It is Monday, September 24, 2012 and we have completed our first week of residence in Barcelona. We are settled in. We do our laundry. We take the buses. We shop for groceries--vegetables, meats, cheeses, vinos, artisanal gelato, organic expresso, eggs from "liberated" chickens (i.e. free range.) And for the past four days we have been surrounded by the intense revelry of the locals during the city wide Mercé Festival.
During the past 2000 years Barcelona has had two patron saints. For the first 1700 years it was Eulàlia. Then Mercé came along and took the job from Eulàlia. It is said that the raindrops that fall on the Mercé Festival are the tears of Santa Eulàlia still sad at having been replaced.
The Mercé Festival was a religious festival. Nowadays, it is non-religious and more or less a gift from the city to the people. For four days, from 10 a.m. until past midnight, in the Ciutadella Park, in the public plazas, at Gaudi's Sagrada Familia Cathedral, on the major thorough-fares there are hundreds of events. Concerts of folk music, rap, salsa, rock and roll. Light shows. Moving pictures projected on the facade of Gaudi's Sagrada Familia Cathedral. Contests to see who can make the tallest human tower. They call them castells. The tallest are ten tiers with four people on each tier. The castell is complete when the small--lightweight--young child climbs atop everyone and raises his or her arm. The crowd goes wild and the humans slide down the tier level by level. There is a parade of larger then life fire breathing dragons that menace the crowd--safely, of course. And another parade of giant people which are statues twelveifeet tall. People climb into them and walk waving the arms and moving the heads. There are tap dancers moving to Glenn Miller played by a large live symphonic wind band. And kooky mini-theaters built inside mobile trailers. They seat about a dozen people and put on puppet shows and artsy films. There is the ground-level movie screen with a camera in the center which captures the passers-by on the screen then somehow moves their heads onto different bodies. Fireworks, of course, there are tremendous fireworks displays and for the price of your empty glass all the champagne you can drink. You just return over and over to the champagne tent for refills. Actually, it is not champagne, it is cava, sparkling spanish wine made in Catalonia. All of that and more was swirling about us for four days. It was surreal. At times, it was sensory overload, but it was a great display of the locals coming out en masse to "forget your troubles, come on get happy" all paid for by the city.
Concurrent with that, I, as usual, have been soaking up the local history, the most recent 800 years which is the age of our particular neighborhood which is called, El Born. Born is from the verb, bornar: "to celebrate tournaments, which included jousts, popular feasts, processions, and other public events". It is said that Don Quixote jousted here. The star character of the Cervantes novel got into lots of trouble on the streets where we live. He may have been a work of fiction, but Cervantes describes well the ambiance of the neighborhood in 1500.
Wes stayed in this apartment two years ago. He loved the neighborhood so much that he is back and this time I am with him. The Born ambiance is a bit like The Village in Manhattan. It is compact. There are a lot of casual coffee houses and eateries. And overall there is a creative aspect in the air. Our 19th-Century building has an elegant facade. Rows and rows of tall stone arches running for blocks. It is visually attractive.
Our particular apartment, from where I am writing, is on the third of five floors. I am looking through nine-foot tall glass doors, through the elegant wrought iron railing on the terrace and through autumnal chestnut trees onto the Ciutadella Park and to the blue sky beyond. The iPod is playing spanish piano music. The pianist is Barcelona's native born treasure, Alicia de Larrocha. She may have been only five-feet tall, but she played like a goddess.
Now for some description of the El Born neighborhood. I may ramble. I may digress. There may be sidebars. I am known for: why use one word when you can use ten. So settle in. Grab a pillow. Fall asleep if you like. My feelings won't be hurt. Instead, I will be pleased to provide you with a good nap. Okay, let' go.......
El Born is anchored by four major elements. They are situated in one trajectory that is maybe 1 mile and a half. The four elements are the Ciutadella (Citadel) Park. The Born Market. The Passeig del Born. And the Santa Maria del Mar Church.
