After staying in Barcelona for most of December I left to go home for Christmas and visit family. I didn’t plan to stay away for long, two weeks in my hometown are enough. Due to unfortunate circumstances I had to work a lot more through January and February than I thought, leaving me stranded and unable to plan my next move.
I played along and when I finally had the chance I opted for the easiest way out and left towards Barcelona once again. No big surprises here, everything went as expected, good old Barcelona. I have lived here for more than 5 years. But just as I was about to leave for my next trip in May there was one thing that stuck to my mind.
Been here before, April 2018, Barcelona, Spain
This photo, or better this location was discovered during my skates around the city in early 2012. I went back in 2018 to have a look around and basically shoot the same photo again.
It was a pretty regular Sunday-meetup on April the 29th of 2018. The only thing out of the ordinary was that a big part of our old crew (THC, the homie crew) came back together after quite a long time.
Sam was visiting for Powerslide week and Danny just got back into town from England. Except for Dustin and Carson we were complete, Nick, Sam, Dan and me, which put us in the mood to celebrate a little. For me that meant beers and spliffs, for some of the others other stuff. Everyone had a great time, out on the blades, cruising through town, checking our regular hangout spots in the Born and around Barceloneta. One of our favorite things to do, it just never gets old. We ended up at Doble Zero, a sushi restaurant where one of our friends, Danny, a skater too, worked as a renowned sushi chef. It’s always good to have friends working at restaurants handing out free foods and drinks, especially at one of the top addresses for sushi in town. We stuck around to the end of his shift so that he would be able to join us on our bladeventures around the city. People were getting tipsy and the spirits were high, we decided to finish the night off by skating towards plaza Espanya and taking the escalators up to mt. Juic to do one of the downhills, as we had done it many many times before. Thinking about it, it was a bit wilder than the usual night, mostly due to the dynamics of the group and the joy of seeing each other again after quite a long time apart.
Naked girls, April 2018, Barcelona, Spain
Some naked girls on the Balcony right by Barceloneta beach. Use the zoom function on your device.
Everyone of us was, or used to be, even if only for a short time a (semi) professional skater, so it was out of question that the quite easy and well practiced downhill would cause any troubles.
Sticking to our traditions we would go all the way up to the stadium at the top, have the last beer next to the infamous big down ledge and decided to go down the hill to Dans house afterwards, have more beers, go up the mountain again and finally take the downhill back into Barceloneta. We started our first downhill and as usual it was a blast, going as fast as we could. I am the heaviest, so for downhills mostly the fastest. It was quite late, maybe around 1am so there were no cars or anything else out on the roads along the mountain. It is not a crazy steep downhill, we were dicking around, riding in each others slipstreams, overtaking here and there, skating as low and fast as we could. It takes about 5 minutes from top to bottom. If I remember correctly I was in the lead towards the end, Dan right behind and telling me to take a sharp-ish right turn at the bottom of the hill, into the street leading to his house. Danny and Nick had fallen behind a bit and were not to be seen from where we were.
After the curve the road turns flat and we were going to use the last bit of our velocity to roll to Dan’s place without having to push too hard. That’s when we heard Nick scream. Loud. Really loud. As a reminder, we were kinda drunk and still had the giant smiles on our faces that a good downhill leaves you with. It was a horrible scream and it just kept going. We were joking at first but obviously turned around to see what’s up. That’s when we saw it. Danny didn’t make the curve. I don’t know why, nobody of us knows for sure what happened in that moment. We think he might have gone into the curve at the wrong angle, pushing him too far to the outside, making him hit the curb, then stumble, loose control, not notice and finally hit a lamppost with his forehead, bounce back quite heavily due to his speed and then hit the back of his head on the ground. He lay on the floor, a lot of blood everywhere already. It came dripping out of his head and broken nose, he was rolling around on the floor mumbling things, occasionally shaking uncontrolled. What to do, what to do? What are four men to do in this situation? Things got real in the split of a second.
I can’t remember how things went down 100% but Dan worked as stuntman and performer at the time, so his first aid course was quite fresh.
