I caught a cold in the park. The gate was open.*

I ran up to Parc Güell today for the first time in months. Okay, yes, I have been exceedingly lazy, but I have excuses! I haven’t been running much because my neighborhood isn’t very exercise friendly. Every time I run in Gràcia (more about my neighborhood in a future post), I elicit incredulous stares and comments. I know they are wondering how a tourist got up this far from Las Ramblas. I feel incredibly foreign and vulnerable, as if I were a giraffe loping down the street. It doesn’t help that now the weather is warmer, I wear shorts, exposing my shockingly white legs that are taller than many people here. Actually, I have a suspicion that not being tan is a crime in Spain.
Luckily, they can’t catch me.

Anyway, I made it through the eight plus minutes of steep uphill to the park, but the side entrance I usually use was closed. There were herds of tourists milling about in front of the barricade, looking hopelessly lost. I decided to forge on anyway and came upon a tall closed gate and a new looking fence. Further investigation revealed a section where a rock wall (embedded with pieces of broken glass to create an extra challenge) offered an easier climb. Once in the empty section of the park, I immediately discovered the cause of the closure: all the trees were gone. There were piles of trunks and branches hacked to bits all over the place, alongside stumps still seeping sap, and entire root systems wrenched from the ground. It was horrifying. In areas, it appeared that nearly 90% of the trees were gone, while other areas appeared untouched. I ran along my usual paths, finding them all ending in fences and realized that most of the park was closed off. What had caused this? Insane neighbors furious about the constant stream of tourists flowing past their doorways? A mob of deranged Catalan separatists? A drunken bunch of Texan fratboys? A tornado that secretly touched down in specific spots on a dark winter night? I think the exposed roots indicating that some trees were literally uprooted offers a clue. Perhaps some of the strong winds and heavy rains have caused massive erosion on the steep hills of the park, carrying trees downhill.

After trying to escape through other exits, I returned to carefully climb over my glass studded rock wall. Waiting on the other side as an Italian man asking how to get in. I answered in Spanish, he replied in Italian, I replied and he switched to English, so I switched to English and he then switched to Italian. Eventually, I think he understood my alternative directions for entering (after eschewing my suggestion to climb the wall).

My Spanish wasn’t that great during this conversation because I was distracted by one of the oddest things I have ever seen. I wish I had a camera with me. It was a parrigeon or a pigarrot, a mixture between a pigeon and a parrot. As I was approaching, at first it resembled a pigeon someone had cruelly dyed for Easter. Upon closer inspection, the pastel blues, pinks, and yellows appeared to be real. It looked like a normal pigeon from it’s head to mid-back. There, it morphed into a parrot with wings, lower back, and tail feathers all sorts of colors, magenta, bright green, along with the aforementioned pastels. It walked awkwardly (it was also larger than a normal pigeon), but when it flew away, it was surprisingly graceful, with a large wingspan and its bright colors even more vivid and striking in the sunlight against the blue sky.

These developments require some research…I will get back to you!