Barcelona · Europe

Overview

Print

• Send to a friend
• RSS
• Menéame
• del.icio.us
• Digg
• Google

The thronging Rambla, the reverberation of a flute in the silence of the medieval Gothic Quarter, bright ceramic color splashed across Art Nouveau facades, glass and steel design over Roman stone: one way or another, though always inventively, Barcelona will find a way to get your full attention. The Catalonian capital is boiling into the new millennium in the throes of a cultural and industrial rebirth comparable only to the late-19th-century Renaixença that filled the city with its flamboyant Moderniste (Art Nouveau) architecture. Wedged along the Mediterranean coast between the forested Collserola hills and Europe''''''''s busiest seaport, Barcelona has catapulted to the rank of Spain''''''''s most-visited city, a 2,000-year-old master of the art of perpetual novelty.

The city''''''''s palette is vivid and variegated: the glow of stained glass in the penumbra of the Barri Gòtic; Gaudí''''''''s mosaic-encrusted, undulating facades; the chromatic mayhem at the Palau de la Música Catalana; Miró''''''''s now universal blue and crimson shooting stars. Then, of course, there is the physical setting of the city, crouched cat-like between the promontories of Montjuïc and Tibidabo, between the Collserola hills and the 4,000-acre port. Obsessed with playful and radical interpretations of everything from painting to theater to urban design and development, Barcelona consistently surprises itself in its constant quest for emotion and self-renewal.

Barcelona''''''''s present boom began on October 17, 1987, when Juan Antonio Samaranch, president of the International Olympic Committee, announced that his native city had been chosen to host the 1992 Olympics. This single masterstrokeallowed Spain''''''''s so-called "second city" to throw off the shadow of Madrid and the 40-year "internal exile" of the Franco regime and resume its rightful place as one of Europe''''''''s most dynamic destinations. Not only did the Catalan administration lavish untold millions in subsidies from the Spanish government for the Olympics, they then used the games as a platform to broadcast the news about Catalonia''''''''s cultural and national identity from one end of the universe to the other. Spain who? Calling Barcelona a second city of anyplace is playing with fire; modern Spain has always been fundamentally bicephalous, even though official figures always counted Madrid''''''''s suburbs, but not Barcelona''''''''s, to feed the illusion that the Catalan capital was little more than another minor provincial port.

More Mediterranean than Spanish, historically closer and more akin to Marseille or Milan than to Madrid, Barcelona has always been ambitious, decidedly modern (even in the 2nd century), and quick to accept the most recent innovations. Its democratic form of government is rooted in the so-called Usatges Laws instituted by Ramon Berenguer I in the 11th century, which amounted to a constitution. This code of privileges represented one of the earliest known examples of democratic rule, while Barcelona''''''''s Consell de Cent (Council of 100), constituted in 1274, was Europe''''''''s first parliament and is the true cradle of Western democracy. More recently, the city''''''''s electric light system, public gas system, and telephone exchange were among the first in the world. The center of an important seafaring commercial empire with colonies spread around the Mediterranean as far away as Athens when Madrid was still a Moorish outpost marooned on the aridCastilian steppe, Barcelona traditionally absorbed new ideas and styles first. Whether it was the Moors who brought navigational tools, philosophers and revolutionaries from nearby France spreading the ideals of the French Revolution, or artists like Picasso and Dalí who bloomed in the city''''''''s air of freedom and individualism, Barcelona has always been a law unto itself.

Barcelona, in the end, is a banquet for all the senses, though perhaps mainly the visual one. Not far behind are the pleasures of the palate, while Orphic delights are prospering as never before. The air temperature is almost always about right, more and more streets are pedestrianized, and tavern after tavern burrows elegantly into medieval walls. Every now and then the fragrance of the sea in the port or in Barceloneta reminds you that this is, after all, a giant seaport and beach city with an ancient Mediterranean tradition that is, at the outset of its third millennium, flourishing -- and bewitching visitors as it has for centuries.