Barcelona stays up late: movies in the square

At 10 PM (22h as they say here), we were having dinner on the roof deck and saw that some pretty big fireworks a few blocks over; this wasn't kids with bottle rockets. The blue light in the bottom is a sliver of the AgBar gherkin building we walked by yesterday.

After they were over, we heard what sounded like a loud TV. Not surprising, everyone had their windows open. But it was really loud, and surprisingly clear. Then we heard the sound of dramatic music, of strings -- it sounded like movie.

The Rambla del Raval is right below us and we figured maybe they were doing a Screen on the Green kinda thing. We headed down the 104 stairs to the street, but there was no film.  Lots of people at cafes, walking up and down, hitting the restaurants and such, but no movie. We could hear it though, a bit further on.

A block further toward the city center is the Filmoteca de Catalunya, and it's showing a great selection of movies this month. It's a cool modern building that incorporates indoor and outdoor spaces, including this bar, the Monroe, named after Marilyn. It was heaving with people at almost 11 PM.

Ah ha, mystery solved, around the corner they were projecting a movie on the wall of the Filmoteca. Black and white. Hundreds of plastic lawn chairs were set up in the square, all filled with people. The audio was in English, with Castilian Spanish subtitles. This could be a fine way to learn some Spanish :-).  After a few lines, I was able to google the names and found out the film was The Fountainhead from 1949 with Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal. Lots of dramatic music.

Even the kids were up at this hour, playing on the swing sets.

We went back to our roof deck and sure enough, by midnight the film had ended, the sound was gone, and we could hear the cafes on Raval putting away their tables; the evening was over, it's quiet-time now.

I guess I don't understand the schedules of people in Barcelona. If they're eating at 10 PM and hanging out until after midnight, are they getting up and slogging to work at 8 AM?  The middle off the day siesta seems a bygone artifact here in the city but maybe that's how they recover.