We placed him in the recovery position as good as we could, we didn’t know how much we can move him around without causing even more damage, as we didn’t know what and how bad his injuries were, the ones that we might not see. Nick stayed with him, talking to him, showing presence and more importantly, trying to keep him in the present, while the rest of us swarmed out into different directions to find someone with a phone to call an ambulance. It felt like it was taking forever, but I finally found a couple taking their dog out for a late walk, I begged them to call an ambulance, both in Spanish and English. I think I definitely got my point across, but they refused. I ask myself to this day, how? How? Why? I am fluent enough in both languages to make the point, I might have been in tears and seemed a bit crazy, but shouldn’t that just underline the authenticity of my cause? Anyways, by the time I left the two and got back to Danny and the curve, one of the others had found someone willing to help. The ambulance was called, we had to wait. It was bad. We tried to be with him as good as we could, talk to him, caress him, basically make him stay in this world by giving him all of our attention. It took so long. People were crying, throbbing, not knowing what to do, the most desperate of glances were exchanged. It seemed as if he was leaving us. It might have taken around 20 or 35 minutes until the ambulance arrived, which felt like 2 hours and even for a Sunday night it seemed quite long. We were in Barcelona, not some village in the countryside. The ambulance finally arrived, two people were getting out, inspecting the situation, it seemed as if they were debating on what to do, but not doing anything. We could sense that things were bad, the guys were no doctors, more like paramedics, they didn’t touch him, I guess things were too bad and unpredictable, even for them. They called another ambulance and an emergency doctor as well, which took another long time, I have no idea how long we had been waiting and crying there until the second group of medics arrived. We kept trying our best to keep him here, but he was fading, breathing but dipping into unconsciousness more and more. By the time the second ambulance arrived the police and quite a few curios onlookers were there as well. It was like a movie scene, absolutely surreal. Six vehicles with flashing lights, nighttime, people bustling about, doctors, police and paramedics deliberating, a crazy amount of time just passing by without any action. I remember the couple with the dog walking by, I spat at the guy whilst calling him names and telling everyone how he didn’t want to help. Sucker.
Justice for all, April 2018, Barcelona, Spain
This is what justice and you look like these days…we’re small. Barcelonas neighborhood of justice.
The second group of doctors finally got a stretcher out of the ambulance and tried to get Danny up onto it.
It seemed so unprofessional, using so much force and moving him unnecessarily, it was just horrible to look at, we were crumbling. Finally, after about 1,5 hours, it might have been 2:30 to 3am by now, they managed to put him into the back of the ambulance. Go!… Go!… but not going. The ambulance wouldn’t leave. We expected that as he was finally in there they would throw on the siren and go full speed to the nearest hospital, but no, nothing. We knew something was up, all of the medical personnel was so tense and stressed out. They closed the backdoor of the ambulance and wouldn’t let anyone of us go near it. We had to talk to the police and explain what happened. The police was very nice and understanding, they didn’t ask any mean questions or treated us bad. We had to tell them that he might have taken one or two little bumps of what they refer to as cocaine in Barcelona, just so the doctors would know for his further treatment. Suddenly the boxy ambulance starts to shake, some serious activity in there, people, police, doctors bustling around, panic could be sensed, you could see in people’s faces that this was going from really bad to absolutely horrible. The shaking of the vehicle kept going for another 20 minutes maybe. We figured they had to reanimate him on location, no time to take him anywhere, as he was leaving. At last they left. Finally. Everything might still be ok-ish in the end. We talked to the police and asked which hospital they would take him to, I can’t remember the name but we decided to skate there, it probably took us about 30 minutes. We go straight to the receptionist and ask about the guy that must have just been brought in a little while ago. We tell the name, the guy checks the system, not there. We tried to explain that it was a heavy accident that just happened, which basically can’t go unnoticed. The guy tried his best, did a few phone calls and another computer check, but no, not here. We figured that they might have decided to bring him to another hospital, a change of plans maybe. We can’t get any more info, so we decided to go home, it must have been between 4:30 and 5 by now. We sat down on the steps in front of the hospital, putting our skates back on as they had us take them off on the way in. A policeman approaches us, he tells us your friend is dead.
