When a man enters a room, he enters it with all his past, ”says a Mad Men character . The phrase came to my mind while I stood in line, with Jordi Socías, the photographer for this report, at the doors of one of the restaurants of the Gran Hotel Bali, in Benidorm, where they served a buffet dinner for 12 euros. In the winter of our lives (we added a century and a half between the two), Socías and I had accepted the commission to tell and portray the Levantine winter. None knew Benidorm, a mythical place inside and outside our borders and to that extent, in that of mythical, a bit unreal too, inevitably.
The capacity of the dining room, according to the sign on the entrance, was 1,400 diners, each with their past. It means that he had passed through there, since, with rare exceptions, those present were users of the Imserso travel services for the elderly. The photographer and I were free, as spies, but we went completely unnoticed, of course. There have never been two observers so closely mimicked for the purpose of their surveillance. Not two strangers that familiar.
Benidorm is in the Spanish Levante, but it could have fallen in Singapore or Indonesia. From the terrace of my room, on the 41st floor of the hotel (the highest in Europe, they told us, with almost 800 rooms), you could see a gigantic bay (that of Poniente beach), besieged by a crown of colossal buildings and decolosales that evoked irregular teeth. At night, thanks to extraordinary lighting, you could believe that you were in Hong Kong, even New York, according to some guides. I have traveled abroad quite a bit, but this foreigner was unlike any other because I was part of him. I was him. I had become a stranger inside my body.
Something like that.
The day after we arrived, we went out into the street and in just five minutes we reached the promenade ready to walk all the way. On our left, the city; To our right, the Mediterranean, the Homer Sea, the wine-colored sea of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the Mare Nostrum of the Romans, the Great Green of the Egyptians, the Sea of Greece and that of Jason, and that of the Argonauts ... The logical thing is that we would get lost in their contemplation, but we only had eyes for the city, whose blocks of flats, except for the skyscrapers, were identical to those of the peripheral neighborhoods of the great European cities.
PHOTO GALLERY: The last winter holidays
We were before a colossal set of cement organized by a somewhat chaotic domestic intelligence. Benidorm seemed to be created by a demiurge who, with materials as coarse as brick or concrete, since he had no others at hand, founded a world that tried to resemble the Platonic world of urban ideas.
The promenade, under the blinding light and the generous temperature of midday (about 22 degrees), was full of a multitude of old men (and old women: the generic is not always enough) who, like Socías and I, traveled with everything his mostly Spanish past piggybacking down that narrow avenue that separated the ocean from real estate speculation.
I stopped to talk to a man in his 80s, from Extremadura, who asked him if he liked Benidorm.
"Man, it's not pretty!" He exclaimed.
"What are you doing here then?"
-Temperature. Look: in the middle of February and we are almost 25 degrees, ”he replied.
-I already said-. And what else?
—They give you two kilos of artichokes at the flea market for one euro. And spinach, the same.
I would get this answer or others like it from different people I stopped to talk to. But the artichokes and the temperature could not explain everything. That mass success must have had a mystery that was not visible to the naked eye.
"This," Socías said, giving free rein to his amazement, "is very difficult to control!" This place is unique! I've never seen anything like this!
As he spoke, he stroked his camera without knowing where to direct it, like the lion hunter who in the middle of the jungle listens to roars whose origin he ignores. For my part, I was holding in my left hand a notebook that I threatened all the time with a pen that I had in my right.
"Have you made a note of something?" -I wonder.
"Not yet," I said. Everything is very normal within the unusual.
Then I wrote down these two words: unusual normality. Perhaps we had inadvertently fallen into the realm of good sense. Of the sane sense, in case there is a rope.
We did not know it then, but it was not long before we missed that unusual normality and that crazy good sense, because we were in February, when the Covid-19 had already demonstrated in the Chinese city of Wuhan, hermetically closed by the authorities so that no one could enter or leave it.
