A Summer Cat or the Swedish Myth

Still in Spain it is very alive the Swedish myth on the minds of many middle-aged men. In short, it is related to those summers in the late 60's and early 70's when our coasts started to be massively visited for the first time by European tourists. Most were either French or Germans, but people here thought they were Swedish.

In the middle of a dying dictatorship, these tourists brought fresh air to many youngsters that discovered, all of a sudden, a new fresh world, specially related to the personal relationships and sex, since Europe was, and is, a more advanced place, economically and socially. It was the time of free sex, a concept completely unknown in the priggish and claustrophobic Spanish society at that time.

This myth of freedom and sexual liberation was a sword with two blades, and also the so-called nordic princesses dreamt to come to Spain to taste a little the fire and passion of such Mediterranean guys. And it is still fresh and alive, and economically exploited at the present day Barcelona, whose authorities, since the 92 Olympics, have been engaged in a policy of total permissibility towards any activity devoted to the entertainment of European tourists, that flock to Barcelona and neighboring seaside towns to have the time of their lives. Nowadays, though, those princesses are not exclusively from Europe nor are only locals those guys who keep on feeding the myth.

Everybody knows what I'm talking about, don't we? Yeah, I can see that little grin in your eyes, dear! Sex without ties, cheap alcohol and lots of pot. And back home, in the boredom of your suffocating country, the myth reappears in dreams or by the only presence of a Spaniard around. "Should I try him? Will he make me remember those summer nights I had in Barcelona? Yeah, why not?".

That's why I like that song, used this year in a beer ad with a starry name. Funny that it is a transvestite Swedish guy who explains the myth perfectly. Summer Cat, a summer in Catalonia.

Barcelona got you, babe!