It has been an atypical summer in Salou, with fewer tourists and less business. "We really started working very late, it's a strange August," laments Marcel, owner of the Di Mare Beach beach bar, one of the most popular on Salou's busiest beach (Llevant). No one would have said so if they had landed yesterday on the Costa Daurada, with a queue of tourists at noon to taste a mojito, a caña or any refreshing drink.
Most of young French women thirsty and hot. “Four non-alcoholic mojitos”. With the thermometer climbing above thirty-four degrees, under a scorching sun, mojito in hand and a short walk towards the hammocks and the parasol. "What a bad face you make!" a local client joked to the boy who is in charge of accommodating tourists in the endless row of hammocks and parasols. Isma doesn't stop, she sweats a lot and, understandably, she has the face of not much friends. Asking her to smile is offensive and shows a lack of empathy.
The formula for success, a mojito (or more than one) at nine euros each plus a hammock with a parasol for eight euros a day. Aisha and her friends parade with their mojitos and settle in their hammocks. Happiness is sometimes a simple and refreshing wish.
“The fan spits fire,” says Clara, a friendly, smiling and efficient beach bar waitress. It doesn't stop serving drinks. It is the second summer of her working in Salou. Originally from Zaragoza, but installed with her family in Reus, she dominates the trade. She “she has suddenly animated the thing”. In the queue, patients, like anesthetized, English, French and Spanish tourists.
A dozen hookahs await customers. Inspire more the smell of mint. "Who will want to smoke a hookah in the middle of a heat wave?" Five minutes pass and a Frenchman asks the price of the hookah. "They distracted. The French: hookah and Nestea”, says the waitress.
Ricardo smiles and prepares mojitos. "Heat? We are used to it". And he keeps mixing lime and mint. “In one day we can prepare 400 mojitos. And there are days that we make short ”, he explains. "Mojitos disappear," they joke.
Away from the sand, on the terraces along the promenade, many empty tables at noon. Menus on offer and customer hunters who can't find tourists. "In this heat there are many tourists who stay in the hotel pool," reasons an experienced restaurateur. First evidence. With the peaks of heat you drink more than you don't eat. Second: it has not been a good summer, with difficulties in reaching full occupancy in the hotels on the Costa Daurada, even if it is August, in the middle of the high season.
In the small supermarkets scattered along the Salou promenade, refrigerators full of bags of ice and an intense rhythm of sale of soft drinks and ice cream. There is no one who walks in the early afternoon without drinking or eating something refreshing.
At one point on the popular Paseo Jaume I, the smell of churros. It's not a hallucination. A veteran churrera braves the elements and fries up a few churros. "Who is going to want to eat some churros in this heat?" Heat enlivens a bad summer and fuels magical realism. “I want four euros of churros with sugar”, asks a vacationer from Navarre along with her two granddaughters.
At the taxi rank, there is a queue of tourists with bags and suitcases. The heat is hotter when the holidays are over. A few meters away, a mother and a teenage daughter, from Logroño, fill two liter bottles with water from a fountain. Then they throw the water over themselves, in the middle of the street, they clean the sand and salt, and they go home. "Mom, can you take a picture of me while I splash the water over myself?" The mother, blunt: "Girl, are you stupid?"
The same drinking fountain becomes a footbath. Disturbing image. On the beach the showers and footbaths work at 50%. There are queues. Inside the sea, a happier world with half a dozen pedal slides facing the sand. Outside the sea, bad humor and embarrassment are chewed. "Carlos, are we going to have a mojito?"