For us, however, the coronavirus still fell too far, allowing us to ironically miss our own daily lives. We were unaware that simply walking on the street or sitting on a concrete bench in the sun was about to constitute an extravagant luxury, as well as prohibited by law. We attended some scenes of customs on which the curtain was about to fall.
"The idea of this report must have occurred to a very sick mind," replied Socías.
"Yes," I said, hiding that I had proposed it to the newspaper myself.
I addressed a lady with the idea of continuing to accumulate information.
"Where do you come from?" -asked.
"I was born here, but don't tell anyone."
"And is it always like this?"
—Young people come from June, but one does not know which is worse.
We continue our journey trying to avoid uselessly the vigilance of a cyclopean and omnipresent skyscraper, 200 meters high, formed by two parallel towers joined at the top by a colossal concrete diamond with gold reflections. We were told that the apartments located inside the jewel could cost around a million euros, maybe more. It did not occur to me who could enjoy living inside a concrete jewel, except for Donald Trump, whose aesthetic tastes are known to all. But you never know. The diamond also had something of a gigantic eye that watched the movements of each and every one of the poor mortals that we moved, like ants, down there, in the depths of reality.
Did that two-legged monster, supported by some 25,000 tons of steel, represent an architectural philosophy for which the spectator capable of valuing it had not yet been born?
Perhaps.
I went to the window of a real estate agency to get an idea of the offer, and stumbled upon the following ad: “Second line of the Poniente beach. Storage room, 5 square meters. Basement -2. Sold".
I was surprised that, in the case of a sunken storage room in a second basement, its proximity to the beach was underlined. Next to the real estate there was a pharmacy where I went to buy some tissue. I observed, stunned, that there was a huge closet full of antacids of different brands whose arrangement reminded me of that of sweets in a candy store.
-Cast? I asked the pharmacist.
"Bad digestions, upsets ..." he said.
♦ The next day I woke up early to see the sunrise from 180 meters above or so, from my room, surpassed only by the diamond monster, who also watched everything that happened on my terrace. I had not been bitten by a mosquito, despite sleeping with the window open, because insects, if any, were not capable of reaching such heights. Nor are sparrows, of course, poor. As for the seagulls, they evolved in the levels located between the 30th and 35th floors, it was unknown whether due to mechanical limitations or for pleasure. After the morning ablutions, I took the elevator down to the lobby, which took me approximately the time it took to go, in Madrid, from the Alonso Martínez metro station to the Callao station, as it stopped at many floors. In the 35th, two old women entered accompanied by an old man of my age (74). One of the old women said that it seemed great not knowing what day of the week she lived on, to which the old man sentenced:
-It's Tuesday.
"Well, you've already screwed me," she said.
In the 18th, two men older than me entered, one of them with a walker. The one with the walker said:
—I was educated in the culture of effort.
"Good luck," said his interlocutor, referring maliciously to the device.
"You have a right to this and this," the other replied, ignoring the comment. But you also have homework.
"And what did you enjoy the most, the rights or the duties?" Asked one of the old women who had entered the 35th?
"Me, from homework."
"Well, you're a masochist," said the old woman.
"If everyone enjoyed duties more than rights, another rooster crowed us," the sufferer defended himself.
And so we were descending and stopping at the different stations until at the height of the 15th floor the elevator was full and we went down at full speed (one floor per second, I calculated).
It was eight o'clock in the morning when they opened the dining room for breakfast, in which 400 or 500 old people immediately gathered, all with our past. I sat next to a widow who was also dragging her husband's, because she began to tell me about him immediately. She was from Castellón and had come with some friends, also widows, with whom she traveled every year.
"But they sleep until nine o'clock," he said in a censorious tone.
I asked him what his plans were and he said that in the morning he would go on an organized excursion to the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia.
"That is paid separately," he said.
"Isn't it included in the package?" I added, underlining the word "package" for giving a technical-tourist touch to the matter.
"No," she said, pleased, I think, with the technicality.
She said that she did not go out at night because she was very tired at that time.
