Just up the road from our flat is El Chipen. I suppose you might call it our “local” although I’ve always resisted the idea of having a regular watering hole attributed to me. Be that as it may, Cris and I go there several times a week for a few beers at the end of the afternoon, generally meeting up there on my return journey from the pool, and over a period of time we have become regulars. Cris has lived in this district for much of her life and is on familiar terms with many of the patrons. Many of them I now know by name and in a sense they have become friends of sorts. We’ll shake hands, smile and wink, ask after each other and exchange well-intended banalities over the course of a few beers. Xavi and Ramón come to mind; veteran warriors in their late forties, generally up for a laugh and friends of Cristina’s dad. Others I know by sight and many will reciprocate my nod of acknowledgement as our eyes meet. Some others with whom we have no interaction are just always there and at most we might exchange raised eyebrows and an aspirated “perdona” as we squeeze past each other in that narrow gap next to the bar that leads to the bog. I could digress for hours on these familiar faces; the names I’ve given them and the lives I imagine they might lead.

El Chipen is tiny and it occupies the only chamfer on Santalò with Laforja. It might have seating for about twelve. The interior is austere – clean and painted white – flooded with daylight thanks to the large windows and dominated on the one hand by the imposing and elegant hardwood bar that is Art Deco in style and on the other hand by a ghastly fruit machine next to the door that has no place being there. It is several notches up from your usual naff “Can Cutre” sort of affair but it is an unpretentious café and is in effect what passes for a local pub in this part of the world. It is a family-run affair and the matriarch – who is quite charming and might well be in her eighties – will appear most evenings to say hello and inquire after everyone’s health before leaving with her next morning’s coffee in a small fruit juice bottle. Other younger members of the clan take it in turns to come in and check on the till mid evening and make sure everything is well. Most afternoons we go we’ll find Yoli – a sunny, petite strawberry blonde, originally from Valencia – running the place energetically. If she happens to be off that night it will be Cari that will be pacing around serving us all beers. Although friendly, Cari tends to be more sullen and appears somewhat moodier of disposition. At one point she told me she was seeing a fellow Brit and she drilled me for saucy lines in English that she might use on him. She is clearly no spring chicken and I came up with a few terms I thought would work but once I’d explained their tone and what they inferred she kept on asking me to turn them up a notch or three. Some chicken!

Gloria and Estefanía come in for a drink most evenings we happen to be there and I have long suspected they are an item. I gave them these names because one of them, Gloria, bears a passing resemblance to Gloria Estefan. When I first noticed Gloria a year or so ago I thought she might be a bit of a drinker on account of her puffy, coloured complexion. Career alcoholics often suffer from, amongst other things, red blemishes on their faces and at first glance I thought this might be the case with Gloria. In actual fact I’ve since seen that both Gloria and Estefanía are very measured, calmly sipping their one beer each for the hour or so they are there before leaving. I would hazard that they are both in their mid to late forties. Gloria might well be a secondary school teacher. Estefanía is perhaps a researcher of some sort, or maybe a librarian. They always appear together, just the two of them, and I suppose their daily ritual is to meet there after work for a drink to tell each other about the day they have had before going home together for dinner. Everything about them and their guarded body language smacks of subdued and discrete intimacy. Perhaps they are just undemonstrative by nature, and happily so, but I’ve sometimes wondered if they might be residual victims of intolerance – unfortunately stuck on the wrong side of a generational and cultural divide – formed and deformed by an archaic system of values and an oppressive family structure that could never understand them, much less accept them for who they are. Barcelona is an open and tolerant city; had they been born ten years later it might all have been quite different for them. So they live together in quiet, complicit secrecy. I am, of course, being assuming in my supositions and who is to say this fabrication of mine is not utterly off the mark.

I’ve only ever once seen Gloria alone and without her other half and that was a little over a month ago. My parents were here and together with Cristina the four of us had had a boozy meal just around the corner. We came round to El Chipen for a nightcap and Gloria was there alone. No one else was in the bar. By that stage of the night we weren’t feeling any pain and the conversation between us was flowing in various languages; par for the course in my family. Gloria sat facing me from across the room at the table by the other window. Out of the corner of my eye, as we bantered and laughed amongst ourselves, I noticed her mouth slightly open and her big brown eyes tracking the back and forth of our conversation with what seemed like bemused fascination.