The Culture of the Street

In the middle of March, my parents came to Barcelona to visit it me. Fot both, it was their first taste of Barcelona. While they both wanted to see all of the tourist sites and ride on the double decker bus that drives tourists in circles around the city, I wanted them to get a real sense of the culture of Barcelona. To do this, I sent them down Las Ramblas to experience what, for me, as been one of the most interesting aspects of Barcelona culture, street performances.

            Unlike anywhere I have ever been before, the people of Barcelona are always out and about on the street. They seem to be people who do not live their lives behind the closed doors of their homes, but rather live their lives out in the public sphere. This is quite a refreshing way of life after living in the US where a “private life” is the norm. But the most interesting part of this outdoor and public life that Barcelonans seem to live is, are those who choose to work and entertain in the street. Walking down Las Ramblas during certain parts of the days can resemble walking through a fairy tale land. Seeing different people dressed as dragons, or fairies, or famous movie characters is humorous and at times scary, but always mesmerizing.

            The most interesting encounter with a street performer I’ve experienced while in Barcelona thus far didn’t take place on Las Ramblas though, but rather in the square in front of the Cathedral. On a quiet Sunday morning stroll though the winding streets of the Gothic quarter; I came across a small circle of people forming around a man assembling a long metal pole. Intrigued I stopped to view what the commotion was, only planning to stop for a few minutes. I ended up staying for an hour and a half in total to fitness one of the best “free shows” I have ever seen. The man, as it turned out, was an Australian acrobat, who had learned just enough Spanish to be able to communicate with the crowd. He called on volunteers of all ages from the audience, preformed magic tricks, comedy, and eventually preformed a routine of flips and dips and dives on the large metal pole being held up by four volunteers from around the world. By the end of his show there had to have been almost 400 people standing around, enchanted by the man’s strength and talent and cheering like crazy. Along with the 400 bystanders, were also 2 police officers that had been dispatched to break up the crowd that had formed, but even they had become memorized by the performance and had decided to stand and watch rather than break up the crowd like they had been sent to do. As soon as the performance was over, everyone, full of smiles and giggles, applauded like crazy and sent their children running towards him to give him donations. It was one of the happiest moments I have seen in Barcelona. Hundreds of locals and tourists all stopped to watch in amazement what this man was doing. For a brief moment, this one cultural aspect provided by Barcelona connected all people from all over the world, but currently in Barcelona.

Sagnier and Tibidabo

Perched on top of Mt. Tibidabo, overlooking the entire city of Barcelona, is Templo Expiatorio del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús, over more commonly know as the Tibidabo church. This grand building was one of the first things I noticed while walking through the city on my very first day. My home stay, located on Carrer de Balmes, near Diagonal, has a perfect view of the church in one direction and the W hotel on the beach in the other. During one of my first dinners with my host, I asked them about the beautiful building located on top of Mt. Tibidabo behind the city. After a brief art history lesson, my host mother is an art history professor and a native of Barcelona, she informed me that the architect of the church was Enric Sagnier, her great uncle and godfather. During the course of my stay here, my host family has introduced me to their grandmother, Sagnier’s niece, who I was able to ask question to and hear stories from about Sagnier.

             The Templo Expiatorio del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús is not just one building, but two actually. The church was built in two stages. First, construction on the lower crypt began in 1902 and was completed in 1911. Next the upper church was begun shortly after in 1912. The project consumed three decades of Sagnier’s life, finally being completed by his son, Josep Maria Sagnier, in 1961. The church was dedicated to The Sacred Heart of Jesus and built following a combination of Romanesque and neo-Gothic styles. Sagnier drew inspiration from the idea of the natural wall that the Tibidabo Mountain created between Barcelona and the Vallès district. He designed the lower church, or crypt, with towers and merlons in Romanesque style as the broad stone base for the upper church, that contained vertical Gothic lines, to sit upon. According to the original plans for the building, the original project was to have a flowery decorative repertoire but when construction commenced Sagnier chose to simplify the shapes. The construction on the church began during Sagnier's life, but after his death in 1931, the project was completed by his son Josep Maria Sagnier i Vidal in 1961. While many people regard the Templo Expiatorio del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús as artistically ugly, it is one of Sagnier’s most famous works through out the city. Some other of his most famous works are the Palacio de Justicia located near the arc de Triomf, the Customs House at the end of las Ramblas near the statue of Christopher Columbus, and Casal del Ahorro, otherwise known as the head office for the Caixa de Pensions de Barcelona, located on Via Laietana.

