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In my first col­umn after the sum­mer break, which now seems so long ago, I men­tioned that I had plenty to write about, given that I had spent al­most three weeks in Brazil this sum­mer, and the cul­tural con­trasts I had en­coun­tered were nu­mer­ous. But then Ru­biales’ ex­ploits got in the way, and I found my­self dis­cussing Xavi’s re­ac­tion to Kiss­gate and the gen­eral fall­out from it, leav­ing my mus­ings on Brazil on the back burner. Well now it’s al­most the end of the year, it’s time to get round to fix­ing that.

I will start by say­ing that I re­turned from that vast South Amer­i­can coun­try a changed man. And not for the first time: I’ve al­ways found long-dis­tance travel to be a cat­a­lyst for in­tro­spec­tion and pro­found re­flec­tion on the life I have built for my­self. In­deed, my first and only album, The Back of Be­yond, was writ­ten dur­ing a six-month so­journ in SE Asia many moons ago. But don’t go look­ing for it, it’s not on Spo­tify or Ama­zon, it’s only on my shelf here at home. My point being, time spent in far­away places in­evitably leads to rich com­par­isons with the place we left be­hind.

Among the many con­clu­sions I came to this sum­mer, per­haps one of the most pow­er­ful was based on safety and se­cu­rity. I was warned time and again in Brazil not to walk the streets alone, or show any sign of West­ern af­flu­ence, since the likely out­come would be a phys­i­cal at­tack and the theft of any­thing valu­able that I might be car­ry­ing with me. I was there­fore im­mensely cau­tious in this re­spect. Then, the day of our ar­rival in Man­aus, my part­ner and I found our­selves stuck in the ar­ti­san mar­ket in need of a mo­bile phone card, since the one we were using had stopped work­ing. There was nowhere to buy a card in the mar­ket it­self, and the only way we could safely get back to our hotel, ac­cord­ing to the hotel staff and the mar­ket se­cu­rity guards, was to take an Uber, which of course re­quired a net­work con­nec­tion. The choice was to ei­ther ven­ture out onto the streets and look for a shop on our own, or try and find some­one to es­cort us. Heed­ing all the ad­vice we had been given, we took the lat­ter op­tion and, ac­com­pa­nied by a se­cu­rity guard, found our way to a local street dealer who sold phone cards, al­low­ing us to re­solve our tem­po­rary hitch. The lev­els of ten­sion were high for those few min­utes we left the safety of our tourist sanc­tu­ary.

A petty anec­dote per­haps, but one that serves to high­light a huge dif­fer­ence be­tween liv­ing here in West­ern Eu­rope and liv­ing some­where else in the world. That feel­ing of in­se­cu­rity that ac­com­pa­nied me dur­ing most of my time in Brazil is not one that I would like to have to get used to. I’m not even sure I could.

The times we live in, where it is im­pos­si­ble to con­sult any media out­let with­out im­ages and news of coun­tries and cul­tures at war and the shock­ing sto­ries of dis­re­gard for oth­ers’ lives all around us, now added to by that ever-pre­sent feel­ing of in­se­cu­rity dur­ing the time I spent in Brazil, have left me feel­ing im­mensely grate­ful for the safety and se­cu­rity of liv­ing here in Cat­alo­nia, and specif­i­cally its cap­i­tal, Barcelona.

Opin­ion