Outdoor BBQ Grill, Deltebre, Catalonia, Spain

A scene I found interesting the other day at the beach. An outdoor barbecue grill very near the water at Illa de Buda in Delta de l'Ebre. It is easy to find places like this in Catalonia but they are usually inland. There is a whole ritual around making fire and cooking around such public grills. You usually bring your own meat or fish and you can buy wood or coal at some facility nearby. Like it happens in most barbecues, the fact of gathering several people around the fire be it friends or members of the family turns it into a social event that may include not just the desired lunch but games like soccer, cards, parcheesi, etc. Besides showing you how these public BBQ grills are, I was interested in those people concentrated on the fire, the smoke spreading all over the place and that guy going towards the beach that of course has nothing to do with the barbeque but contributes to the depth to the image.

Fishing Lead, Delta de l'Ebre, Tarragona, Catalonia

Nothing you haven't seen before. Just a fishing lead hanging from a rod and a beach. Although this activity is regulated and there are certain hours and areas to fish, walking under a nylon line along the shore is something very common here. I only tried fishing once to find out I am not patient enough and I am more of the diving kind. If you ever went snorkeling, you probably have watched through the goggles at that man on the pier, wasting bait totally unaware of the deserted underwater prairie you have the privilege to explore. But fishing rods have that certain romantic look, they are part of the landscape, just like fishermen boats are in a painting and they meet their purpose which is, triggering a hypnotic status in the mind of the fisher-to-be. Maybe the most interesting thing here is the location, a wonderful natural park with wild beaches called Delta de l'Ebre, in the province of Tarragona, Catalonia. Towns nearby are popular among other things for the fantastic paellas, smoked eel tapas, frog legs, angulas (young eels), etc.

Faithful Friends, Passeig de Lluis Companys, Barcelona

Friendship, love, hate, happiness or sadness are a universal asset, inherent to the human race. Friendship knows no creed. Anyone that is able to love, to be kind, to do good, to cultivate friendship is a person and not "the source of all evil". We tend to stigmatize religion, we foolishly fear the unknown, people that look different.

These two Muslim women, for example, covered with what we, out of our own ignorance, would refer to as just "a beautiful piece of cloth", are in fact wearing one of the many types of Hijab as part of their own traditions. Nonetheless, very often they are looked over the shoulder by many and are generally misjudged by the western world.

If I look underneath their headscarves, I just see two wonderful friends, maybe more valuable as persons than many ignorant racists of the so called First World. This is a delicate issue and perhaps the mere fact of musing on it sounds silly or irreverent. My anticipated apologies for that. By the way, let's not forget that other well known "good citizens" of this planet wear or have worn a veil and nobody ever cared. So this is another example of how absurd a debate (the use of the Hijab) can get to be. The picture was taken at Passeig de Lluis Companys, Barcelona.

Update: According to Gurvinder in the comments below (thanks!), these women are Sikh so they are wearing Chunni or Dupatta. If that is the case, this is proof of my poor and shortsighted "Western" approach to the matter. Sikh or Muslim, my point about racism is still valid.