Along the Carretera de Collblanc, in an area of L’Hospitalet not too far from Camp Nou, lies both an electrical substation and abandoned land with buildings. There is nowhere to park along the Carretera, but running almost parallel to it is Avinguda d’Manuel Azaña. This road has construction and empty land and is therefore used for the ever-elusive parking. I became acquainted with it not because I was searching for parking, but because I was searching for new and faster ways to get home. In the daytime this road is harmless. At night, it is a place where prostitutes solicit their wares. (It doesn’t seem the place for your higher-end prostitute. Too dark.)
My main goal was to take a photo of this building, from Carretera de Collblanc, but my parking spot on Av d’Manuel Azaña allowed me to get a view of the other side.
There’s a hole in the fence on this side that allows you to take a well-worn path down to some make-shift parking off of Collblanc.
Having taken the shortcut, I was then able to snap a photo of the original side that had sparked my interest.
And take a shot of the impressive gate.
Down the road is this building:
I then took the series of photos from yesterday. And returned to my car in time to take these two photos of the sun beginning to set:
My picture-taking being finished, I drove to visit my friend at her university on Diagonal. She told me to park in the university parking lot, but having never driven in Barcelona, she couldn’t tell me where it was. I searched behind the University on Carrer Pascual i Vila, which has a view of Camp Nou and some very cleanly laid-out parking (a rarity), due to its proximity to Camp Nou and its inherent, frequent usage.
Here is where my post comes full circle. This road is separated in the middle by diagonally-angled parking spaces open only to one side and is bordered by parallel parking, making it more of a parking lot than a road. At the low end is an exceedingly rare U-turn possibility. On my way back up the road, I saw two women standing by some cars. They were both dressed well, and I noted to myself that the one woman’s boots could be hooker boots. But then I noted that her jacket seemed to be of too good a quality to be worn by a prostitute, and plus, it was still light out.* By this time, I was almost upon them, and, as you can guess, the woman, née man, turned to me, opened her jacket and grabbed her boob to try to solicit me. “Ah!” I said, “Obviously I should pay more attention to my instincts.”
I related this story to my friend, and she, of course, was unsurprised, as she used to walk home that way everyday when we were living together. We did laugh, however, at my benign fear of driving by them again while I was searching for parking. When leaving, we encountered a different set of prostitutes and I kept pointing out that they weren’t the same (They were probably women). This area (the area around Camp Nou) is well known to be a neighborhood of transgenders. So when you are taking your kid to a Barça game, don’t veer too far from the main roads or your kid may see something you don’t want them to! (My friend has seen quite a number of penises over the years. Some very large, as she has told me. I’ll leave you to imagine how big.)
Until next time.
*Prostitution is neither legal nor illegal in Spain.
Treading in the Deep End 