"If anything," he added, "I have a drink at the hotel snack bar, where there is always something." Today the Duo Mavi performs, they sing in English. But in the restaurant that opens onto the terrace there is flamenco. There they always sing in Spanish.
After breakfast, I hang around the gigantic hall for a while and I see some old men coming out of the storage room aboard modern four-wheel electric scooters. At first I think they are handicapped people, but then, when leaving the hotel to take a walk around the block, I see that there are many of these vehicles on the street.
There can't be that many paralytics, I think.
So I go back and ask at the reception, and they tell me they rent them, which gives me great joy. So I call Socías, I tell him and we rent one for each one. They are very easy to handle, since they only have forward and reverse gear. They brake on their own, when you stop pressing either button.
That pair of subjects who go along the promenade of Benidorm laughing like two crazy old men on their motorcycles (this is how we have decided to baptize them) are the photographer and me. The elderly on foot make way for us, envious of our motorized condition. There are old vigoréxic, old squishy, old deteriorated, old brand new, old used, old with hair, old bald, there are old couples who go hand in hand and couples who go loose, there are groups of old friends, surely widows, but few groups of men because they die before they do.
What kind of old man am I? I wonder.
If someone were looking at me as I observe others, what would they say about me? I feel light because I have only had an orange and some cereals with a tea for breakfast, but I have seen contemporaries (and contemporaries, of course) that they took a couple of fried eggs with bacon to which later they added a couple of sausages with black beans. I was struck by a very muscular old man with a pointed mustache, like that of the colonels in the movies, who ate breakfast three times. He was in short-sleeved polo and scout pants. He has just passed me walking at about six kilometers per hour (my motor, at full capacity, barely reaches five).
Towards the middle of the route, a group of retired people appear dancing, perhaps doing tai chi, I'm not sure. Socías parks his vehicle and descends with the camera at the ready. I stay upstairs, next to the contemplative elders. An old woman next to me says she misses her grandchildren.
"Not me," the husband says with a laugh.
"I'm going to call, see how they are," she says.
"You see," he concludes, "there will be someone with a fever."
The woman takes out her cell phone and withdraws a little.
By midmorning I realize that I have not taken my cholesterol pill. I tell Socías and he says don't worry, we are safe here from everything.
"Nothing can happen to us here, can't you see?"
As I believe at face value, and although neither of us smokes for years, we looked for a tobacconist and threw a marlboro on a terrace, in the sun, in front of a triangular island called the island of Benidorm, logically. The forbidden cigarette tastes of glory and, incomprehensibly, whets our appetite.
While looking for a restaurant, I think about how our lives have changed since we left Madrid and arrived in Valencia, on the AVE, at about 300 kilometers per hour. At the station, we rented a car with which we traveled at 120 the distance that separated us from Benidorm. Our average speed, now, did not exceed 5. If such progression continued, we would soon be completely still. It meant, I thought, that our journey, unlike the ones we had done in our youth, was disinteresting.
I told Socías in front of a plate of fried artichokes of unsurpassed quality and a glass of extra white wine:
"We are killing ourselves."
"You, with the disinfection roll, you already have the report done, but I haven't taken a photo yet," he said.
Socías always complains about his material. It never has enough. We discussed what is more difficult, whether to photograph or write, while realizing an excellent “Señorito's rice”, so called because it lacks uncomfortable stumbling blocks to clean. The owner of the restaurant, who has taken us for a gay couple, says that she has ordered some things for Valentine's Day, but that they have not yet arrived.
"If you come back tomorrow," he promises, "I'll make you a little present."
In the afternoon we separate, so that everyone can do what they want, but we meet for a late-night gin and tonic on the terrace in front of the island.
And at the last minute, with the gin and tonic, another magnificent marlboro falls. This is life.
At night, already in bed, I listen to the news and I don't think they talk about my country. It seems to me that they talk about Mars. In just 24 hours, I have become unaccustomed to today. This is one of the characteristics of disinitiation, unlearning, which denationalizes you too. It makes me want to call Jordi to warn him not to listen to the radio or put on TV, so as not to interrupt this reverse, disinteresting journey that we have incurred, but I am sure he will regret that he has not done a good job. still photo. Fuck it, I say turning around to "change the penalty on the side," as the great Manuel Alcántara said.
