No, it's Dirty!

I was walking home from my Catalan class today and overheard a grandmother teaching her 2 year old grandson about where to walk. He wasn't allowed to walk along the gutter because it was dirty. The word dirty was accompanied by an urgent and disgusted tone of voice. Dirty is 'bad'. This reminded me of conversations I've had with other locals. Their horror of dirt, the ground, touching the trees, insects or anything that survives outside of 5 star hotels. Then you've got the hippies who happily embrace all of the dirty. But they are merely in reaction to the others. As I'm writing this, I just saw a woman use some anti dirt gel before she started to drink her coffee. She's a local.