Barcelona! Barcelona!

Brings back memories of Freddy and Montserrat in their 1987 hit song. What a beautiful city with thousands of years of history and scores of artistic monuments. Dali, Mirò, Gaudì, to mention the most recent monstres sacrés of contemporary art and architecture, left their stamps for ever in the beautiful Catalunia and its capital. The second largest city in Spain and one of the largest cities in Europe, Barcelona is a role model to many... that's what I thought...

A recent article in a local newspaper reported that the Catalans get increasingly tired of foreign visitors. It's true, in the Franco years, the luminous shorty dictator managed to exploit the country as a tourist resort for the majority of middle class and working class Germans, English and Dutch, Belgians and Nordic Vikings vacationing down there by the gazillions. The country got properly organized, indrastructure-wise that is, to receive scores of stressed and unbridled tourists from the North and Spain's Eastern and South-Eastern coast (facing the Mediterranean) turned into a monster landscape of appartment buildings necessary to pack the miserable Western Europeans during their two week annual vacationing. Benidorm, Costa del Sol, Costa Brava, Costa whatever... the place got packed! Great for the economy, awful for the landscape and the locals... except for the diddlies tourists were bringing with them...

Getting tired of tourists? You bet! And they are darn right. Nevertheless, even then, there is a thing called elementary courtesy. And it seems that many are losing it in that beautiful city. The Ancient Greeks had something in their genes called "philoxenia"... means, love thy strangers at thy doorstep, thy visitors, those who knock at thy door for some water and bread. The Swiss have just the opposite... called xenophobia... sometimes meaning closing thy door even to thy own family members, let alone those strangers. Well, reality is somewhere in between for both contemporary Greeks and Swiss, but leave those buggers in their own misery... we are having it about the brave Catalans here...

There is a posh restaurant in Barcelona going by the name Taxidermista (who knows what that means? Probably...philoxenia?). My good friend Nikos from Brussels had the most impossible experience there during a week's time-off in Barcelona beginning of this month.

Read-on the letter he wrote to them after a evening's adventure and nightmare experience in that place...

"Dear Ms Munoz,

This is to formally and officially complaint about the behaviour of your staff at your restaurant TAXIDERMISTA for Sunday 12th August 2007.

My wife and I booked a table for 20.30 this evening and we arrived at 20.30 precisely. We proceeded to sit down after informing two waiters – a woman and a man – that we hade booked a table for 20.30. There was already a long queue of about 10 people outside the entrance at the terrace of the restaurant. Someone, who was I assume the manager on duty, came to tell us that we had to get up and join the queue. We explained that we had booked a table for 20.30 and he insisted that we join the queue. We complained that this way we may take some time before we sat down and that this was the reason we bothered with booking a table. He rudely told us to join the queue treating my wife and I like children. We complained that the system seems stupid at which stage the man stormed into the restaurant, took in his hands the reservation book and erased our name from the list in front of everyone. We stressed that this was not professional and that never such a thing has happened to us before and that they should apologise. The Man rudely turned his back to us and left us waiting in the queue taking everyone else at tables ignoring us totally. Totally shocked and embarrassed we left at 20.45 and had to find another restaurant although we were exhausted from touring the city.

I am not aware of the systems of Barcelona et al but anywhere else in the world you reserve a table so that you can make sure that there is a guarantee of going and be served. I consider your behaviour totally unprofessional. The least I demand is an apology.

You cannot possibly treat people, and tourists that are otherwise welcomed in Catalunya, in such a bad way. Apart from that we had a wonderful time in Girona, Figueres, Cadaques, Bessalu but we consider the attitudes towards tourists in Barcelona from indifferent to unfriendly.

Thank you for your attention."

Can you just believe that? Well, lucky him he got a response within the day... in relatively descent English, I must admit, much better than her moron desk manager.

"Dear Sir,

First of all I would like to apologize in the name of my staff and myself.
I’ve been trying to find out what exactly happened, as this incident it is completely far away from the way we treat our customers, and in fact we are proud of giving the best gastronomy and service as thousands of visitors, every year, prove.

After talking with the manager on duty we can explain you that he understood that you called him “stupid” and that he felt not acceptable at all, as he was someone just doing his job, and in that case is a shame that the problems with the language made such a big misunderstanding. For sure, he didn’t manage the situation as he should have done, and at that point we had to penalize him, and also had a meeting with all the staff to talk about this, and how to show, during the service, my personal way of treating customers, no matter if they are tourist or local, as for me it is one of my personals goals to give a complete experience to all my visitors giving and excellent food, service and impression of the city. I am completely aware of were my restaurant is located, and it is a pleasure to have the opportunity of being a part of the good memories that, for sure, a tourist is going to take with him after visiting our beautiful city.

May be our system seems stupid to you, and you believe that it is not the correct one, but we like to check out with the book each reservation, not just to give the table assigned to each person that had phoned before, but to give the welcome to the place to everyone.
Also I would like to thank this mail to let us know what happened because it is the best way to improve our service and solve our problems, so Sir, thank you again.

I hope to have the opportunity to change your mind about us, so I leave the doors open to receive you any time you visit Barcelona again, and invite you to a bottle of our fantastic catalan Cava to show you the way we like to treat everybody.

Sincerely yours,

Berta Muñoz
Directora General"

Yeah, right! He thought you called him stupid! Cool. Even if he did, he'd have to stay friendly, the useless moron he is, and not turn into a mad dog, Banderas 'el Zorro' look-alike! To be fair to her, the woman has at least some courtesy. No bad idea to use more female managers anywhere in Spain and send their miserable males to the arenas to chase toros instead. When Nikos asked me whether to accept their apologies (which he eventually did) or go after them big time, I jokingly told him that I wouldn't have anything less that the sonovabitch's head on a platter... like St-John the Forerunner... anyways, live and let live! These things happen... in Catalunia that is!