♦ I got tired of the motorina before Socías. The photographer has taken vice because he says that he can reach the furthest corners of Benidorm, the groin and the armpits of Benidorm, his navel. I tell him to keep an eye on the battery of the scooter, he will not end up far from the hotel and you have to drag him. He laughs at my apprehensions and after breakfast he goes on board the vehicle in search of that material that he never finds.
For my part, I go out into the street and walk aimlessly, looking for the secret of Benidorm, but I see nothing but neighborhoods that look like any of Madrid, Valencia or Zaragoza, to name three random cities, or streets topically tourist, in whose stores they sell fridge magnets. There are places more needy than others, of course, because here the world is divided into classes, just like everywhere else.
As my intellect tends to symmetry, the height of the skyscrapers and the big hotels forces me to speculate about what happens in the subsoil of the city and for half an hour or more I follow, through its records, the network of sewers, which seem few to me if we consider the amounts of faeces and urine they have to evacuate per day. The city, narrow and long, has about 70,000 registered inhabitants, to which must be added the floating population of winter, among which I include myself. But in the summer, they tell me, it can reach 600,000 or more. I then think of the length of my gastrointestinal tract, which is about six meters, I multiply them by the number of inhabitants and I get a number of kilometers of guts that do not match the naked eye with that of the sewer network. As I am apprehensive, it gives me a slight dizziness and I decide to return to make a hotel life.
The sun had risen at 8.03 and sunset was at 18.27. I saw him when he entered, on a screen in the lobby that residents consulted a lot. It did not seem right to me, given the average age of the travelers, that they called sunset “sunset”. I thought of a company that my parents had death insurance with that name.
Near the reception desk there is an Imserso information table whose worker is currently idle. I sit in front of her and after some courtesy I ask her if many sick people get sick. He says yes, of course, due to the average age of the users, but that a doctor and a nurse come to the hotel every day to attend to the staff.
"And I say that there will be dead and also dead, logically," I add in a low voice.
"Every year there is someone who does not come back," answers laconically.
A hotel employee had informed me that a man had just died who had been quietly removed from the establishment through doors that were out of sight. I inform the employee of the Imserso, who does not deny it, although she assures that it was not from her group.
I make these inquiries thinking of my own death, or that of Socías, if I had to take care of his corpse. When I remembered Socías, I called him so that he would not be reckless with the motorina.
"But if this goes to four an hour," he says before hanging up on me.
In this, a lady who wants to make an inquiry approaches and I tell her not to wait for me, inviting her to sit in a chair that is free. Request information about a place where, he says, there are some fish that eat the dead cells of your feet.
"Pedophile fish," I say for a grace that doesn't laugh.
For the first time, in any case, I hear about an activity that interests me. At my request, the lady says that it was what she liked most about last year's trip.
"I left there," she says, "very light, as if I had no feet, ready to go dancing." It was in the center, but I don't remember where exactly. Also, for them to do it for free, I need an invitation.
The Imserso employee rummages in a box and takes out a kind of ticket. The lady is happy as castanets.
"Could you give one of those tickets to me?" -I ask.
"Are you from Imserso?"
"Well, no, but I found that very appealing that the fish devour your feet."
The employee makes a concessional gesture and ends up giving me a pass for that same afternoon.
"Are you sure it's free?" -I ask.
"Yes, but they will give you a talk about some creams for the reunion." If you want, you buy them and, if not, no.
I already have a plan for the afternoon, so I go out to a gigantic terrace, next to which there is a very large pool too, to have a green tea. If I didn't have the sociability problems I have, I would make friends right away, because there are people everywhere ready to talk. This lady, for example, is called Amparo, she is 69 years old and is a veteran of the Imserso. He says that this year he has not come out any day after dinner because he has lost the taste for staying up late. I ask him what's out there.
