“The Prince concert is going to be just as bad,” I said. “I vote for Celia and Tito.”
I offered to pay for one of the concerts, so I could skip Prince to hang out on the beach, but Daddy wasn’t letting me open my wallet for anything.
“Wait. The Prince tour is called Nude?” Mama raised her carefully drawn eyebrow as she read the Spanish newspaper. “Oh, we’re going to see Prince.”
That settled it.
??three
The drive from Frankfurt to Barcelona takes about twelve hours, and along the way is some of the most beautiful scenery in Europe. I loved the fairy-tale mountains and forests of Germany. As we passed through the French Alps and on to the Riviera, we heard a mix of Arabic and Spanish music that lent to the atmosphere of class and happiness. When Dad was driving, we listened to Cat Stevens, who reminded us to bliss out and appreciate the beauty in life. Finally, the freeway came close to the sea. One minute you’re in France, and then—oh, you’re in Spain! Easy. You find yourself on the coast of the Balearic Sea, which is always coming up with new shades of blue. The air smells like spice and salt water. You pass through busy little cities and quaint old villages, each one built around an ancient cathedral. There are very few straight lines in Spain. Curves are everywhere from the winding roads to the architecture. In everything—the people, the food, the music—there’s passion.
Years later, there would be a time when my husband and I were in desperate need of a place to run away to, and with the entire world to choose from, we decided to take our broken selves to Spain. To that cool sea air and persistent passion. From our house on the coast near Marbella, we could look out at the Rock of Gibraltar and the distant shore of North Africa. I thought Spain would take us in and cradle us while we started over again. I kept returning to the memory of that happy journey with my family the summer of 1990.
Daddy was right. It was our last trip together. The experience was sweet and a bit humbling. We did a lot of sightseeing, taking in great music and fine art and so much history. We visited Gaudí churches, climbed up and down narrow stairways, and walked cobblestone streets that reminded me of Old San Juan.
Daddy had rented an RV from the military, and I wasn’t excited about it. I told him, “I have enough money to stay in a hotel.” He wasn’t having any of that.
“People in Spain know how to do this. They’re like professionals,” he told me, and it was true. At an RV park south of Barcelona, we were among a large group of campers who had ritzy setups with comfy furniture and electricity for stereos and television sets. They drank wine and played music around their campfires at night and walked to the impeccably clean shower house in designer sandals. Jan and I quickly made friends with the furnished tent people so we could hang out, play games, and listen to music in the evening after laying out on the beach all day.
As the day of the concert drew closer, I dragged my heels a bit, but Mama and Jan convinced me that the Prince concert would not be the near-death experience we’d endured at the Michael Jackson show. It was arena seating, not “carnival” (such an ironic name for it), so people would be separated in rows with plenty of oxygen instead of being crushed together like a herd of cattle. Jan and I were getting pretty tired of the camping experience by this time. With nothing better to do, we headed to the Estadi Olímpic de Montju?c early on the day of the concert and ate a picnic lunch on a grassy hill outside before going in to get our tickets, which placed us somewhere high in the nosebleed seats. Jan immediately homed in on a barricaded area directly in front of the stage.
“Hey, look,” she said. “Let’s try to go to the front.”
I wasn’t sure that was allowed, so I was heading for my nosebleed seat where I could sit and sulk and eat a sandwich Daddy had packed for me, but Jan came running back and said, “If you come early, you get a wristband. It’s limited to only so many people, so it won’t be crowded. They promised. But we have to hurry.”
Mama and Daddy and I followed her to the barricade, and true to their word, security did close it off with a reasonable number of people inside. There was room to breathe, and we were literally front and center as the roadies did final sound checks for the opening acts. Three backup dancers came out to look over the gathering. I didn’t know it at the time, but later I’d become familiar with this routine; they were scouting girls for the after party. They eyed Jan. They eyed me. These dudes are skilled; it takes them about thirty seconds to spot a girl, determine her age, and decide whether to hand her an after-party pass. One of them started a conversation with Jan, and another started to approach me, but Daddy stepped in with a friendly smile.