I walked past Can Pep yesterday evening on my way to the pool and I remembered that I’d been meaning to write something about this place for a while. In fact I was there yesterday afternoon for a quick coffee, having dashed down the six flights of stairs at around five for a walk around the block and a shot of caffeine; to break up the monotony of those tiresome, hysterical last coughs at the end of the working week. I took my impressions away with me – once again – skipped back up the street to my building’s front door, hiked up the stairs and went on to finish my days work at home.
A few hours later I slipped into the water at San Miquel and tucked into the routine I’d set for myself on this day. Can Pep was still very much on my mind but my concern was that, whatever observations I eventually chose to share, it should be clear that I looked to act as a cool observer of my environment and none of what I wrote was meant to be interpreted as an assault of any kind. Swimming is not for everyone and most often I hear people comment on how the exhausting, repetitive tedium is just… quite frankly… exhausting and boring. It does, however, work for me. And it does so for me on various different levels. One of the things it does – once I’m into my stroke and cruising on – is ignite the bits of loose tinder in my subconscious. I’ll push forward with my stroke – at a comfortably relaxed pace that still feels like I have a pair – and let thoughts and feelings wash into me, to be retained just long enough to be acknowledged, before I allow them to slip away. I might liken it to the surreal image of driving your way through a line of bubbles of varying shapes and sizes and feeling them pop behind you with a satisfyingly innocent gulp and snap. My mind yesterday, however, was more of a foamy froth; all tits and arse, credit card this and over-draught that.

Can Pep is on Laforja; just up the street from Cristina’s, almost on the corner with Amigò. You would think it stood out. But in reality it doesn’t stand out very much at all; it is encrusted and imbedded into the wall of this gentrified street, besieged by boutiques and delis on three points of the compass. Loafers and Lodens and Pradas with multi-hundred euro pumps walk past it hundreds of times a day, only stopping in front to turn their back on the place whilst their toy drops a hard, greasy turd in front of the door. Push past your preconceptions and once inside it’s not all that frightening; you are in “la Iberia profunda”. What hits you first is the tepid smell of aguardiente and stale beer. A grimy place, yes, left behind in 1976. All shades of beige and brown and faux-wood paneling, the inox bar to your right with all its paraphernalia and a heap of tables and chairs to your left preceded by the fag machine that never works and a slot machine that blings constantly and audibly no matter whether it is being fed or not. Above the Cimbalino is the obligatory titty calendar showing Miss Montesa in all her splendor…for this month. Other parts of the walls are occupied by the fading photos of long forgotten local football teams and phalanxes of lottery scratch-cards.

The patrons are a curious bunch of characters that aren’t seen much around the ‘hood. For all you would know they might live in the nooks and crannies at the back of the bar; washing forward with the tide of opening hours only to get sucked back with the ebb. Every now and then you will see one drifting past you in the street with an odd, loping sense of purpose; en route to some other watering hole perhaps. Mostly I would say they are mature, career drinkers getting by on some form of retirement fund. They play cards at the back.