I have seen cherubs eat their noses, the Argentine team at a third-rate funeral –Japan 2002– and the night before last the rout of an army: the survivors of company dinners hunting for a taxi on Muntaner street in Barcelona.
While the city slept –soon, as always–, thousands of people perpetrated the so-called company dinners (not to be confused with the martyrdom of San Lorenzo, the one on the grill).
As its name indicates, it is an extra-work activity for recreational purposes. A handful of brave people set a date and choose a restaurant in the process of development where they usually serve a despicable picapica and a second to choose from, poisoned with concoctions among which, due to their deadly capacity, the so-called shots (alcohol drones) stand out.
After the first desertions, the uninjured tend to prolong the party in rooms where people dance and labor legends are forged, such that the accountant Gutiérrez, a married man who to the sound of Devórame again attacks his partner, the youngster intern or the hitman boss, who has a plan and executes it.
On leaving Nuts –where the night owl calms down, another great bar in Barcelona that this glanderous city does not deserve–, I was able to appreciate the third phase of company dinners: the toccata and fugue of Lolita (in military slang, a tactical withdrawal home). A solidarity phase in which the great Gutiérrez once again gives his best: I have a car –hell, the children's seats!–, I am sober and Badalona catches me on the way, I live in Gavà and I am a man inconspicuous from where the palm grows.
Naturally, these meals end in talk because the least important thing is the dryland sea bass or the point of the Iberian pork secret, as if we did not know.
And, there, where Muntaner and Travessera de Gràcia intersect, the survivors attacked the taxis while on a sidewalk – I saw her go by – a woman walked barefoot, her high-heeled shoes in her hand, leaning on the shoulder of a companion, like if that were a night of penance in Triana.
