Reflections on World Travel

Inspired by Braless in Barcelona

And lots of other things that make you realize humans are remarkably alike

I guess that’s the thing about Barcelona. They have their own playbook. Their own script for decency, legitimacy, and humanity.

I commented a few weeks ago on a Medium piece by Anu Anniah called Braless in Barcelona. The author had recently traveled to Spain from her home in Bangalore, reflecting on — and wondering about — the casual attitude Catalonian women seem to embrace about bralessness in the streets of Barcelona, not to mention being topless on the main city beaches.

She writes…

“This is not bravery. This is the norm… They were just living their lives through their daily motions. It so happens that wearing a bra was not part of it.”

Having been to Barcelona several times over the years, I got to thinking, “By golly, she’s right!”

In fact, one of our favorite stories about Barcelona was a visit years ago with our adolescent children. We were sitting on the steps of the main Cathedral when two, dare I say beautiful, women walked through the plaza in front of us completely naked, save the stylish black sandals on their feet. Everyone sort of paused as they passed by, gazing for a moment, but that was about it. Later that day, we saw them again while waiting in line for gelato.

Our children were raised in a naturist-friendly household, and in fact, we were staying at a naturist place during that visit to Barcelona, so they hardly gave it a second thought, except for the spectacle of it all. Interestingly, a few years after that trip, Barcelona enacted a ban on nudity in the city, due in part to people who kept wandering up from the beach in their swimsuits, as well as others, like the women we saw, who made it something of a spectacle to walk around town naked.

Nudity is generally legal anywhere in Spain except for Barcelona, but the locals were worried about the naked people frightening the tourists. Would Ms. Anniah decide naked people in the streets was over the top while taking her tourist dollars to stuffy Madrid or historic Granada instead?

I’m thinking… NO.

Which brings me to my most recent trip to Barcelona, which concluded about two hours ago. (I’m writing this on the plane home.) ‘Seems the new laws are holding up pretty well. There were no naked people walking the streets this time, but plenty of braless women. In fact, I was there to attend a music festival where a vocal group of young women wore backless blouses that made it impossible to conceal their bra straps. There were eight people in the group. A couple of them simply let the straps show, but several others went the other direction, revealing their physical attributes with confidence and ease.

My first thought was that of my Medium author friend. Was this some sort of feminist statement? An act of civil disobedience? (Naked is against the law in Barcelona, but a thin layer of revealing fabric is most certainly not!) In conferring with a colleague, we concluded that it was not a statement. They were simply living their daily lives… and a bra was not part of that. (Anniah, 2022)

That alone was worth the story, but it gets better.

This particular music event was an international choir festival with groups from all over the world. As my colleagues and I settled in for the final concert — something equivalent to the last season’s episode of American Idol — we were surrounded by other groups that had participated in the contest. Denmark was seated behind us. South Korea was in front of us and to our left, but a wide block of seats to our right was occupied by a group from Iran.

I’m old enough to remember the Jimmy Carter years, the Ayatollah, and all that’s gone down since then in Iran and Iraq with a decidedly narrow perspective of what I know about people from that part of the world. As Americans, we’ve been well indoctrinated as to the cultural mores and ideals of the Middle East, especially in that particular region. My amassed knowledge of Iran is largely drawn from TV video footage of people expressing their hatred toward the West in the streets of Tehran.

When the braless Catalonian girls went up on the stage to perform for the last time, I was sitting next to a young Iranian woman, perhaps 20 years of age, donning a scarf in place of a hijab, nails and makeup done to a tee. I suspect she spoke no English, but in front of us were a half-dozen of her friends. As the contest unfolded, they bantered back and forth, also like the contestants on American Idol. They seemed unfazed by the braless Spanish girls, and the rest of the audience seemed genuinely nonchalant about women in hijabs singing songs from their vast cultural tapestry. But like everyone else in the audience, they were genuinely giddy about the outcome of the contest and how they would place amongst their peers from all over the planet. They were human.

SPOILER ALERT: The girls from Denmark, the men and women from Iran, my American colleagues and I all share one singular quality. We are all living our lives, adorned in fabric, simply being ourselves in real-time.

I could go on for a good bit at this point about how Barcelona may well be the crossroads of the world in terms of culture, art, and humanity. A visit to the nearly completed Basilica Sagrada Familia might be a good point of departure. A huge church conceived by an artist turned hero, Antoni Gaudi, that breaks all the rules of typical churchiness in creating a space for the people, by the people, funded not by the wealthy and privileged, but again, by the people. (We did our part by paying the 26€ tariff to enter the church, though found reassurance when learning that all proceeds from those fees are helping to fund the completion of the last spire.)

I guess that’s the thing about Barcelona. They have their own playbook. Their own script for decency, legitimacy, and humanity. (Shame on you, city council, for shutting down the right to walk naked in the streets. Have you been to an art museum lately?)

All said Spain has had a rough go. With the collapse of the Franco dictatorship in 1978, they’ve largely had to reinvent themselves as a passageway between Europe and North Africa. Go to Granada and you’re surrounded by Muslim architecture and art. Go to the Green Coast near Bilbao and you’re in the Basque country where the language is more like Hungarian than any Spanish dialect.

Go to a music festival in Barcelona, and you might find yourself sitting between an Iranian woman with perfect nails, a Korean singer dressed to the nines and a braless girl from northern Europe who says, “I have breasts, and you do too. So what?”

I think this is what I love most about world travel. Every time I think I have things figured out, someone hands me a new playbook.

Isn’t life grand?

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