Caspe

29 April

Thanks to Connie Booth, John Cleese and Andrew Sachs, a generation of English schoolboys grew up associating the Spanish with hysterical incompetence. The oft-repeated line in Fawlty Towers: “I’m so sorry, he’s from Barcelona” excusing Manuel’s miscomprehension of the simplest tasks and slandering the population as a whole. Catalonia’s crowd management Wombles, however, are a timely reminder of the sometimes aptness of the quote.

Despite being an hour early, we missed the start of the concert as we were forced on a walking tour around three sides of the stadium and endless snaking queues. After the show, and in keeping with the fascist history of the Passeig Olímpic (you have to hand it to these European dictators, they did have a terrific architectural sense), it was a forced marched out on a fixed route to the edge of the city centre. As a result, we didn’t make it back to the hotel until 02:00 even though the concert ended at midnight and our hotel was less than a mile away, forcing us to seek further refreshments along the way.

So it’s a late start as I pick my way gingerly out of Barcelona early on Saturday afternoon. I’ve plotted a four-day route to Almeria simply by putting waypoints on what looked like interesting roads and then relying on Booking.com to find somewhere to stay every 150 to 170 miles.

Like Germany, Spain's motorway network is mainly two lanes and again, like Germany’s, needs to accommodate traffic moving at any speed between 50 and 150 Kmh. Unlike Germany, where autobahn protocols are fastidiously observed, the Spanish don’t seem to have the faintest idea that anyone else even exists. It’s not that they don’t care because they are stupid on a molecular level (like many testosterone-fuelled, young Essex males, for example), they just don’t notice.

So after an invigorating run south down the motorway hugging the sea, the route veers and snakes its way inland. All rather lovely until I get to Caspe which is not. But it is where I’m staying…

It's one of those Butch & Sundance moments when they alight the train in Bolivia, wondering what on earth they are doing there. After the buzz and thrum of Barcelona, the rural poverty of this town is a jolt. Culturally, Arabic and Muslim influences abound with the welcome as warm and genuine as elsewhere. A snarky review on Tripadvisor of the only place open for dinner turns out to be way off the mark. The waitress who got very low marks from the cowardly, anonymous reviewer was lovely if smirkingly amused by my reliance on Google Translate and truly awful pronunciation.

At breakfast the next morning, the bar-cum-restaurant is full of locals enjoying bottles of red wine with their breakfast followed by a cheeky Fundador to set them up for the day. No doubt staunch Catholics, maybe it’s their way of getting through the obligatory mass later that morning. This place and life would not be for me but they all seem well-chuffed with it.