The oldest of the four is the Santa Maria del Mar Church. It was built by Alfons the Good, King of Aragon to celebrate the conquest of Sardinia. It's first stone was laid on March 25, 1329 and it's last stone on November 3, 1383. The site had been a place of reverence since the year 100 when, on it, a Roman Necropolis was built to house the bones of Santa Eulàlia, the patron saint of Barcelona. (Remember her?) The Santa Maria del Mar church is a wonderful gothic structure. Inside, it is tall and has long lines, spacious and airy. Up until 1930 it had fascinating art and furnishings. But the during the Spanish Civil War, Generalissimo Franco sent people in to burn what had survived for 600 years.
The church has been the focal point of the neighborhood now for 630 years. Back in the old days this was the neighborhood of artisans and craftspeople. People who built things. We visited the church yesterday to note a few things. There are two plaques near the entrance. They were carved and installed when the church opened to say so and so built this for such and such a reason. Interestingly, one plaque is in Castilian (Spanish) and the other, in Catalan. The city was bilingual. The other thing we looked for was something on the front door. When something expensive is built, the biggest contributors are acknowledged, but if your contribution is not money, but let's say labor, let's say, stone masonry, the way they were acknowledged for their volunteered labor was to cast small brass plaques in the shape of a mason with a stone on his back. There are two such plaques installed on the upper part of the grand front doors to the church. It is very sweet to see 630 years later.
Let us move onto the second element of the neighborhood. Many of the streets are not wide enough for a car to pass, but the pedestrian street that emanates from the church widens considerably and is called Passeig del Born. Passeig is Catalan for "avenue" and Born, remember, is from the verb, bornar: to celebrate tournaments, jousts, etc. Specifically, this little quarter-mile stretch of widened street was where the jousts were held. Horses. Armor. Guys with long pointy tipped polls trying to poke their opponents. Makes me want to read about it in Don Quixote!
So this street, Passeig del Born, which begins at the church, ends at a structure called, the Born Market, the third element in the neighborhood.
The Born Market was built in 1878 and offered fruits and vegetables to the neighborhood until it closed in 1977. It may have been in a state of major disrepair, but the building had great bones. It was worth saving. Here are some words from a website about the structure: "A building of extraordinary lightness and transparency due to the slender metal columns and the light that filters through the slatted shutters around the side...the roof is laid with red and green tiles in a mosaic pattern...a cupola and crow's nest crowns the pinnacle....it's spacious interior has earned it the name of Cathedral of Iron and Glass." The city government decided to save the building, to repurpose it into a library. So in 2002 they began they restoration. During the excavation they found something remarkable.
Let's turn back the hands of time to the year 1700. Carlos II, the King of Aragon and ruler of Barcelona died. He died without an heir. Their was an opportunity for someone to become king. The royal families in France and Austria had many willing, chomping at the bit, candidates. The French King Louis XIV sent his grandson, Phillip of Anjou. The Austrian Hapsburg Emperor, Leopold I, sent his son, Archduke Charles. There was trouble--known as The War of Succession. For a dozen years the two skirmished. A political wrestling match with guns and blood and vendettas. Eventually, Austrian Archduke Charles quit to take a job as Holy Roman Emperor. On September 11, 1714, Phillip became King Felipe V of Aragon , ruler of Barcelona, and had a lot of scores to settle with the local population who had not sided with him which was most of the El Born neighborhood. From 1717 to 1719 he set about razing the El Born neighborhood. By razing I mean bulldozing, flattening, leveling, destroying. It was typical at that time that if you won a battle you destroyed your opponents castle or in this instance all of their homes. And not just their homes. King Felipe V banned the Catalan language, dissolved the local government, closed the university and executed his opponents.
So, back to the Born Market. In 2002, during excavations, they discovered directly beneath the market, the ruins of fifty structures and the paved roads that ran between them. The structures were medieval homes, stores and artisan workshops. And there were household items and artisan tools. A wealth of evidence of life before 1717. The building will begin it's new life as a center for Catalan culture. You will be able to descend a stairwell into the old city ruins. This will all come to pass on September 11, 2014, the 300th anniversary of Felipe V coming to power. This market is adjacent to our apartment.
I love this photo. This may be one of the cutest of you two ever!
ReplyDeleteAh, now I get it the colonnaded building is the Born Market?
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