Has the microwave improved the quality of life?

Here I sit in the Barcelona hotel lounge, listening to the piano as I sit slowly typing with one finger, hoping all the while that I make fewer typing mistakes than in my last post. Five of us went out for dinner. This is always a gamble for the traveller, who can feel increasingly hapless and helpless as time goes by. Tonight two of us chose chicken, which tasted twice cooked, as well as inadequately reheated in the microwave. Whatever was done added nothing good to the quality of the food. Oh well.

We are all rather tired and almost ready to go home. This, surely, is bad. We have walked a lot and my body is protesting. I am developing blisters on my toes and my hip is sore. Too easily I get lost.

However, never let it be said that I am not having a good time. True, the weather is not wonderful. It is overcast but at least is not rainy. We spent some hours at the Museum of Catalan History. All very interesting, although cast in very general terms. Catalan is used extensively and it seems a mixture of Spanish and French, making it possible to guess quite a lot, but just as often I do not have a clue. And I wonder to what extent it benefits a nation and a people to split off from the rest of a country and, in a way, to fracture and break off from the whole. While I can sympathize with the desire to preserve ethnic origins and history, there are losses too, and the more extensive bonds and connections can be endangered and lost. Catalonia could probably survive, even prosper, as an independent nation, but I do think that wider ties, historical links, are important and should be valued. I know I speak as a citizen of a young country without severe divisions, but to me the preservation of a common history, language, literature and political ethics is immensely important.