(Photos: Craille Maguire Gillies)

Contributor Craille Maguire Gillies posts from Barcelona on how she passed New Year’s Eve.

We stuffed ourselves into the metro car until no one more could fit, and then a few more people squeezed in. While we were waiting on the platform for the train to come, a group of a half dozen kids popped the cork on a bottle of champagne and hooted as it hit the roof of the metro station. Then they did it again. It was just shy of midnight and the train was going to downtown Barcelona. There was hardly room to breath, let alone swig champagne, and anyway, there would be time for that later.

We were quiet as the metro plugged along slowly, until people in one section of the metro car started counting down in a mélange of languages and then exploded in cheers as midnight arrived. The ceiling of the metro car seemed to drop a few inches with their cheers. In Barcelona, 2010 started underground, for us anyway.

By the time we arrived in Catalunya, the cheap champagne, costing only a few Euros at the tiny supermarkets on every street, was already flowing. Police in military-like blue uniforms, helmets and face guards, stood around in clusters or by the rows of blue vans lined up in case things got out of hand. A clean-up crew from the city handed out biodegradable disposable cups. Loud pops came from the crowds and smoke from these impromptu, unsanctioned fireworks floated over us.

All of La Rambla promenade was as full as the metro cars. People hung out of windows of restaurants, hotels and apartments to watch, well, a lot of nothing much. A block of partiers played a kind of soccer game with an enormous red fuzzy ball, which bounced over their heads and then away by a gust of wind. But there was no music, no dancing — except for the occasional drunken conga line. Simply gathering a bunch of people was enough entertainment, and anyway, clubs would be open all night.

A few minutes after midnight, a woman stood off to the side of the street nibbling absentmindedly on translucent white grapes. It is traditional to eat 12 grapes at midnight, one at each strike of the clock; all down La Rambla, the cobblestone was covered in smushed grapes.

The next day was sunny and warm, but with winds that you could lean into and not fall down. Tourists had made their way back to La Rambla even though all the stores, save the farmàcias, were closed. Some kiosks along the promenade were open though, selling flowers, and one stall offered canaries, bunnies and turtles. (When regular business hours resumed, kiosks selling guinea hens, pigeons, chickens and roosters also re-opened.) On the promenade, street performers moved about quietly, including one guy dressed as a creepy insect reminiscent of the “non-humans” in the South African sci-fi movie District 9.

Nearby, one of the flower stalls had a small basket filled with neatly wrapped bouquets of el muérdago (mistletoe). The shopkeeper explained that muérdago bouquets were for good luck. Some of the berries were bright red, but other berries were the same translucent colour of the grapes people were eating the night before and were soggy and mashed up. The bouquets were on sale for just 3€, but no one seemed to be buying last year’s good luck charms.