Reykjavík Grapevine - 11.02.2005, Síða 32

on tour BARCELONA Spain
THE CHEAPEST WAY TO
GET TO BARCELONA:
Iceland Express
KEFLAVÍK-STANSTED: 11.000 ISKSTANSTED-KEFLAVÍK: 11.000 ISK
Easy Jet
STANSTED-BARCELONA: 2.457 ISKBARCELONA-STANSTED: 2.457 ISKBook a month in advance for lowest prices.
Grapevine consumer service note: Do not drink and cycle!
Don´t cross the street at a red light, there may be no cars but the fine is huge.
by John Boyce
BARCELONA:
Great Scenery,
Tragic History
A Sophisticated European
Metropolis
A part of modern Barcelona’s
allure is its multiple identities, the
second city of Spain, the capital of
Catalonia, the economic powerhouse
of the peninsula and a sophisticated
multicultural European metropolis.
Through the vicissitudes of history
and the repeated suppression of
Catalan, Barcelona has acquired a
random bilingualism that largely
remains thirty years after Franco’s
death, the undoubted resurgence
in Catalan tempered by huge
immigration from South America
and other parts of Spain.
Home to over seven million
people, with a huge industrial base
and a massive Barcelona-based
tourist trade, Catalonia subsidizes
the rest of the country with
millions of euro each year. Though
Catalonian nationalism has no
militant equivalent of the Basque
Country’s E.T.A., Catalans are,
understandably, pressing for ever
more autonomy from Madrid, a
demand that has received a generally
sympathetic hearing from the
current socialist government. For
the opposition, Aznar’s centralist
Partido Popular, this amounts to
nothing less than creeping secession
and has fuelled their fears that in the
fullness of time Barcelona will add
yet another personality to it already
multiple identity, the capital of an
independent European state.

Rambling Raval
If you should go astray one day on la
Rambla, Barcelona’s principal tourist
thoroughfare, and land at the feet
of a midget sitting on a shiny steel
bucket who offers you, for a price,
naturally, your hallucinogenic heart’s
desire, then you have probably
wandered into Raval.
Diplomatically described by
one guidebook as “a little rough
around the edges”, Raval is home
to the bohemian set, all manner of
victimless crime and is possibly the
most police-patrolled part of the city
centre.
In times past the Chinatown
of Barcelona, Raval is a sprawling
working class barrio separated from
more famous neighbourhoods, such
as Barri Gothic, by La Rambla.
In recent years the area
has become a glorious ethnic
hodgepodge with the Arab
population increasingly dominant.
Wander in on a Sunday afternoon
to check out the unlicensed market
and the good-natured game of tag
between the marketing miscreants
and any one of Barcelona’s three
different police forces. Or enjoy the
bizarre spectacle of 37 traditionally
dressed Arabs playing improvised
volleyball amid the sirens and the
catcalls.
But hurry while it’s still there! A
combination of a central location,
cheap property prices and abandoned
lots have those pesky developers
sniffing round and it may not
be long before radical chic Raval
becomes as overpriced and over-
hyped as its more fashionable guide
book neighbours.
by John Boyce
A Brief History
Tucked between the Spanish central plain and the south of France,
with Andorra for a pillow, Catalonia is the wealthiest and most powerful
autonomous region in the Iberian Peninsula.
But it wasn’t always thus for the province and it dominant capital,
Barcelona. After declaring itself independent of the Frankish empire in the
11th century, Catalonian monarchs arranged a political marriage with the
neighbouring kings of Aragón, and Barcelona became the metropolis for an
empire that stretched across the Mediterranean, kicking off what became
known as the Catalan golden age. And that’s when it all started to go
terribly wrong.
War and Black Death
A serious bout of Black Death decimated the city in the 1300s and the
region had barely recovered when the Kings of Aragón had the temerity to
switch political horses, cozying up to their other regional neighbour Castilla,
leaving Catalonia firmly out in the cold.
Colonial cutthroat Christopher Columbus, blundering into the Americas,
delivered the next near fatal blow, drawing trade from the Mediterranean to
the Pacific, almost bankrupting Barcelona in the process. Just when they
thought things couldn’t get any worse, France pilfered another chunk of
Catalonia in the continent wide 30 Years War (1618-48, although the war
between France and Spain didn’t end until 1657). Barcelona then proceeded
to back the wrong nag in the Spanish War of Succession (1700-1714). The
eventual victor, the Bourbon king Felipe, duly took his revenge, abolishing
regional autonomy and banning the writing and teaching of Catalan.
Anarchist and Fascist
The province and its capital finally caught a break in the 19th century when
a ban was lifted on its trade with the Americas and Greater Barcelona
launched one of the earliest industrial revolutions in Europe. Barcelona grew
rapidly, was forced to demolish its medieval walls in the 1850s and had
doubled in size by the1920s.
This decade saw a resurgence of a phenomenon almost unique to Barcelona
in the 20th century, anarchism, in the form of the radical trade union the
C.N.T. After a wave of successful strikes, employers hired assassins to
eliminate hundreds of union leaders.
Civil war and the Franco dictatorship returned Barcelona to smothering
isolation, with Catalan and even the notion of Catalonia ruthlessly
repressed.
The death of Franco in1975 and the reestablishment of regional
government in the seventies finally reintroduced Barcelona to the world and
it quickly set about establishing itself as the cultural and tourist capital of
Mediterranean Europe.