Not even Saint Gaudí knew the joy

We read in ARA that the visitor service workers at the Sagrada Família are on strike to denounce "extreme" climatic and labor conditions. Apparently, many end their workday at the infirmary due to heatstroke, dehydration, and dizziness. It says they work an 11-hour shift “without being able to sit down” and are requesting “handheld fans and appropriate changing rooms,” among other measures. Temple officials are already installing sunshades and fresh water points wherever they can, apparently.

Being a guide at the Sagrada Família and the Sagrada Crane in August is much worse than being a farmer in August, or even than being that little man who, also in August, holds the tar on the road. Because the farmer, whether you like it or not, at midday, if he can, hides in the vineyard hut, very cool, built by ancestors who knew the good life there. The tar man is another matter; everyone knows they glue him to the tar early in the morning, and when after six hours he dies liquified, they replace him with another. Being a guide, no matter how many portable fans you have and water points, is much hotter, because you have to put up with visitors. And these visitors have a worse job even than the guide: that of a tourist.

Not even a miracle from Saint Gaudí can make the queue to enter the temple not a torment. It's not that the poor people who spend the day there indicating where the restroom is and telling the tourist “Don’t touch” need to sit down for a while and drink water. It's that tourism in August must be prohibited. With climate change, in August you shouldn't leave Massachusetts. They will come in the winter. Now we have to deport them, because just looking at them makes us much hotter.