Ley Seca

I´m back to work now after a long weekend for the May Day bank holiday, which is celebrated as Labour Day here. There was a lot of tension in the city, and rumours that the students were going to riot. Among their grievances was the fact that a popular professor from one of the universities was found murdered on Monserrat this week. As he was also an outspoken union leader and critic of the government, there is some suspicion about how he met his end. But despite this the riots didn´t really happen in the end. By the time I got to the main square yesterday afternoon the pigeons had reasserted control of their terroritory and were maintaining an uneasy standoff with a few bored paramilitary police.

One effect of the threatened violence was the imposition of a temporary drinking ban throughout the city on Sunday and Monday. These are called "ley seca" days (literally meaning ´dry law´) and are usually imposed before elections and other times of potential instability. The English contigent at the hostel (despite living with some of the world´s most stringent drinking restrictions at home) were outraged at this infringement of their god-given right to get plastered on a bank holiday Sunday. Particularly annoyed was a bloke from Middlesborough, Chappie, who was hoping to celebrate his birthday along with his football team´s semi-final victory in the UEFA cup. A plan was hatched to catch a taxi and ask the driver to take us somewhere with beer. As well as four English blokes there was also Aviv the Israeli and Clarabelle, perhaps the nicest French person I´ve ever met. The driver waved his hand dismissively when we gave him his mission, telling us there was any number of places he could take us to. We chose the Zona Rosa, the posh party zone in the north of the city, which is usually packed with people for 24 hours a day throughout the week. When we arrived we realised the taxi driver hadn´t been entirely honest as the place was deserted. He stopped to ask a passerby if he knew of anywhere. "You´ll have to take them to a girly bar," he told the driver. "They´re the only places open today." Clara told the driver in no uncertain terms that she didn´t want to spend the evening in a brothel, we just wanted to find somewhere to have a drink. The driver assured her that he understood, then drove to pink neon place called Exciting Girls, or something. As it was obvious that this was the only place open, we decided to give it a go. We were shown to a ´private room´, which was like a doctor´s waiting room, but with more mirrors and a wipe-clean leather sofa. It took quite some time to explain to the manager that we just wanted six beers - I got the impression he thought we were being euphemistic. "Just a beer, know what I mean? Nice little brown beer. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Hey? Hey?" When he finally believed that we were talking about actual literal beers he told us they would cost us about six quid each, but that we could have a bottle of whiskey for a hundred. We bolted at this point and as we disappeared down the street we noticed the baffled faces of the naughty ladies watching us through the window. They looked very confused and not a little hurt - it must be damaging to their professional pride to find themselves counted as less than a beer.

After this there was nothing to do but to catch another taxi back to the hostel. It was an expensive waste of time, but at least we tried, damn it, at least we tried.