Mostly sitting around on the benches and terraces, kids riding in front of the church, and eating out in the open during Falles, probably busiest in the evening.
Kids playingopen paving in front of the church door, Plaça de Patraix (the side with no terraces)
The strip right in front of the church is the one bit of the square nobody puts tables on, so it's where the kids ride bikes and scooters in loops while their parents stand in a clump talking. It fills up from late afternoon and in summer it's still going long after you'd expect kids to be in bed.
familieslocalslate afternooneveningall yearbusiest in summer
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The bar terraces own one side of the square and creep further out as the evening goes on; if you don't want to order anything you sit on the benches and planter edges on the far side, which is where the neighbours who've come down just to sit end up. Two different crowds, same square, about ten metres apart.
localseveningall year
drinks and snacks from the terraces on the square itself
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Sitting and talkingchurch steps and doorway, Sant Joan Baptista, Plaça de Patraix
After the midday mass on Sunday people don't leave — they stall in the doorway and on the steps for a good twenty minutes, so you have to walk around them. It's the one time the square is busy in the middle of the day; on a normal weekday noon it's empty.
localsmiddaysundayall year
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Weekday mornings the seats by the market door work as a waiting room — shopping trolleys parked, coffee in hand, conversations that outlast the shopping. It empties out around lunchtime and that corner stays dead until the evening crowd shows up on the square instead.
localsmorningweekdaysall year
coffee from the bars beside the market entrance
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On the narrow pedestrian stretches beside the square people still bring chairs out to their own doorway on summer nights and sit facing each other across the street. Kids use the whole width of it as an extension of the square.
localsfamilieseveningnightsummer
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For Falles week the square stops being a thoroughfare and becomes the neighbourhood's dining room — long tables out, lunch eaten in the open, and the traffic around it rerouted. It's the one stretch of the year when the middle of the square is fuller than its edges.
localsfamiliesmiddayeveningfalles
food cooked by the falla crews on the square itself
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