It's gray and chilly today in Barcelona, about 40 degrees or so with a light drizzle. This ought to keep a few of the peaceniks home from the demo this afternoon. On Saturday mornings most of us Barcelonese have to be alert for the butane-tank man. You see, we don't have central heating here. You can get it, and it's not very expensive--we could afford it and we sure ain't rich--but it just seems unnecessary to install when you would only use it five or ten days out of the year and when effective butane-powered space heaters are available for a hundred bucks or so and last for years. A replacement of the butane tank costs eight bucks, and we go through one about every couple of weeks. Most people have two, one in use and a spare, and when your tank in use runs out you start looking for the butane guy to replace it.

The butane guys come around every couple of days but most people work in the mornings and so we miss them, which is why Saturday is the big butane day. The guys drive these rattletrap old trucks piled high with these fireplug-size orange metal tanks which weigh a ton empty and two tons full. They wear these scruffy bright-orange jumpsuits, now rather a dull orange, and they park their truck down in the Plaza Rovira and spread out around the surrounding few blocks with dollies carrying five or six tanks. They bang a metal bar on the tanks to alert the neighborhood that it's butane time. When you hear the banging you go out on the balcony and yell down to the guy how many tanks you want and which apartment you live in. He brings what you've ordered up and exchanges his full tank for your empty one. His job really sucks because if your apartment building doesn't have an elevator, and many don't (ours dates from the '70s and has one), he has to carry the full tank up the stairs and the empty one down. Also, he's probably an Arab or Pakistani illegal immigrant working for tips. The tank is eight euros so I just give the guy ten. He needs the cash more than I do.

Our hot-water heater and stove, like most people's, are hooked up to natural gas, but some people use butane tanks to power them, too. Our last apartment was like that. We went through at least a tank a week, and if we missed the butane guy, we were screwed. My understanding is that in interior Spain and the north coast people generally do have central heating, but along the Mediterranean coast it's rare. Air-conditioning is pretty rare, too, because you really need it only about two weeks out of the year, in August, and we're often gone in August anyway, either to the US or someplace nice and cool like the Pyrenees or the north coast. We also spend a good many summer weekends in Remei's tiny hometown of Vallfogona de Riucorb, where they have a big old stone house that's wonderfully cool inside, where there's a very nice municipal swimming pool with full bar service--the only rule is that you get your drink in a plastic glass, they don't allow real glass in the pool area--and where it's dry and hot, therefore tolerable, during the day, but breezy and cool at night. Air-conditioning is becoming more and more common in Barcelona since it's cheap to install and people don't run it very much. We're not going to get it since we don't need it. I will admit, though, that while I am a vegetarian, I have been known to go over to the McDonald's over on Mayor de Gràcia, the only fast-food joint in the neighborhood, and order a Coke, just to sit in the A/C for half an hour or so.