A fleeting visit to Barcelona Spain

We have been back on the west coast of Canada for almost one month, but LE still has a few blog entires to complete. When we are traveling it is difficult to carve out a chunk of time to write, and then when we get home we start doing other tasks. Our last blog entry spoke about the marina where we left Curare for the winter, but the crew did not fly directly home from there. Instead we traveled north by bus to Barcelona to get our PCR tests (Covid travel requirement), which had to be done 72 hours prior to boarding our final flight.

Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain (1.6 million inhabitants) and is the fifth most populous urban area (5.5 million) in the EU. The city was founded by the Romans in 15 B.C. and it's name derives from the ancient Iberian village named Baŕkeno which the Romans changed to Barcino. LE had last visited this city about 45 years ago, and nothing was familiar. At that time the waterfront was crowded with industrial buildings, streets were dirty, and historical buildings were run down and in poor states of repair. But during the 1980s Barcelona underwent a major urban regeneration project in preparation for the 1992 Olympic Games, buildings along the sea-front were demolished, coastal railway lines were re-routed underground, 3 kilometres of sandy beaches were created, new green spaces were set aside, and historic buildings were repaired. Despite Covid restrictions, which should mean fewer tourists, it was still very crowded and we both wondered what this city would have been like in a pre-pandemic year? A study from 2018 states that Barcelona is the 12th most visited city of the world and Europe’s third, after London and Paris. Statistics from 2017 show that in 1990 1.73 million people stayed in hotels but in 2017 that figure had increased to 9 million people, and with visitors staying in other types of establishments and excursionists who do not stay overnight, it is estimated Barcelona hosts 30 million visitors each year (numbers from 2017). We were happy that we visited this fall because neither of us like crowds or standing in queues.

We arrived on Friday afternoon and, after checking into the hotel near the waterfront, we walked north to the clinic where LE had scheduled our PCR tests. Turns out the clinic was very close to the famous Gaudi cathedral - The Basílica de la Sagrada Família - so after our ticklish nose swab we wandered across Diagonal Avenue to have a look.

The Sagrada Família cathedral was the vision of Antoni Gaudi, a Catalan architect who is considered the master of the Catalan Modernisme movement (equivalent to Art Nouveau in France). Cathedral construction started in 1882 and was scheduled to be completed in 2026 the 100th anniversary of Antoni Gaudi’s death (he was hit by a tram car), but was halted in March 2020 when Spain went into a national lockdown and a revised completion date has not been revealed. Interestingly most of the cathedral has been built without a permit. Gaudi applied for one in 1885 but never heard back from the city and it was not until June 2019 that a seven year construction permit was issued for a fee of $5.2 million. On top of that the building's trustees have also been ordered to pay a $41 million fine for continuing construction without a permit. When completed, the Sagrada Familia will feature 18 towers with the highest reaching 564 feet into the air. There is not much to say about the cathedral that hasn't already been said on-line; it is an impressive, outlandish, fantastical, gaudy creation. Which begs the thought that maybe our English word "gaudy" is derived from Gaudi.

Since neither of us were particularly impressed by the Gaudi architectural style we did not make it a point to search out other examples of his work, although we did encounter some by accident because they are everywhere. Even present day artists create pieces a la Gaudi, an example is the is the waterfront El Cap de Barcelona sculpture created by the American pop artist Roy Lichtenstein for the 1992 Olympics.  Our hotel was conveniently located on the street separating the Barri Gòtic (Gothic quarter) and El Raval Barri (El Raval neighbourhood). The former is described as a beautiful neighbourhood, with narrow winding streets, the latter as "an interesting and exciting area with a darker and seedy side that you ought to be aware of". We loved them equally and spent the majority of our next two days walking around these barris enjoying the sights. Despite El Raval's tarnished reputation it did not seem any less safe than the Gothic quarter, even after dark. As it is easy to get disoriented in the canyon like streets the city has placed signs showing the way to the entrance. We wondered why not the exit, most visitors probably want to get out, right?

We discovered that Barcelona has: an Arc de Triomf, built for the 1888 World's Fair; that Picasso, although living in France, considered Barcelona his home, explaining Barcelona's Museu Picasso, one of the most extensive collections of his artworks with 4,251 on display; that there is a monument to Christopher Columbus, also built for the 1888 Worlds Fair, to remind people that after his first voyage Christopher Columbus reported to Queen Isabella I and King Ferdinand V in Barcelona; that the Estació de Fança, the grand train station built in 1929 for the Worlds Fair, is often compared to the old Gare d'Orsay in Paris;  that the gothic Cathedral Basilica (from 1298), has a resident flock of 13 white geese; that the Sant Felip Neri church is only a facade, the church was leveled in 1938 by aerial bombardment, killing 20 children who had sought refuge inside; and finally, but not the last of what we learned, that it houses one of the oldest archival collections in Europe, founded in 1318 - the Archives of the Crown of Aragon.

Looking back on our visit it seemed we spent a lot of time eating tapas, the exquisite, bite size, tasty, appetizers invented in Spain. Spanish restaurants do not serve the evening meal until after 10 P.M., which was too late for GG, but tapas are served pretty much all afternoon and into the evening. Our favourite tapas bars were the ones where each tapas was skewered by toothpicks of varying lengths and at the end of the meal the waitress totaled your the bill based on the number and length of the toothpicks in your pile. Yes, this is an honor system and in North America patrons would probably accidentally drop a few toothpicks under their table, but we looked and the floor was clean.