            While Sagnier was a modernista architect, he was also much more. Throughout different points in his life, he embraced and utilized styles of neo-Classicism as well as neo-Romanesque.  Therefore, Sagnier’s work does not stand out as clearly to people because he does not have one unique style, the way Gaudi’s use of mosaic created from broken tiles, Trencadís, can be used as an identifier of his work.  Sagnier’s form was eclectic, changing with changes in taste, and technologies.

            There are three main time periods through which Sagnier’s work, especially in Barcelona, changed drastically. Prior to the turn of the century his work was grandiose. During the first century of the 1900’s he adopted a modernista style. Finally, after 1910 he turned to Neoclassicism. Many of the people who commissioned his works were either aristocrats or from the Catholic Church.

Escaping the City

A unique aspect of the city of Barcelona is that while it is a huge city, located right on the Mediterranean Sea, it still has a large amount of green grass parks. Many of which are much more than city block full of trees and benches, but rather small getaways that one can disappear into and forget all about being in such a large city. The two I have in mind are Parc de la Ciutadella and Parc del Laberint d'Horta. Ciutadella is Barcelona’s most well know park in the Ribera district. It was converted into park starting in 1872, after King Philip V’s citadel was demolished. In 1885, the area was designated as the site of the 1888 Universal Exhibition, which boosted the development of the park. The most famous building that still remains from the Universal Exhibition is the “Castel dels Tres Dragons.” The other famous cite in the park is the Cascada, an arch waterfall in the corner of the park built to resemble the “Trevi Fountain” in Rome. Today, walking through Parc de la Ciutadella, one cannot help but feel a bohemian vibe. Many of the city’s younger residents inhabit the Parc during the dancing, dancing, singing, playing, and eating. It is full of vibrant life and is a wonderful break from the traffic and business heavy grid of the Exaimple. The other, Parc del Laberint d'Horta, located next to the University of Barcelona’s campus in the Horta-Guinardó district of Barcelona, is a 18th century neoclassical garden. It is truly a blast from the past and one of Barcelona’s best-kept secrets. Wandering through the maze of gardens and walkways and waterfalls, one completely forgets that they are living in the 21^st century and feels as though they have traveled back in time to18^th century Italy. Filled with statues of roman gods and beautiful gardens, it is truly a little slice of paradise hidden in Barcelona’s outskirts.

Visit to Tarragona

Before my trip to Tarragona with IES, I had heard some pretty bad things about Tarragona. I heard it was nothing but a few random remains of the roman city. I heard it was also only worth a day trip and not the three days IES was planning on spending there. This was not the case. Tarragona was an amazing experience. In Roman times, the city was named Tarraco and was capital of the province of Hispania Tarraconens is The Roman colony founded at Tarraco had the full name Colonia Iulia Urbs Triumphalis Tarraco. Today the Roman buildings remain in the city are the walls, with two gates: Portal del Roser and the Portal de Sant Antoni, the capitol, the Forum, the circus or amphitheatre, the so-called tower of the Scipios, and the Aurelian Way. All are extraordinary. And beyond the Roman history for the city is a flourishing beach side town filled with hotels, restaurants, and stores. It was an absolutely beautiful place. But the highlight was certainly our journey to the amphitheater situated right in front of the sea. While I never got the chance to travel to Italy this semester, I feel I have been exposed to roman architecture and influence many times throughout Barcelona and especially Tarragona.

