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the nineteenth century when there was desperate poverty; the
years after the First World War when there was enormous unem-ployment
and unrest; and the years of the Civil War, when the
Anarchists held the city centre.
That Sunday night the Catalans were in the Plac¸a deSant
Jaume too, dancing to a band playing Viennese waltzes. There
were more old people here; each generation seemed to have found
its level on the last night of the festival. In the Plac¸a del Rei
around the corner the music was more modern and cool, and this
was where the fashionable people were, the people who would
later move on to the fast-lane nightclubs, now standing in the
fourteenth-century square swaying slightly to the music.
A bar on the corner, an old bar with upstairs windows over-looking
the square, was half-empty now, although it was a hot
night and the square outside was full. Catalans and the citizens of
Barcelona in general have very little interest in alcohol, will seldom
have more than one drink in a bar, and will often nurse a Coca-Cola
for an entire evening.
All over the city the music went on. On Friday night 180,000
people had gone to the free rock concert on Montjuic and tonight
there were 100,000 people up there again; earlier, an estimated
100,000 had watched the dragons and devils on the correfoc, and
the same number of children had taken part in various events
in the city over the weekend, all the events being paid for by the
Town Hall. There had been no arrests, no fights. The city was
stable now, at peace. The squares were full of people as midnight
approached. Barcelona was having a good time.
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