Noir novel route: 08. calle León y Castillo / bar Casablanca

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria · Category: Routes · Subcategory: Noir novel route

The city was on the move. It had woken from its slumber a few days ago, with the holiday period now at an end. The Paseo de Tomás Morales was no longer a quiet Sunday morning avenue: it had once again become the noisy swarm of adolescents buzzing around on a daily basis; the hustle and bustle had returned to Triana, with busy shoppers,old people out for a stroll, some unemployed people whiling away the time alongside street musicians, tall statues and Red Cross workers; Mesa y López and the shopping centres were struggling to cope with the hordes of mothers and fathers pouring in, looking for text books, stationery materials and shool bags as if the world was about to end, with an energy and an ability to get het up making anyone think they had been training hard over the holidays to come back even more stressed out; back to the throngs, traffic jams, stress of work in the midst of an unbearable summer heat that refused to go away.

Yes, there was the city, this lazy, clumsy and blundering place that tried to take on a rythm and lifestyle which were not its own, like an orangutan dressed in a dinner suit who is forced to use a knife and fork. There it was, behind the glass door of the bar Casablanca, coughing away, suffocating and sweating in the heat of the car engines that seemed to be nudging eachother along calle León y Castillo. Eladio Monroy glanced up quickly from his usual table, whilst flicking through his El País newspaper and drinking his daily coffee from the same old cracked cup.

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