Barataria
A fictional Spanish isle
From the column Unnatural Habitat
Originally published on Barcelonareporter.com

On the morning of San Juan in the year 1614, on a beach shoring up to where today's Facultad de Nautica now stands, Don Quixote was defeated by the Knight of the White Moon. Obligated to renounce his knight errant ways, Quixote and Sancho Panza - his trusty squire - were forced to go home to La Mancha . His final excursion to the industrial city of Barcelona chastened him with a good dose of reality, and Quixote was ready to give up the ghost.

With that final apocryphal adventure Cervantes paved the way towards modern realism. He also rounded out two singular and beloved characters that still live in our collective memory. Universally revered, the eponymous hero of the novel has even inspired his own adjective - quixotic - describing anything wildly idealistic, beyond reason. Sancho, his portly comic sidekick, may be simple, but he acts as a check on Quixote's flights of fancy - indeed he is the blunt voice of reason.

Most importantly, Quixote and Sancho instantly became popular icons across the Iberian peninsula , and, not much later, the world. They're the opposite of the elitist heroes in medieval tales of chivalry. There is something accessible and endearing about them. Their everyman appeal even influences politics in Spain , where it's commonplace to cite Cervantes in debates (as ERC leader Carod has recently done).

The symbolic end for Quixote's adventures came, appropriately enough, in Barcelona, of which he said:

“[Barcelona is] the treasure-house of courtesy, haven of strangers, asylum of the poor, home of the valiant, champion of the wronged, pleasant exchange of firm friendships, and city unrivalled in site and beauty.”

It was in Barcelona that Quixote realized his true identity as a low noble and a dreamer; but he represented so much more than a ridiculous old man. Nowadays people would call people like Quixote and Sancho frikis , or freaks, or even perdedores , losers in the comic sense, if there is such a thing. Again, it's their commonness that attracts us. And they represent an impossible ideal. They are martyrs for all those dreams we dare to dream.

Could that be the fiction of a united Spain ?

Just down the street from me in barrio Sant Pere is a Cervantes elementary school. Cervante's Quixote is, in many minds, a universally Spanish character. There's no denying his roots throughout Spain , or the common causes he represents.

These days Quixote-esque characters are the norm. Trickster figures and macho bumblers like El Neng and Torrente may not be as eloquent as the Knight of the Sad Countenance, but they appeal to a broad spectrum of Spaniards - be it Galicians, Andalusians, or Catalans. Perhaps their obvious madness provides a kind of shadenfruede, or maybe it's their political ambiguity that makes them so universally accepted.

My first exposure to this phenomenon was at my first job in Barcelona : loading trucks in a warehouse in the Marina district. Breakfast, for my coworkers and me, usually consisted of a salami sandwich on a French roll, a shot of espresso with cognac, and a cigar. Around this time Torrente , the first instalment of what would turn out to be a lucrative film franchise, came out. From my truck-driving coworkers I learned (but could not mimic) their constant Torrente-esque catcalls to passing women. Words like “amiguetes” did get incorporated into my budding Spanish vocabulary, however. Because this behaviour was so pervasive, I thought it was the norm - “typically Spanish”.

It was only after seeing Torrente on television that I realized the movie was an indictment of post-Franco machismo. My coworkers were aping it, but it was obvious by the sheer consistency that it wasn't always in a derisive way.

Torrente isn't wholly successful as a critique because he is so ridiculous, so deluded, that in a way he's like an anti-Quixote. He's cutre , wears cheap suits, goes to puticlubs , and he even recruits local half-wits in a quest to bust an entirely imagined Chinese drug smuggling ring. He tilts at his own contemporary windmills.

If you see a Seat beater car with a spoiler; hear deafening, distorted techno; and see a miscreant inside wearing sweats and sunglasses, you can be sure you've witnessed a more recent Quixote-esque manifestation - el Neng. This Spanish archetype, now embodied in a television personality, represents so much of Spain in such a bad, but funny way. People of all classes and ages are probably guilty of at least once saying “Que pasa neng!” - his catchy salutation.

Anyone here knows what to expect when they hear chumba chumba music and whiny mufflers. It took el Neng to personify this particular species of Fuana Iberica , to put a name to it (and unwittingly to release whole hordes of mini-Nengs, ringtones … even to popularize his sartorial style: green Kappa sweats, shaved head and yellow sunglasses).

And truth be told, el Neng with his bobbing head, and his Quixote-esque delusions of grandeur is a welcome relief from the populist ranting in Spanish parliament. That's the secret to his appeal. Despite the flashing strobe lights, pathetic music, and incomprehensible tuning proclivities, he is a contender in the big social spectrum because he represents something universally and unmistakably Spanish.

It's been a while since I loaded trucks with my amiguetes . But since then I've worked with countless other Torrente wanabees (once, while riding in a car with coworkers, the driver - who was Catalan - actually meowed at every passing female in what could have been a scene straight out of Torrente). Even in formal office environments I face a barrage of “Que pasa nengs!” from 50 year old suits and prim secretaries, both Catalans and Madrileños. The antihero reaches beyond the constrictive confines of politics and is embraced by all.

In a way, Cervantes addressed this issue in a running joke throughout his book. Quixote assured Sancho that if he followed him on his noble adventures he would be awarded with his very own island to rule over. Upon being vested with the title of governor of a fictional island called Barataria, Sancho said he'd do it because he “wants to figure out what a governor knows”. On the point of proper dress, he was indifferent:

“Dress me as you would like. Because any way I'm dressed I'll still be Sancho Panza.”

Superficially Sancho may be a common labourer, drunk and simpleton. But even at the height of his and Quixote's delusion he spoke words of wisdom which still resonate with us. How could regal trimmings add to his ability to rule? To extend the argument, does it really matter if you're wearing a barretina or a gorra madrileña ? Your flag Catalan separatist or Spanish nationalist? Neither Sancho nor Quixote would limit themselves like that.