Couldn’t sleep, so I went walking. Past midnight, streets quieter but never silent — mopeds whining, bins being dragged, someone arguing on a balcony. Ended up by a block in Poblenou wrapped in scaffolding. The lamps strapped to the poles gave everything a yellow cast, like a crime scene. Nets sagged, flapping in the warm breeze. The air smelled of dust and tar, that sharp mix you only get when concrete’s been chipped away all day.
It took me straight back to Manchester. Night shifts on sites where the scaffolding lights buzzed like insects and everyone’s eyes stung from cement dust. We’d eat bacon sandwiches at 2 a.m. off greasy paper, leaning on rails, pretending we weren’t knackered. I hated those nights, but standing there in Barcelona I realised I kind of missed them. Not the deadlines, not the shouting, just the rhythm. Noise, dust, a job you could feel in your bones.
Here the scaffolding stays up for months. Whole blocks shrouded in nets that turn green with mould by the end. I counted three different sets of graffiti sprayed onto the same panel — the painters don’t bother cleaning it, they just add another layer. Sustainable? Who knows. The longer it stays up, the more people assume the work’s never going to finish.
Pepi says scaffolding makes her nervous. “Means something’s broken,” she mutters, scuttling past. Rob, on the other hand, loves it — says it means progress, says he likes watching the stages from his balcony with a beer. Two opposite takes, same street. Me, I just smell the dust and feel my eyes itch.
Funny how WSB14 used to talk about “temporary interventions.” I remember that phrase because I had to sit through a dozen meetings back in the day where some consultant threw it around. Temporary never meant temporary. It meant scaffolding that stayed up until pigeons nested in it. It meant projects dragging on because paperwork got stuck. Same here. Whole corners of Barcelona wrapped like Christmas presents nobody opens.
The smell lingers too. You don’t read that in the glossy brochures. Fresh concrete in the heat, sawdust when someone hacks at an old beam, paint fumes trapped under nets. I stood there last night breathing it in and thought: this is the real city. Not the polished towers, not the brochures. Dust, tar, and neighbours complaining about noise at 7 a.m.
Emily wouldn’t get it. I sent her a photo once of scaffolding lights glowing at night. She replied with a single “???” and left it at that. Fair enough. Maybe you have to have worked under those lamps, eating bacon baps in the rain, to understand.
I leaned against the railing a while, listening to the nets slap, counting cranes on the horizon. Lost track after five. Odd, even, didn’t matter. Somewhere down the street a cat knocked over a bottle and it rolled until it hit a drain cover.
I walked home eventually, shoes grey with dust. Could still smell the tar when I got inside. Boiler clunked to life, rattling like always. I thought about the site in Manchester where scaffolding collapsed once because someone cut corners. Nobody died, thank God, but it scared us all stiff. We swore we’d never trust rushed jobs again. Then deadlines rolled on, corners kept getting cut. Different country, same habits.
Maybe that’s why I walk. To remind myself buildings aren’t finished when the ribbon’s cut. They keep breathing, crumbling, breaking, getting patched. And sometimes the most honest version of them is at midnight, under buzzing lamps, smelling of dust.
I was going to write more, but the scaffolding net outside my own street’s just caught the wind again. Flaps so loud it’s making the window rattle. Hard to think with that racket.
