So here I am on Thursday 7th December, the day between two public holidays. In fact I attended, and gave a brief presentation at, a three-hour Zoom meeting (related to Euclid) yesterday afternoon, so it wasn’t really a holiday for me, and I’ll be working tomorrow too. Most shops are closed on public holidays, though
Today being an example of a Puente (‘bridge’, slang for a day bridging two holidays); at first I thought it was a day for playing Bridge. Many businesses close for a puente and some workers take a holiday even if their place of work is not closed. This is a rather splendid puente, actually, as it joins Wednesday to Friday and thus creates a (very) long weekend. I suppose the best one would be when public holidays are on a Tuesday and Thursday so then one can take Monday, Wednesday and Friday off to make a week-long holiday. I’m told this is called not a puente but an acueducto!
Anyway, I had planned to spent today’s puente working from home like I did yesterday. Unfortunately I had to change plan. There has been construction work going on in my apartment block more-or-less continually since I moved in. This hasn’t really bothered me much, as I have been out during most weekdays and the work never happens at night, at weekends, or on public holidays (such as yesterday). On the occasions when I have been in during the work, however, it has been very irksome. I had assumed that the builders would regard today as a puente but alas this is not the case. No sooner had I eaten my breakfast when the dreaded drilling and banging began. Knowing I wouldn’t be able to get much work done in such an environment, I decided to relocate to the University after all.
The University of Barcelona is actually open today (although not all entrances to the Physics Department are accessible) but there are no classes for students. The Metro coming here to Zona Universitaria was, unsurprisingly, pretty empty. The café downstairs is closed. The only other people are staff members, so It is very quiet and I should be able to put few useful hours of work in…
P.S. Apologies for getting the gender of puente wrong in the original title.It’s interesting that the Welsh word for “bridge” is “pont”, like French (from Latin pons cf puente), whereas in Irish it is “droichead”. The English word “bridge” is of Germanic origin.
In the Dark 