11am is as busy as 11pm for Agustión Castro, 48, who has been working at Kiosko Martos on La Rambla since he was a teenager. Taking phone calls, helping customers, stooping over to pick up souvenirs that tourists unknowingly knock over, his shifts leave him little downtime, but come 3am and the Rambla is dead. “I like the peace that comes at that time of night,” he said. But by 5am the new batch of newspapers is already getting dropped off and he’s back to work again.
Castro has worked an alternating schedule (seven days in a row followed by seven nights in a row and so on) for his entire adult life. Nevertheless, he still hasn’t gotten used to it. “The human body wants to sleep at night; it’s not natural to work then. I get home and I lie down and go to sleep right away.”
During his 32 years on Barcelona’s busiest street, Castro has seen it undergo huge change. “La Rambla has changed a lot. Twenty years ago there was a much more pleasant atmosphere. Local residents would take a stroll down and buy a book.” These days more tourists pass through than locals and with the shift in clientele has come a change in products. Castro explained that although he still offers books and magazines, what really sell are city guidebooks, batteries and, especially, postcards.
“It’s not a nice atmosphere at night. The only people that roam around are prostitutes and drug dealers.” However, he said that the street has really shaped up in the last two or three years, thanks to a heightened police presence. “Now the police walk by every five minutes or so, say hello, ask us how our night is going and tell us to call if we need anything.”
Luz Delgado is 29, originally from Colombia and has worked as a night-time taxi driver for the past four months. Her timetable is not easy—starting at 6pm and finishing at 6am five days a week. And the crisis has made it a hard job to make money from. Yet she clearly loves the work.
“When I was a little girl, taxis always caught my eye, and when I arrived here, 10 years ago now, I thought it was great to see women driving taxis.” She was working in the hotel trade and finally it was friends who, having heard her wax lyrical many times about female taxi drivers, motivated her to sit the test to become one herself. “When I called my mother in Colombia to tell her, first she said ‘Oh, madre mia!’ And then ‘At last!’ When I asked what she meant, she said ‘as you always used to tell me “look mami, at the women in the taxis”, I knew one day you would call to tell me you’re a taxi-driver.’”
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