I’ve just returned from three marvelous weeks in Barcelona, visiting my son and daughter-in-law and learning about Antoní Gaudí’s magnificent and fantastical architecture and Catalan history, food, and the varied characteristics of the region. I visited museums, markets, restaurants, cafes, bars and parks, heard a choral concert by “Cor Madrigal” and an opera, “Death in Venice” by Benjamin Britten, and I walked all over the city! Barcelona is a terrific city for walking, and the subway, bus and train systems are all linked together, making it very easy to get around. My son and daughter-in-law are very conveniently located in the mostly-young, urban, “edgy” neighborhood known as Graçia, which had been a separate town until Barcelona incorporated it. Corrie and Jason live in a beautiful, newly-renovated apartment with a balcony only four flights of stairs UP! Sixty-four marble and brick stairs UP and DOWN!! I never quite got used to that last flight and always arrived out of breath at either end.
The main shopping street in Barcelona is the beautiful Passeig de Graçia, which has two of the major Gaudí-designed buildings located on it, “La Pedrera” (or Casa Mila) and “Casa Batllo.” These are the most amazing and innovative buildings I’ve ever seen. Gaudí’s style is called “Modernisme” or “Modernista” and is the Spanish equivalent of the Art Nouveau style that was pervasive in Europe and the United States roughly at the turn of the twentieth century. “Art Nouveau” was known in France as “style Guimard,” after the French designer Hector Guimard, in Italy as the “stile Floreale” (floral style), in England as “stile Liberty,” after British Art Nouveau designer Arthur Lasenby Liberty, in Spain as “Modernisme,” in Austria as “Sezessionstil,” (Vienna Secessionist style), and in Germany as “Jugendstil” (youth style). [From: http://www.huntfor.com/arthistory/c19th/artnouveau.htm.]
I left Barcelona three times by train. First, my daughter-in-law suggested that we visit Girona, a medieval city, that was in the midst of its 53rd annual flower festival, “Temps de Flors.” You may visit the website with images of previous years’ festivals here: http://www.gironatempsdeflors.net/eng/index.php
While in Girona, we walked through the medieval Jewish quarter known as “the Call,” from the Hebrew word “kahel.” I just found this provocative note after Googling “kahel:”
“For nearly 500 years the Call lay buried, with the legendary medieval Jewish community where the Kabbalah was first written down, all but erased from Girona’s past. The old town was sealed off from above, as new houses and streets were, in successive layers, were built over it.”
I had no idea until just now that the Kabbalah was first written down in Girona! The Jewish Call is a beautiful area, very hilly with narrow, cobblestone streets. We stopped for a cold drink in a charming bar called “El Pati del Rabi.” That rabbi is probably spinning in his grave if he knows there is a bar on his patio!
I took a train on my last Sunday in Barcelona to Colonia Güell, a town designed by Antoni Gaudí for his patron, Eusebi Güell, who owned a textile factory. To quote from the internet again, “Gaudí’s Colonia Güell chapel was begun in 1899. Technologically brilliant and structurally sound, it combines the magic of traditional religious architecture with the originality of an isolated genius. Nothing else like it exists — the crypt is a mysterious place, with seats as fanciful as the thrusting structure. The porch consists of a series of connected columns taking down the load of isolated pieces of roof or wall.” — [From: Dennis Sharp. Twentieth Century Architecture: a Visual History. p54.]
On my last day in Barcelona, I took the train to Figueres, the birthplace and final resting place of Salvador Dalí, the surrealist artist. On the way, I sat with a charming couple from Canada as far as Girona, where they got off the train. During the last half hour of the train ride, I saw the snow-capped Pyrenees mountains from my comfortable seat. Finding Dalí’s Museum-Theatre in Figueres is a total surreal experience, which is exactly as he intended it to be. The museum, which stands next to the church where Dalí was baptized, is in a former municipal theatre that had been destroyed by a fire near the end of the Spanish Civil War. As Dalí himself explained: “It’s obvious that other worlds exist, that’s certain; but, as I’ve already said on many other occasions, these other worlds are inside ours, they reside in the earth and precisely at the centre of the dome of the Dalí Museum, which contains the new, unsuspected and hallucinatory world of Surrealism.” You really must go there and experience it for yourself. I have never seen anything quite as bizarre!
I suppose I could babble on and on about the marvelous time I had in Barcelona, and I haven’t even mentioned Gaudí’s magnificent “Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Familia” yet! Thanks to my son and daughter-in-law, who entertained me night and day and were always suggesting new things for me to see and do. Instead of writing more now, I’ll just post this little travelogue. As always, I invite your comments.