that I sometimes don’t research things before traveling?).

I had two groups of friends in Spain.

One was a group of about 8 Spaniards who hung out every weekend, but all of them were used to speaking Catalan instead of Spanish. They tried to remember to speak Spanish for me, but sometimes they forgot, so we created a code word to remind them.

Whenever they switched back to Catalan and I couldn’t understand them anymore, I would loudly yell “Tots Mercats!”

Tots Mercats is the first Catalan language that I learned, and it just means “all of the markets.”

Haha it really makes no sense, but it became our code for “switch back to Spanish, I can’t understand you!”

The other group of friends I made were other foreigners from Italy, Germany, France and Belgium. The only language we all had in common was English.

The thing is, they said things like “Let’s make a party” or “make a picture” and so I ended up saying this stuff, too.

And that’s how I came back from Spain with worse English and zero improvement in Spanish.

Catalonia is an interesting region in Spain. A lot of people want to form their own country and become indepent from Spain, my local friends included.

This red area is the part of Spain were a lot of the people want to become an independent nation:

Because my friends wanted to be independent from Spain, I ended up at a rally/concert that was in support of Catalonia being its own nation.

Everyone was yelling “Visca Catalonia” (long live Catalonia).

I remember thinking how weird it would be if they got what they wanted, and Spain would cease to exist as we currently know it.

It would still exist, but could you imagine Barcelona not being a part of Spain anymore and it would be a part of a different country?

Here’s us at the independence concert/rally…but this was way back before I even had a smart phone and cared more about living in the moment than taking pictures.

Now that Steemit exists, current me is yelling at past me “Why were you so busy living in the moment??? You should have taken crappy pictures with your 5 megapixel camera!”

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All of the pictures I have are from my friend Aina who took all of our photos from our outing that day/night. The flags are the flags of Catalonia.

The economy has been really bad in Spain for at least 8 years now, and a lot of people in Barcelona felt like they were the ones carrying the rest of the country economically and they shouldn’t have to do the heavy lifting anymore.

Here are her pics from during the daytime, so you can see with better lighting:

This one means something like “I’m little, but I know I want to live in Catalonia”

Point is, the song I remember them playing at this event is this one. It’s crazy fun to dance to. Kind of ska-like?:

Bongo Botrako - Todos Los Dias Sale El Sol

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Sau -Boig Per Tu

It's crazy how a song can instantly take you back to the moment you first heard it. It's the closest thing to time travel I can think of.

When I hear this, I'm instantly transported to the night my Spanish friends and I were out on the beach until around 3 am, just playing games like uno on steriods, and singing songs together. The usual stuff.

I asked them to show me a song in Catalan, and this is the song they showed me.

If you’ve never heard what Catalan language sounds like…here’s your chance!

I really actually liked this language! It’s kind of a Spanish/French mix. Pretty easy to pick up because a lot of things are similar to spanish, but then again, other words aren’t similar at all.

For example, “Boig per tu” means “Crazy for you” and in Spanish that would be “Loco por ti.”

So, the word “crazy”in both languages looks like this:

Catalan: Boig
Spanish: Loco

The word for "I can" is "puedo" in Spanish and "puc" in Catalan. So, kind of similar I guess?

Man, I actually think I remember all of the Catalan words I learned 7 years ago! I was kind of surprised to find out how much I really liked their language!

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Manu Chao- Papito

When I was living in Spain, I was an aupair to 3 kids. A lot of my job was just speaking to the kids in English and teaching them to play piano.

The fun parts were things like listening to this song they LOVED dancing to by Manu Chao.

See? I took extra crappy pics back then with that 5 mp camera!

Oops, I just realized for the first time that maybe the lyrics aren’t so appropriate for kids, but the tune sounds SO appropriate for kids!! It just sounds so happy!

What are some of your favorite tunes you’ve heard while traveling? Be sure to tag #traveltunes so we can hear! There’s nothing like discovering AWESOME new music from around the world!