It was a mirage. The two years that West End in Sant Antoni was practically closed made us believe that nothing there would ever be the same again. But it is still the same. The same as before the health crisis stopped time in the area. West End has gone back to its old ways. There is no other public road on the island, possibly the whole world, where there are so many remains of balloons and metal containers of nitrous oxide per square meter as in calle Santa Agnès: the 200 meters between its start in s’Era d’en Manyà and its end in calle General Balanzat are carpeted every morning by plastics and containers containing so-called laughing gas, which are sold every night in the neighborhood as if they were candy. “Every day is the same”, confirms one of the workers of the cleaning and waste collection company that from 6:30am cleans up the pigsty which at dusk then becomes a public road. Every morning, he assures, they find the same scene, the same landscape after the nightly drunken battle: it is up to them, either with their hands, or with hoses, to clean up the dump, where, despite the danger (broken glass and bottles abound), some drunken, wobbling tourists dare to walk barefoot at dawn.
The 200 meters of calle Santa Agnès in West End are carpeted every morning by plastic and containers that contain so-called laughing gas, which are sold every night in the neighborhood as if they were candy
At nightfall, in the vicinity there are scenes that the most optimistic believed would not be repeated once the worst of the pandemic was over: two British men, facing each other, urinate on the thin trunk of one of the trees on the promenade. They are so drunk that they don’t realize that they are splashing each other. A passer-by catches their attention: they comb their hair and shout insults at him while they continue to pee just a few meters away from the families and children passing by. And it is only 9:45pm. The night is promising. At the entrance to West End, on the corner of calle General Balanzat, the laughing gas sellers take up positions and deploy their quartermasters. A woman sits next to two huge thermoses filled, it is assumed, with coffee or some stimulant drink that is distributed throughout the night in small disposable cups that in the morning appear lying on the floor.
In the main thoroughfare of West End from early evening every few meters there are men who selling everything from sunglasses to nitrous oxide. One of them tries to flirt with a British woman, grabs her by the hand and brings it close to his penis. She tries to get away, but he grabs her from behind and, while they both laugh, gropes her, until the woman manages to get away (not easy, he’s a beefy guy) and manages to get back to her friends. He’s still close by and going about his business, trying to sell more of those cream whipping chargers whose inhalation causes an instant high. And dangerous: it’s easy to see huge guys, the size of rugby players, collapse after breathing in a balloon loaded with the stuff.
A surprised West End neighbor tells how, in the middle of last week, she passed by on her way to work and, seeing what the ground looked like, thought at first that there had been a birthday party with hundreds of guests
Alcohol is flowing in the street. The bars serve drinks in buckets full of bottles while the balloons begin, little by little, to cover the ground. A surpised West End neighbor tells how in the middle of last week she passed by there on her way to work and seeing what the ground looked like, she thought at first that there had been a birthday party with hundreds of guests… until she realized that there were also dozens of metal containers of laughing gas scattered around.
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