"Sing and dance stuff," he says. Magic shows and juggling, you know. There are also transvestite attractions, but I've never been to those.
"Yeah," I say.
"And right now," he adds, "there's a zumba session in the hotel's cafeteria." Maybe I'll get closer in a little while.
- And what is zumba?
"One thing that's halfway between gymnastics and dancing." I like a lot.
I get up and go to the back of the cafeteria, where a social entertainer leads, from a wooden platform, a group of participants who clap their hands to the rhythm of music that I don't know, because I've never been very fond of dancing. Or gymnastics. The show is wonderful. Except for the entertainer, the rest are women. There is a man in the middle of them too, but he remains absurdly static. I place myself in a group of old voyeurs and we remain ecstatic at the flexibility, the rhythm and the desire to live of these old women, all in T-shirts, all beautiful, all smiling. It is not a very moving dance, but it requires the continuous movement of the arms. In an instant of unconsciousness and envy, I step forward, enter the group and do what I can. A woman corrects the height of my right arm while saying:
-So.
After the exercise, the animator congratulates us, inviting us to repeat it, this time without music.
"One step to the left," he says, "another to the right." One, two, three, four, seven, eight, arm raised ...
To end the session, put in the music player Don't break my poor heart anymore and everyone dances:
"Do not break my poor heart anymore,
you're hitting right, get it.
If you break my poor heart a little more
You will tear me to pieces, love it. "
You can live perfectly without leaving the hotel, this is undoubtedly one of the secrets of Benidorm.
"Tomorrow more," the entertainer shouts when the song ends. Now we have a Viking chess out there.
I spend the rest of the morning between Viking chess and a game of darts in which the fifth of six remained and in which we were four women and two men. Then my cell phone rings and it's Socías. Sure, I think, he has run out of battery in the motor and wants me to come help him drag it. I'm about to not catch it, but finally I pick it up. He proposes that we meet for lunch at yesterday's "arroz al señorito" restaurant, but I am too lazy to leave the hotel.
"Come on, man," he encourages me, "you can't spend your life in there, you have to do a report."
"I'm already doing it," I say.
-About what? About the hotel?
"About the hotel and about the stranger I have discovered within myself."
—You, with that nonsense you solve everything, but I have to go out and take photographs.
I ask him how it went and he says he has seen 200 old people dancing to Michael Jackson.
"Do you have it then?" I insist.
"I have something," he says cautiously.
I'm not fooled, we have done other reports together (maybe this is the last one, I think longingly), and I know that when you say you have "something", you have everything.
♦ But it's finally five in the afternoon. The most glorious moment of the day has finally arrived, so I leave the hotel and take a taxi ready for pedophile fish to devour my feet.
I enter, barefoot now, in a large rectangular room with chairs attached to the walls. At the foot of each chair is a water tank filled with small, black fish. I sit in one of the chairs, roll up my knee-length pants, and a young woman sprays my feet.
"To disinfect them," he says.
Once disinfected, I put them in the aquarium, put them on the bottom and see how the fish flock to devour them. I feel a tickle that makes me laugh a little.
"They're hungry," I say to the young woman, "they're going to be blind."
"No, sir," she replies a little offended, "that's not your food, that's your job."
Two ladies of about 75 years old arrive, one of them with blue hair, like Lucía Bosé's. They are knowledgeable, so everything that happens in that room seems natural to them. Then I look around me, I observe the panorama and I think that Buñuel would not have even thought to mount a similar scene. Here are seven or eight old men (and old women) with their feet inserted into their own subconscious.
"Where are these animals from," I ask.
"They come from Turkey," they tell me.
"Ah," I say absurdly, "in my house, when I was little, we had a Turkish bed.
After 20 minutes, maybe half an hour, another young woman comes, asks me to remove my feet, sheathes them in a plastic bag and takes me to a room where she gives them a massage with a special cream that contains menthol and that I leaves them frozen. Then they fire me without trying to sell me anything, which worries me a little.
