Of course, sir

Tourism is boom­ing in Barcelona, de­spite three no­table fac­tors: one, the ter­ror­ist at­tacks of just two years ago; two, the so-called “tourism-pho­bia” that has gripped the city in re­cent years and seen local res­i­dents’ as­so­ci­a­tions and other or­gan­i­sa­tions protest­ing against what they per­ceive to be the ill ef­fects of mass tourism in the city; and three, Barcelona’s ser­vice in­dus­try not being on a par with that of other major cities. I was pro­vided with ev­i­dence of the lat­ter when I re­cently de­cided to up­date my wardrobe.

En­ter­ing a shoe shop some­where near Di­ag­o­nal, one of those where you have to ring the bell to be let in, and clearly lo­cally owned – my guess is it was a fam­ily busi­ness – I was re­garded with sus­pi­cion and not even af­forded a hello by the one mid­dle-aged lady serv­ing in the shop. I picked a shoe from the shelf only to be met with a barked “Don’t bend the shoe!” in Cata­lan. “What if I want to try it on?” I replied, only to have it re­moved from my grasp and re­placed on the shelf. I left im­me­di­ately, my words of dis­be­lief ring­ing in the shop­keep­ers’ ears. I headed for Corte In­gles in Francesc Macià, look­ing for a spe­cific shoe I’d seen on­line. Un­able to find it, I asked the as­sis­tant if they had it in stock. “It’s only avail­able in Corte Inglés Plaça Catalunya or Maria Cristina,” I was in­formed. “Could you call there to see if they have it in my size?” I asked. “No, you’ll have to go there,” came the curt reply. Fur­ther dis­be­lief on my part. Later, I headed for Plaça Catalunya, and stum­bled upon a bag and wal­let sec­tion among the down­stairs de­part­ments. I had a spe­cific brand in mind, “Do you have bags by Tumi (an Amer­i­can brand)?” I asked. The an­swer was yes, it turned out later, but “I work for Pi­quadro,” was the reply I re­ceived be­fore the as­sis­tant turned away to look at his phone.

My de­sire to spend money in these places was di­min­ish­ing by the minute. I then found that there was a Tumi store on Pas­seig de Gra­cia. And what a con­trast: they let me try the bag out, bend it, play with it, swing it around my head, and gen­er­ally fid­dle with all parts of it for five min­utes with­out say­ing a word, just wait­ing to see if I had any ques­tions and then an­swer­ing them po­litely. “Wow, these staff must have ac­tu­ally been trained in serv­ing cus­tomers, what a novel idea,” I thought. Then, when I bought the bag, they stamped my ini­tials on a leather tag for free and told me I could change it (also for free) any time at any Tumi store around the world.

I walked out of there so happy, that I went straight into a Geox store across the road. In case you don’t know, Geox is an Ital­ian shoe brand. After an hour of try­ing on var­i­ous shoes and hav­ing a lovely chat with the beam­ing and charm­ing Ital­ian sales as­sis­tant, I bought a lovely pair of shoes and left there again a happy cus­tomer.

Pleased with my Amer­i­can and Ital­ian pur­chases, I headed to a local eatery for lunch with a friend. “Can I change the salad that comes with the fish for some steamed veg­eta­bles?” my friend asked. “No,” came the reply... for “Noth­ing is to much trou­ble,” read ”Every­thing is too much trou­ble” in the Barcelona ser­vice in­dus­try.

So I have a mes­sage for all the res­i­dents’ as­so­ci­a­tions try­ing to keep tourists away from Barcelona: don’t waste your en­ergy – the local ser­vice in­dus­try will end up doing the job for you.