Barcelona

My friend, Frank, in Iowa City wrote to me the other day and mentioned that the fabled archives of Spanish travel were not immediately apparent upon looking at my blog.  They are there, but you have to dig deep.  Frank mentioned that he and his wife will be in Barcelona in June.  What a fantastic opportunity for me to sort through all of my pix of Barcelona!  We were there 2-3 days this past September.  Barcelona is awfully photogenic.  I've managed to cull a few photos.  I'm pleased to report that I now have only 115 photos remaining from which I have to pick and choose to post here.  Wish me luck.  At least I've got a couple of months to do it.

Until this year, Barcelona was the last remaining "must see" great site that I had yet to see in Spain.  The primary reason for this oversight is because Barcelona is in Cataluña.  The primary language there is Catalan, which, although similar to Spanish, is really an entirely different language.  You don't hear about it Catalan politics here in the US, but Cataluña would really like to be a separate country from the rest of Spain.  There is constant noise of secession.  There is also a long history of antagonism between Madrid (i.e. classic Spain) and Barcelona.  The two cities have the two best soccer teams in Spain, which hate each other, kind of like the Yankees and the Red Sox.  This past year, the Catalan people went so far as to ban bull fighting just to stick it to the people from Madrid.  I don't know if Cataluña will really ever secede from Spain, but they sure sounded pretty serious about it this past fall.  For me, my primary interest has always been more the Spain of flamenco and and jamón and Madrid.   For this reason, I had never made it Barcelona.  Happily, it is definitely worth the trip.  I had the best jamón of my life there.

The "Iowa City Ped Mall" of Barcelona is a street called "Las Ramblas."  Think of Las Ramblas being the Ped Mall many thousands of times over.  It's one of the finest people watching places on earth.  There are street performers and little shops everywhere.  There is a constant river of people going up and down the street 24 hours/day.  Another claim to fame is that it is the most notorious pickpocket spot in all of Europe.  The stats show that it is worse than Rome, worse than Paris, etc.  This doesn't mean you shouldn't visit.  Just have your wits about you.

Here' a picture of Lisa waving to the camera (you'll need to click on the picture to make her out in the sea of humanity).  There is also "human statue" street performer on the right side dressed up like a WWII soldier.  I have to admit that I've never quite understood the whole human statue phenomenon, but it is quite common in all the big cities in Spain.

We also stumbled into an anarchistic street demonstration one day.  They were demonstrating against the government with regards to the economic crisis.  One common theme was "let the rich people pay for their crisis."  In other words, the rich people caused the crisis and therefore should pay for the crisis themselves.  I guess this is not unlike the scorn that average person heaps on Wall Street over here.  One thing that is the same is that the average person unfortunately ends up paying for these things.

I've never quite understood anarchism as a viable political philosphy. How would you get roads built in an anarchist society?  For some reason, anarchism has been popular in Cataluña dating back to before the Spanish Civil War.

During the protest, teams of masked kids with spray paint would rush up to various business and quickly tag them before security could catch them.  It was kind of nuts.

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This has nothing to do with anarchism:  We saw this interesting sign one day in a building in Barcelona  that was miles from the beach:

Resources:  Rick Steves' overview of Barcelona can be found on his website here.  I recommend his books and travel philosophy whole-heartedly.  In particular, his "no checked luggage" rule is pure genius.  The freedom of traveling light can't be beat.