What have they seen in me that they do not see in the other elders?
At night, still with cold feet because of the menthol, I tell my adventure to Socías and he is scared.
"Didn't you think for a moment about the number of people who will put their feet in those aquariums at the end of the day?"
"They disinfect you before you hit them," I say by way of excuse.
♦ Before traveling to Marina d'Or, which was our next stage, we decided, like the one who takes a sheet of ginger when changing dishes so that the flavors do not mix, to spend a day at Asia Gardens, a 5-star hotel located just over two kilometers from Benidorm, in the direction of the mountains, and in which, in addition to taking your suitcases upon entering, one had the impression that, if requested, they were also in charge of its existence.
That's what luxury is, in externalizing life.
There you realized how tired it is to belong to the middle class, let alone the worker. In short, that one was exhausted and did not know why: he blamed it on age, work, cold, and it turns out not, that none of it. It was a class fatigue.
The first thing we do, at the time of registering, is request a Thai massage for that same afternoon. They ask us if we want them to give it to us in the same room (and at the same time, of course), and Socías says, terrified, no.
"If they give it to us in the same room," I encourage him, "we can chat while we get in shape, like the gangsters in the movies."
"I said no," says the photographer.
The hotel has more than 300 rooms, but it seems that only yours exists, because everything is arranged in such a way that, if you don't want, you won't meet anyone (and if you want, often, either). The doors are black; the night tables, black; the mirror frames, black ... everything, in short, is a black label. Everything has the minimalist elegance of a notice.
Logically, I wonder if we have passed away and we are in the afterlife.
I take these notes from the terrace of my room, which overlooks the Vietnam, since the different modules in which the rooms are located are surrounded by a vegetation that is extremely abundant and identical to the one we have seen in movies like Apocalypse Now. The sound of the water is incessant and pleasant, since the entire estate is covered by circuits where colorful tents from Asia stretch. I call Socías, I tell him that ours is like a trip to the heart of darkness.
"Right now I feel like Captain Willard." Do you realize that we are deep in the jungle?
"This is crazy," he says, puzzled, from his terrace.
And after a few seconds of silence, repeat:
"This story can only have occurred to a sick mind."
I consider it appropriate to continue to conceal from you that it was my idea and I invite you to take a tour of our possessions.
In our labyrinthine and silent possessions, ponds abound (I dare not tarnish them by calling them pools) whose sheets of water, transparent and smooth, invite Zen meditation. We talk all the time in a low voice so as not to break the sacred sigil of a shadowy and luminous jungle at the same time in which gigantic bamboos, prehistoric-looking ferns, invasive vines, lianas, epicurean flowers and other varieties of the tropical and subtropical forest.
Few insects, I think, for so much thickness.
We capriciously take one avenue or another, always surrounded by abundant vegetation, although strangely domesticated, since nobody ignores that the jungle, naturally, is hostile. The feeling of decoration and depersonalization that I had to face in Benidorm, when I saw Hong Kong or New York when I looked out on my terrace, attacks me again. Our life, like that of the protagonist of The Truman Show, began to seem like a TV show. We went from set to set believing that we were in reality.
We ate alone, in the silence of a cloistered convent. Then, when I looked back at the large living room window, located in the highest part of the estate, I saw in the distance the skyline of the concrete jungle that we had just left. Observed from this oriental peace, it represented the urban barbarism of the white man. I thought of this with a sense of guilt, in the manner of a newly declassed, perhaps a new rich man. While they were serving us an exquisite quinoa salad, I realized that I hadn't even bothered to find out what the inhabitants of Benidorm were called yet. I asked the waitress about it.
"Tourists," he answered without hesitation.
