The couple that was making out in the street

1. It had been so long since I had seen it – so very long – that I decided to dedicate the first column of June to it. As a street-gazer and a regular walker, I can attest that a phenomenon like the one I am about to recount may not have been seen for years. The event that struck me, and which I saw from a mere ten meters away, happened last week. It was half past eight in the evening on a May afternoon. However, on the Passeig de Pere III in Manresa, the heat felt stolen from mid-July. I was leaving an event at the Centre Cultural El Casino, organized by the College of Journalists, all alone and was strolling casually towards the car park. The street was lively, with people coming and going, even though the works on Guimerà made walking difficult and covered everything in dust. At the ice cream parlors, long queues of families were looking for a cone. All the terraces in the center were packed to the brim, eager to taste the first sorbet of the season. The plane trees, witnesses that have been there since the 19th century, presided over the walks of those who, after work, were in no hurry to go home. And it was at that moment, right there, in front of the modernist Casino Central, so symmetrical and French-looking, that I saw it. Without meaning to, I stumbled upon it right in front of me.

2. A couple was sharing a snail-like kiss, planted in the middle of the street. A proper kiss, one of the old-fashioned kind, with all the trimmings. They weren't two youngsters celebrating the spring of life. Quite the opposite. She and he, over fifty but under sixty, were passionately kissing. They held each other's faces and necks, both of them, afraid the moment would slip away. They savored the love with closed eyes, to feel it better. There was mouth, tongue, soul... And here we go again. They gave as much as they received. They didn't care how hot it was. Oblivious to everyone, nothing else in the world existed: the two of them and their irrepressible desire. They didn't even stop to catch their breath. She, in a short jacket dress, was on tiptoe. He, bearded, with the air of a BBVA office worker, was bending slightly to steady himself with his partner. There was so much passion in that colorful kiss that the usual Manresa restraint had exploded all over the place. They were almost enviable. A passerby couldn't walk past them without noticing that powerful, intimate scene, transformed into an unusual living nativity scene. It wasn't exhibitionism. It was simply love.

3. When it was the car, I thought why I was so surprised by a street kiss. In the public sphere, scenes of love are increasingly scarce. There is still tenderness to be seen, but I would say less than before and in more limited ways. There are still marriages walking hand in hand. Especially on weekends, when rushes don't chase us. Walking hand in hand, from a certain age that I can't specify, is being lost. It's true that you often see two girls with their hands linked, more than boys, who normalize their lives or their relationship for all the generations who had to live loves in secret and hidden. On Friday and Saturday nights, in certain party neighborhoods, there are indeed corner kisses. You see them everywhere. And the later it gets, the more, and with more of a gin aftertaste. They are playful kisses, a flash for a night that promises. But they don't have, not by a long shot, the depth of the kiss of my heroes from Manresa.

4. Forgive me if today I haven't talked about Zapatero, Rufián, Trump, the highway closures that are paralyzing the country, or the elections for the presidency of Real Madrid, which bore me as much as they bore Florentino Pérez. But it's just that that kiss that sealed so many feelings – I confess – moved me. I will never know if it was the first. I'll bet everything I have, yes, that it wasn't the last.