Visit to the Picasso Museum

When one thinks of Spain, it is hard to not also think of one of its greatest painters, Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso, also just know as Picasso. Barcelona just so happens to be home to the Museu Picasso, located on Carrer Montcada in the El Born. But unlike the Picasso’s famous works of cubism known around the world, the Museu Picasso in Barcelona sheds a different light on this famous painter. The Museu Picasso specializes in the early years or rather “blue period” of Picasso’s life. The walls of the museum are lined with dark and gloomy paintings in the style of realism. It is almost as though an entirely different painter did the paintings. Compared to his famous painting, Guernica, done in 1937 and now housed in the Museo Reina Sofia, in Madrid, the paintings of Picasso’s Blue Period are completely different in color and style. But the most interesting exhibit in the Museo Picasso was not a painting at all, but rather a television screen towards the end of the museum showing the similar shapes between his early works and his cubism paintings. While his color schemes and styles changed drastically, his forms and characters remained the same across both styles. The most apparent of these was that of a dog which appeared in most of his works. The television screen would outline the shape of the dog in one of his realism works and then overlay one of his cubism works on top of the first and show how Picasso kept the same form and spacing throughout all of his works, regardless of the time period.

El Raval

El Raval = a redefined neighborhood. Apparently El Raval Barrio was a bit dilapidated and a center or drugs and violence a few years back. Known for being once being the home for sex, drugs, and alcohol, as well as whatever else a sailor might want after a long journey, today it is a young and vibrant neighborhood, filled with young people on skateboards, amazing restaurants, home to a few departments of the University of Barcelona. It is also home to the Museum of Modern Art as well as the Centre de Cultura Contemporanea de Barcelona. After our field trip I took a friend to Bar Raval at the top, or bottom depending on your perspective, of Rambla del Raval to introduce him to tapas and Seafood Paella. Of course he loved both, but was unwilling to touch the balls of the cat, like we had been instructed to do during our field trip by a local, on our after lunch stroll.

            Our second stop along the field trip was the Maritime Museum towards the bottom of the Raval neighborhood. Built a few kilometers from the sea, the building itself was held up by gigantic arches, which helped to envision the construction of ships which took place there. Sitting outside the Museum was a replica of one of the world’s first Submarines, an interesting piece of history.

Back to the Future

            Entering the Museu d’Història de la Ciutat in Barcelona felt more like Robert Zemeckis’ 1985 film, Back to the Future, than a school field trip. Boarding the elevator inside the museum in the year 2011 and watching time fly back to the 1^st century BC as we descended to the old Roman ruins of the city was a humbling event. Resting a story or two below the modern bustling streets of Barcelona around the Cathedral and Placa del Rei, the rumored location of Ferdinand and Isabelle’s reception of Christopher Columbus, now lays the remains of the once bustling streets of the Roman city of Barcino, or rather Colonia Iulia Augusta Paterna Faventia Barcino. The old roman city was founded in 10 BC by the Emperor Augustus, hence the original roman name for the city. While Barcelona today stands as one the world’s most famous cities, back in the time of the Romans, it was a distant second to the Roman capital and port of Tarraco, current day Tarragona.

            Never the less, the remains of the roman city of Barcino on display beneath the museum gave us a glimpse of what life was like for the Romans. Surprisingly, society for them was not all that different from society today. On preserved display is a district of workshops and factories, including areas where clothes were washed and dyed. The large pits of the cetaria, used for salting fish and preparing fish sauce, garum, are still partially intact. Also on display are the old roman public baths used for bathing and teaching as well as a Church from the Visigoth period, around the 6^th century.

            But perhaps the most interesting part of the Museum were the displays of Children’s toys, trinkets, and tic-tac-toe boards, as well as women’s make up kits and jars. Such objects show you that while we live in a time very distant from the Romans, the structure and workings of society are not as distant. Today in Barcelona, The Government center, The Town Hall and the Parliament of Catalunya, as well as the religious center, all still stand in the same spot as it did for the Romans, in Placa St. Jaume. Children are still seen playing in the streets, although now more so with skateboards than tic-tac-toe boards. And women still parade into local beauty shops to buy their makeup. The large vats of garum have now been replaced by large vats of gelado. But all in all, the Roman city of Barcino does not seem to be all that different from the modern Catalan city of Barcelona.