{"id":10661,"date":"2017-10-02T20:25:05","date_gmt":"2017-10-03T00:25:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=10661"},"modified":"2024-09-11T17:06:46","modified_gmt":"2024-09-11T21:06:46","slug":"busted-in-barcelona-almost-1977","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2017\/10\/02\/busted-in-barcelona-almost-1977\/","title":{"rendered":"Busted in Barcelona (Almost) 1977"},"content":{"rendered":"

I heartily support Catalonia’s referendum <\/a>on secession even though I\u00a0was almost arrested the only time I visited Barcelona.<\/p>\n

I hit Spain as the next-to-last country in a 5000-mile hitchhiking jaunt in the summer of 1977. Within 10 minutes of getting dropped off south of the French border, I realized that my two years of Spanish classes in \u00a0Warren County High School\u00a0were not worth a busted pi\u00f1ata. (Admittedly, I was the worst student in the class.) Barcelonans spoke so quickly while thrashing the air with their hands that I could only nod or sigh.\u00a0 Seven hundred words a minute was\u00a0brisker than I had heard growing up in the Appalachian Mountains.<\/p>\n

I spent four pleasant days roaming Barcelona while staying in a dirt cheap pension where I was the only guest without a thunderous TB-cough. Spain was definitely the most backward country I visited (dictator Francisco Franco had died only two years earlier). The clearest proof it was still in the Dark Ages: hitchhiking was illegal. But I tried not to let that bias me against Spaniards. I viewed such prohibitions simply as transaction costs, the 1970s equivalent of traffic speed cameras.<\/p>\n

When\u00a0time came to head back north, I staked out a spot on the last street before the Autopista (motorway) entrance. Traffic was light and relatively slow\u00a0 so my thumb posed no safety hazard to drivers.<\/p>\n

No luck in the first hour. Then I got more fraternizing than I wanted. A finger-wagging policeman with the glummest face I saw all summer descended on me. I reached deep within and retrieved my entire Spanish\u00a0vocabulary – Lo siento<\/em> (I\u2019m sorry), No comprendo<\/em>, and\u00a0Que lastima<\/em> (That\u2019s too bad). I didn\u2019t know enough Spanish to ask him if he got his job \u2018cause he was a pal of Franco. But by the time he walked away, it was clear that I understood I\u2019d be jailed if he caught me out there again. And from my prior experience in the U.S., I knew that regulation-size handcuffs fit poorly on my large wrists.<\/p>\n

I respectfully waited two minutes after he vanished before resuming hitchhiking.<\/p>\n

Half an hour later, I glanced up and saw the same cop\u00a0a block away, closing fast, and looking too irate for his own good.<\/p>\n

In the nick of time, a sickly orange British car (with a wrong-side steering wheel) pulled over and the driver signaled me to hop in. His vehicle could have fit in the trunk of a Lincoln Continental. I jammed my pack into his back seat and had 15 seconds to spare before I got busted.<\/p>\n

As we sped away, the pasty, tussle-headed driver announced: \u201cI\u2019m not going very far tonight. I\u2019m really tired.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIs that because you\u2019ve been working hard?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, I\u2019ve been drinking for\u00a0three days.\u201d<\/p>\n

That explained the empty liquor bottles on the back seat.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the car was heading up the Pyrenees Mountains – not the easiest stretch of driving on the continent.<\/p>\n

Twenty miles later, I was still comparing the risks of riding with a besotted driver versus being gamahooched in a Spanish slammer\u00a0when the Brit announced: \u201cTEA TIME!\u201d He pulled off the road, stepped out of the car, and fetched out a large plastic cup. He retrieved a fifth of gin from under the seat, poured eight ounces into the cup, and topped if off with two ounces of orange juice – \u201cto make sure I get my Vitamin C,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cWould you like a sip?\u201d he jovially offered.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll pass.\u201d<\/p>\n

He slugged it down, smacked his lips, and proclaimed it was time to forge on to France. As we ascended steep mountains, he was driving in the right lane much slower than most of the other traffic. I kept leaning in his direction, ready to seize the steering wheel if he lost control. But he had plenty experience driving smashed.<\/p>\n

I kept the conversation rattling along to keep him alert. He told me that his family remained at their home on the Isle of Wight while he vacationed in Spain. He explained that he drank too much because he was having a very rough time letting his college-aged kids leave home and go their own way. Or at least that was the excuse this 45-year-old guy offered for not weaning himself from a bottle. I eventually persuaded him to pull off the road so we could get some beer and chips.<\/p>\n

After we entered a roadside bistro, an 18-year-old British lad came over to our table and was instantly bosom buddies with the driver. The driver was a Conservative Party member and the young guy supported the Liberal Party but the two agreed that England was the greatest, freest nation and that everybody in the world learned democracy from Britain. The only thing necessary to transform one\u2019s country into utopia is to leave it briefly and drink heavily.\u00a0 The young guy related how Bobbies in his hometown\u00a0used their nightsticks to pummel teenage scofflaws and he and the driver agreed that was a good thing\u00a0because the boys usually deserved it.\u00a0 I was mystified that anyone would idealize official beatings.<\/p>\n

The dipsomaniac launched into an anti-Teutonic tirade, swearing that the only good German was a dead German. He declared that he\u2019d fight any German in the room. But he didn\u2019t say it very loud, so I didn\u2019t have to dissuade anyone from stomping him. When he wasn\u2019t slurping down ale or boasting about his homeland, his eyes radiated a desperate fear that he had failed in life.\u00a0 (An Englishman later told me that the Isle of Wight was known as “80,000 drunks on a rock.”)<\/p>\n

As the evening ended and we went our separate ways, I noticed\u00a0the young Brit had no knapsack.\u00a0 I asked about that and he declared\u00a0that he didn\u2019t want to be bogged down carrying a lot of things. He slept on a concrete slab at a closed gas station that night. I felt like I was traveling first class because, after finding a nook in nearby woods, my knapsack was as comfy as the best pillow in a four-star European hotel.<\/p>\n

The next day, I was out bright and early wearing a Virginia Tech T-shirt.\u00a0 That shirt was the perfect bait for\u00a0a U.S. Army tank commander whose wife had attended nearby Radford College. As we rode 300 miles through southern France, I listened avidly as he explained some of the tactics American armor units would use if the Soviets attacked across the Iron Curtain. He said that the life expectancy of U.S. soldiers would be measured in quarter hours in that showdown….<\/p>\n

****<\/p>\n

Forty years down the road, I\u2019m still waiting for the United Nations to recognize anti-hitchhiker bias as a human rights violation.<\/p>\n

preceding is an excerpt from Public Policy Hooligan<\/a> \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Thanks to Pixabay<\/a> for the copyright free image<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I heartily support Catalonia’s referendum on secession even though I\u00a0was almost arrested the only time I visited Barcelona. I hit Spain as the next-to-last country in a 5000-mile hitchhiking jaunt in the summer of 1977. Within 10 minutes of getting dropped off south of the French border, I realized that my two years of Spanish […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1154,1155,1150,1156,570,738,57,123],"class_list":["post-10661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-barcelona","tag-british","tag-catalonia","tag-crime-spree","tag-drunk","tag-hitchhiking","tag-police","tag-public-policy-hooligan"],"yoast_head":"\nBusted in Barcelona (Almost) 1977 - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I support the Catalona referendum even though I was almost arrested the only time that I visited Barcelona in 1977. 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