That afternoon, in the solitude of the Turkish bath, since only I was occupying it, surrounded by clouds of steam, I discovered, when caressing the ceramic bench on which I had lain, a loose tile with which I identified myself. Maybe my place was down there, in the somewhat chaotic streets of the city, in the old-fashioned lobby of the Gran Hotel Bali, in line for the 12-euro buffet: with my classmates, anyway. And while I thought about my place in the world, I sweated and I sweated and I sweated and in the sweat the knots of the soul were undone. Later, thanks to the Thai massage, the body massages were also taken off and I was ready to undertake the next stage of the trip: Marina d'Or, Holiday City, located in the Castellón municipality of Oropesa del Mar.
♦ According to Siri, from Benidorm to Oropesa there were 174 kilometers in a straight line and 245 by car: about three hours driving leisurely and stopping there to get gas or drink coffee. We left with a splendid sun, in the middle of the morning, but as we advanced the sky became cloudy and the outside temperature dropped to normal winter levels.
At intervals it rained.
From the road you could see the blocks of second homes that bricked, paved and cruelly paved the Levante coast. Most of the buildings had the blinds drawn, as if their eyelids had been closed, providing the appearance of soulless bodies, of abandoned or comatose neighborhoods.
Our spirits, like the weather, turned gloomy as we advanced towards our destination. The matter worsened when we stopped in Benicàssim with the idea of eating well and we barely managed to have a bad snack.
After the gastronomic failure, following the directions of the car navigator, we immediately found the famous Holiday City, at the entrance of which there was a gigantic arch formed by a huge fish of Mironian colors and shapes. Looking closely, we see that it was a no-look, perhaps an anti-look: a plagiarism that, far from hiding his imposture, accentuated it strangely. As if its author had wanted to tell us:
"This is what Miró would have done if Miró had been an idiot."
After checking into the hotel, I went upstairs to my room, furnished with plastic furniture that evoked the furniture of classic Rome. It means that she was a non-Rome, perhaps an anti-Rome: a plagiarism that, far from hiding her imposture, accentuated her strangely. As if its author had wanted to tell me:
"This is what the Romans would have done if they had been idiots."
In the late afternoon, we went for a walk in the surroundings and stumbled upon an avenue - the main one - decorated with luminous arches that resembled those at the entrance to the Seville Fair. It means that we were facing a non-Seville, perhaps an anti-Seville: a plagiarism that, far from hiding its imposture, accentuated it strangely. As if its author had wanted to tell us:
—This is what the Andalusians would have done if they had been assholes.
On the ledge of a building we saw a group of peacocks that, despite being fully alive, looked like imitations of real peacocks. It means they looked like non-peacocks, maybe anti-peacocks. A plagiarism, in short, which, far from hiding her imposture, accentuated her strangely. As if they wanted to tell us:
"That's what turkeys would be like if evolution had chosen the wrong path."
The experience would be repeated in an alley profusely illuminated with colored lights that was definitely a non-Hong Kong, perhaps an anti-Las Vegas, etc., and in a park furnished with ceramic benches that wanted to resemble those of Gaudí, but that they were, without exception, anti-Gaudian.
"It's a strange world," Socías commented, trying to moderate the expression of his panic.
We did not want to look out over the Mediterranean, which was there, a stone's throw away, for fear that it would appear to be a falsification of Serrat's.
Meanwhile, in our perplexed wandering, we ran into astonished people too, newcomers on the Imserso coaches, who seemed to wonder if they should like it or not, whether or not they should enjoy what was offered to their senses.
Everything in Marina d'Or could be made of plastic. Everything, without being plastic, could be imitated, it was imitated. Everything that could be ugly was ugly. Everything that could be sinister was sinister. The set was revealed as the work of an infernal anti-artist, of an exquisite anti-talent, since Marina d'Or, Holiday City, was not so much the result of a bad taste big bang as a true explosion of non- taste or anti-taste. As if its designers wanted to tell us:
"This is what the whole world would be like if culture had not corrected humanity's most primal instincts."
Marina d'Or, to summarize, was the bomb.
Perhaps for fear that it would explode in our hands, the photographer and I packed our bags first thing the day after our arrival and left it in a hurry. In the car, Socías was going to open his mouth when I interrupted him:
"Don't ask again what sick mind came up with the idea for this report."