Football at Las Ramblas

Football at Las Ramblas - a tasteful pizzeria in Bar

While sitting waiting for, eating then digesting a plate of tasty but insubstantial grilled veg, a Partizan Belgrade game was being screened. Belgrade were leading 5-0 against hopeless opposition, though this didn’t look an average end of season romp. Rather, flares and smoke bombs were flying with terrifying abandon, crowd invasions took place at surreal half speed, while on the pitch, a foul towards the end of the game rendered Partizan’s number 17 dead. Not injured, mind, but genuinely, undeniably dead. I’d never seen such a horrific challenge.

Just to repeat and for removal of any doubt. Partizan’s number 17 (which subsequent research seems to indicate was a young man called Živković Andrij) was dead; the still corpse carelessly crumpled on the playing surface at a hideous angle.

Justice was either meted out or not – the gravity of what I’d just witnessed made everything else absolutely irrelevant. I started feeling concerned that the police hadn’t been called and that the tv channel was still broadcasting when, lo and behold, dead number 17 hopped up and dusted himself down. The game continued and I tried to relax, hoping against hope that the rest of Partizan’s opponents would push, grab six injury time goals and triumph against their big time, big cheat opponents. They didn’t; there were more flares, Partizan flags with skulls and crossbones were flown to a conspicuously empty stand and the game ended acrimoniously.

I took a little time to compose myself before checking and passing myself fit and ready to move on. Soon after leaving Las Ramblas, I caught sight of my reflection in a plate glass window. Someone in a badly floppy sunhat and long sleeved plaid shirt, and someone who looked a generation or two older than the younger man I still imagine myself to be gawped back. I’d been happy enough on the journey thus far, even after the airport and ferry shenanigans, but I was ill prepared for this spectre which looked like an American tourist who’d blundered into Nuts in May.