I'm bored of the Estatut, clamoring Esquerra Republicanos, whiny Peperos, and finger-pointing armchair historians proclaiming the beginning of Balkanization and the end of traditional marriage.

The minefield of legalese jargon looks like hieroglyphics after a while. It's tricky language and a quagmire of semantics, enough to put tweaking after-hour clubbers at the Moog to sleep. Is there something in there? Probably, but it's called politics, and most people don't want anything to do with it.

Not much you can do besides head down to a bar and order a Moritz and some aceitunas. If it’s a good bar, the floor will be suffused with palillos, even cigarette butts, until January 1st; they’ll have fresh tapas under long glass cases; good frankfurters; bikinis; football on TV; and singularly surly waiters. It’s standard Spanish fare, actually, to slam plates down, let the beer slosh over - but my admiration runs deep for anybody who has the endurance to work as a waiter here. The pay is a touch above 7 euros an hour, at the most, and tipping is practically heretical. Even though my modest income doesn’t really allow for it, I always tip - per beer, tapa, etc. I’m talking twenty cents per item and it makes me recoil in shame as I write this, but truthfully it's enough to receive genuine words of gratitude amidst the drone of the tragaperras and the latest Latin pop sensation. You have to appreciate that. Twenty cents in the States can’t even buy you a telephone call, much less a smile from even the most destitute vagrant.

After some time in Barcelona (aka Guirilandia) I’ve outgrown my prejudices and realized the culture is deep-rooted in all that formed old Europe: the warring tribes; Cartheginan and Roman vestiges; the Moors; the Jews of the Barri Gòtic. Catalonia is mythical because Catalans want it to be mythical. The very idea of it, the language and history that binds these people together make whatever polemic in the Estatut’s dense verbiage understandable. Irritating yes, but understandable.

But it's somehow foreign to the city of Barcelona . All you have to do is listen. There’s a multilingual chatter, a mad rush up and down a living statue-lined Ramblas - the main artery shooting from the heart at Plaza Catalunya to the foot of the piers where a confused Columbus points towards Libya instead of the New World. Alleys and sub-streets branch off in capillary disarray into the rest of the old town where every country on earth is happily and amply represented, from old-guard Catalans who will tell you stories of getting their hair pulled in school for speaking their mother tongue, to small shops in the Raval with names like Al-Quds, to Viking invaders, to scarf-wearing football fans.

Most delirious guiris flying in on 1€ intercontinental flights are convinced they’re in another Spain. Almaldovar’s transvestites and women on the verge, to Buñuel’s discreet charm, glossy pages of National Geographic, Picasso, über-eccentric Dali, regal Goya, trippy el Greco, Hemingway’s bulls, visions of paellas, sangria, sex & sol … they have all shaped the concept of Spain, and, since the union of Aragon and Castile 300 hundred years ago, Catalonia.

The other tourist, i.e. the cultural tourist (hint: they’re not the ones wearing Mexican sombreros on Las Ramblas) comes here knowing there are regions like the Basque country, Galicia, and Andalusia, each with a strong sense of - as Zapatero put it - “national identity”. Condensed into 2,000 square meters in the winding alleys of the old town spreading up through the beveled grids of Eixample, from the swath of Diagonal to the little restaurants of Barceloneta, you’re struck by the variety of color and language - and it wouldn’t be unusual in some neighborhoods to find a Sevillano living next to a Madrileño over a Pakistani run Catalan bakery.

I’m writing this from three floors up in a centric and emblematic neighborhood called Sant Pere. One of the first things anybody walking through the neighborhood is struck by, if not the intermittent waves of suspicious odors, is the symphony of sounds, as I like to call it. I have my neighbors: playing rumba to chumba chumba to the Sunday morning old school flamenco I’ve grown accustomed to waking up to. There’s Bar Carlos with live tangos twice a week, with this Argentinean woman belting out tragic songs of love and loss well into the early morning. There are even gypsies with their cheap no-brand electronic keyboards and no-brand sweatpants crooning syrupy ballads on bright Saturday mornings - much to the dismay of hungover squatters on Sant Pere Mes Baix. A little further down L'antic Teatre might be putting on a performance, or playing the latest Ojos de Brujo single - the sounds wafting out its balconies, rolling over its tree covered patio. Appropriately the modernist Palau de la Musica is right down the street, with its busts of Bach, Beethoven and Wagner looking gravely down on photo-snapping tourists. At this sunny corner on most mornings someone is practicing the piano, or singing an aria. This is also a hot spot for thieves and every week the symphony of sounds is punctured by screams and shouts of "stop thief" and foots pounding on stone. It’s these unfortunate tourists, and the more adventurous “cultural tourists” that venture their way into the neighborhood, off the beaten track, in search of a stolen camera, or a genuine glimpse of the city. More colors, more sounds, strange faces …

Music even penetrates the souls of nocturnal wanderers leaving bars and clubs, staggering through the alleys. These drunken songs stop at no linguistic barrier. Sometimes they're interrupted by a super-tuned scooter driven by a mullet-haired garrulo, yelling “joerr neng!”, or a tight-lipped hiss from a dark anonymous balcony, or a bucketful of water cascading upon the midnight revelers below. But they sing on, for Barcelona's tongue is like a sultry harlot loyal to no one race or ethnicity. Whether you speak de facto English, proud Catalan, pervading Spanish, or ubiquitous Arabic you'll know Barcelona when you’ve stumbled through the green streets of the Gòtic late one night singing for no other reason than to celebrate the vibrant sprawling animal at the heart of this city.