When September Arrives

Josep Pla had an unusual view of the end of summer: the true pleasure for Barcelona residents was not leaving the city, but coming back to it.

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People return from the countryside or the beaches, from the disorderly and chaotic summer holiday, somewhat tired of fresh air, eating green beans, discomfort, temporary arrangements and fatigue.

In a passage from Les hores, Pla described people returning from the countryside or beaches tired of fresh air, green beans, discomfort and temporary arrangements. City life, with its familiar comforts, eventually began to look attractive again. He concluded that holidays were launched with enthusiasm but ended with an even stronger desire to return home and its calm routine.

The column treats Pla’s observation as a rebuke to modern theories about post-holiday syndrome and burnout. After a vacation, it suggests, people should be able to reset themselves like computers by switching off and starting again. Irritability, anxiety and poor concentration do not necessarily deserve a more elaborate explanation.

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In this sense, summer holidays have this good quality: everyone begins them with great enthusiasm, eagerly and cheerfully, and ends them with an even stronger desire to return to the calm of home, to its monotony.

Politics, however, did not take a summer break. Carles Casajuana noted that arguments continued over forest fires, million-euro apartments and the assault on Ceuta. Pla himself praised the pleasure of a slow, restrained conversation after the “incoherent summer verbosity” filled with outbursts and interjections. The column ends by suggesting that Spanish politics offered no such quiet return in September, or even during the summer.

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After the incoherent summer verbosity, so gratuitous and bristling with outbursts and interjections, a slow conversation, in a minor key and discreet, is delightful.