Barcelona, September 24-27, 2017

Our third city, Barcelona, is one of our favorites. On this visit, instead of renting an apartment, (as we usually do), we stayed in the new, five-star, twenty-eight room, six-story, Hotel The Serras, facing the Mediterranean. In the lobby, they greeted us with smiles and glasses of cava, (Spanish sparkling wine. The French prohibit them from calling it "Champagne", but that is what it is).  Our room, sleek and modern, had two balconies with harbor views. It also had an iPhone, which we were invited to use throughout our stay.  It was set up for international calls and free data!

The top floor has a large painting of the face of Pablo Picasso. It commemorates his presence there at age fifteen. It was his painting studio. (Picasso was not native to Barcelona, but spent his teenage years there before moving to Paris.)

It must have been a great place to paint. Great light off the sea. There is a great view now, as I imagine there was then, lots of activity to hone in on. The waterfront, the Mediterranean, has the huge commercial ships, the little local boats and luxury yachts. (The Nirvana, a yacht, was conspicuously parked in view. It is 300 feet long and rents for $900,000 per week.)

Also there are iron towers holding up cables for aerial gondolas which travel from the waterfront up to Mont Juic, the hill full of museums (the Miro), the old Olympic stadium and Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona Pavilion. 

The roof top space is outfitted as a very comfortable hangout spot. There is comfortable furniture for sitting upright at a table, lounging on a chaise or sprawling on a sofa for a snooze. There is shade and open air.  A stainless steel, rectangular pool is perfect for a dip, but only a dip because it is only four swim strokes long. There is a bar which offers food, drinks and towels all day. We used it a lot.

Our stay in Barcelona was only for a few days, but they were the days of the annual Mercè Festival when the city teems with activity. Mercè refers to Our Lady of Mercy, which sounds like it would be a religious holiday, but if it is religious, it is not apparent.

Two traditional activities stand out. In a tangential way, they are related to the current dilemma with the recent vote for independence from Spain.

There is something called, Castells, which is Catalan for castles. They are towers of people standing upon each others shoulders. They can rise ten people tall. The beefy men with strong shoulders stand at the bottom. The lighter weight people stand atop them, etc., etc. For the grand finale, a small child runs up all the shoulders, to the top, where their little arm is raised in a victory wave.  According to recorded history, they have been doing this for a little over three hundred years.  Seven years ago, UNESCO declared it a "Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity."  Typically, in Barcelona, it is done in the Plaça Sant Jaume where the important city and state government offices are. It is currently ground zero for the independence vote. The plaza gets jammed with spectators. So jammed, you might not fall if you raised both legs.

The other popular event is a dance, the sardana, done to the live music of traditional, Catalan, reed instruments.  The sound is coarse, reedy and a bit screechy, but the melodies, like from a Spanish Puccini, are sweet, romantic and somehow make you feel something, maybe nostalgia. The dance is done in a circle. The circle begins with only a few people, usually Catalans, native born. More folks join in. The circle grows. When it gets too big, it breaks into small circles. They have been doing the sardana in Catalunya for more than five hundred years.

During the last century, Generalissimo Franco, the dictator, while he was alive, made a great effort to extinguish Catalan culture; to compel the Catalans to become  "Spanish" in their culture and language. Banned in public, things "Catalan" went underground in order to be kept alive. Franco's death enabled a renaissance of Catalan expression.  During the recent weeks, as Barcelona has struggled with their vote for independence, the issue of maintaining their Catalan cultural identity is front and center. When they dance their dance, in their circles, to their sweet melodies, (played on screechy reeds), when they stand atop each others shoulders to make castells, they are remembering, and honoring, their centuries old culture that was once imperiled by autocratic policies.  Whether one is Catalan or not, it is easy, while hearing and watching, to sense what they are doing is deeply special to them.

Other Mercè Festival events are held in the Ciutadella Park. Enormous, like New York City's Central Park, on most weekends it is filled with joyous activity. On Mercè weekend it is absolutely crazy. There were so many people. Some lounged in their hippie-like bacchanal, on India print bedspreads, on the grass. Children, everywhere, ran and laughed. There were food stalls and exhibition pavilions with long lines.  There were street performers invited from around the world to roam the park and make people joyful.

One attraction caught my eye. It was a curved dirt lane with about a dozen home made metal machines, contraptions really, which all together looked like a Willy Wonka gymnasium. One, a twelve foot tall metal man, sculpted from scrap metal, had lanky pipe arms. They arms had levers. Children pulled the levers with the goal of making a lanky arm poke it's long finger into the metal nose. Small children gave it a go. It was harder than it looked. But when the finger poked the nostril we all howled.

No matter how much of the city we get to know over time, there are always surprises. One day, while wandering among very old stone buildings, we saw a little sign which directed us into a little vestibule. The vestibule, on the ground floor, lead into a room with four soaring Roman columns, fully intact, standing since the year 100. Originally, they stood as part of a temple to the goddess, Isis. After the temple fell into ruin, the columns were used to support a five story palace. The palace eventually fell into disrepair and became apartments in the 1800's. A book shows a photo of an apartment with the columns supporting the floor, walls and roof. Finally, a portion of the building's core was removed to reveal for us the enduring work of human beings. I am always thinking, while in Europe, the "old world", what do we build in America that will last two-thousand years.

Wes and Marlow
Barcelona, September 24-27, 2017