Holidays should improve the mood of those who enjoy them. The well-known reports on post-vacation syndrome and other pathologies typical of a society that tends to enshrine any occurrence of Chichinabo psychology will come in September. But until then, it is to be assumed that whoever has given routine a thumbs up, escaping for a few days from the realm of obligations, must be in an acceptable mood and maintain an at least moderately optimistic view of the passing of days and of their congeners.
It is easily understood that the waiter of a coastal restaurant can have a bad day in August, coming from Sant Joan to serve lunch and dinner without interruption. Or that August is not the preferred month of the members of the municipal brigades in charge of cleaning the streets and squares of the tourist towns, which visitors turn into a dunghill day after day. Working when the others give themselves to the party has never been a reason for hullabaloo.
But it is difficult to guess why so many of those who are installed in not giving a stick to the water, the activity of the vacationer, remain faithful to bad humor and bitterness. If in summer they are so restricted as to argue for a parking space or if the queue at the supermarket has been kept as it should have, one does not want to imagine what the long winter must be like between the walls of their habitual residence. It will be that the sour character behaves like a self-employed worker and does not know about vacations.
Of all places, the beach is the space that provides the most alibis and food for the angry. In just a few days, current news, conveniently doped up by summer journalistic routines, has given space to various groups in turmoil for the most diverse reasons.
The nudists are climbing the walls because textiles – that's what they call those of us who wear swimsuits – invade their beaches, without complying with the non-existent rule of staying naked as soon as they set foot on the sand.
The non-smokers of some municipalities are complaining about having as towel neighbors people who puff on a cigarette even when they are about to dive into the water.
Some of the women are concerned that the new generations do not go topless with the libertarian enthusiasm of their mothers.
The locals, bored because the hidden coves are now massive because of the network users who geolocalize and share their paradisiacal photographs.
In the swimming pools, anger spreads among those who consider that hygiene standards are not compatible with the bathing suit imposed by some religions.
Whatever the reason for each one to be upset, the pissed off on the beach are united by a shared dream: a world populated only by their duly approved clones. On one side and the other of the parasol photocopies of themselves in an endless extension beyond the horizon.
In his fantasy, the entire coastline is divided to the millimeter. Marked with dozens of pictograms so that everyone knows where they can and where not to soak. Here naked, there with a bathing suit. Here the healthyies, there the dirty smokers and tinto de verano drinkers. Here the sedentary and the bellies, there the players of shovels and the vigoréxicos. And, far, far away, to infinity and beyond, families with tough children.
What the pissed off man doesn't know is that, once the cause on which he projects his discomfort has been eliminated, he would have no choice but to face himself. Discovering, without excuses, that he is nothing more than a grump. A curmudgeon. And since we do not wish him so much misfortune, it is necessary that we commit ourselves to the noble work of continuing to cause him the occasional inconvenience.
For all these people who want to turn the beach into a box at the Liceu, we have some advice that they certainly haven't asked us for: stay at home. Or go to the beach from October. But abandon all hope of privatizing public space based on your obsessions. What they demand is not civility. They aspire to turn the beach into an extension of themselves and their boredom. Of all of them, the worst are the picky ones who invoke the non-existent right to have few people in the place they have chosen to bathe. They never realize that the ones who are really superfluous are perhaps, with or without a swimsuit, precisely them.
