Catalunya/Catalonia

Posted on 30/04/2021 by Michael

‘The Sun’ Concert Hall – Palau de la Música Orfeó Català

Catalunya/Catalonia

A collection of posts covering various aspects of the Spanish (although many Catalans don’t want it to be) region. Some of the early posts might now be out of date but are included here for whatever historical merit they might have.

History

The Roman City of Baetulo, Badalona Museum

I’d think I’d be fairly safe in saying that the overwhelming majority of people who visit Barcelona aren’t there for what remains from the Roman period – many not being aware that the Romans had actually been there in the first place – most coming to view the Modernist architecture of the likes of Antonio Gaudí and Lluís Domenech i Montaner. That’s a shame as the city has remnants from 2,000 years ago, although admittedly some of them need to be searched out. Even fewer people would be aware that just a few kilometres down the Metro line to the north-east of Barcino (the Roman name for Barcelona) is the Roman City of Baetulo at Badalona Museum, one of the most important Roman archaeological sites in Catalonia.

The Spanish Civil War

Refugi 307 – A Spanish Civil War air raid shelter in Barcelona

Refugi 307 (an air-raid shelter during the Spanish Civil War, 1936-39) is one of the few existing shelters from that conflict which it’s possible to visit. Situated in the working class district of Poble Sec it’s very close to Montjuic Hill. The opening of these places to the public throughout Catalonia was part of a project called Memorial Democràtic, started under a more left leaning regional government. The right, who’ve regained control of Catalonia, have messed around with the organisation and I’ve found it impossible to discover exact details of the present state of affairs. This shelter is now under the control of the Museu d’Història de Barcelona.

The air raid shelter of Placeta Macià, Sant Adrià de Besòs

The air raid shelter (refugi antiaeri) in Placeta Macià, Sant Adrià de Besòs, Barcelona, provides an insight to what life was like for ordinary, working class, people during the Spanish Civil War, 1936-39.

Rosanes – a military airfield during the Spanish Civil War

Memorial Democratic, a programme to spread information about the history of the Spanish Civil War, tells the story of the small Republican airfield of Rosanes, just outside La Garriga in the hills just to the north of Barcelona, Catalonia.

Modernismo

Santa Creu i Sant Pau Recinte Modernista

The largest, and in many ways the most impressive, of the Modernist sites in Barcelona, indeed in all of Catalonia, is probably also one of the least known and visited. This is the Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau, designed by the architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner who was also responsible for the Palau de la Música Orfeó Català.

Arenas de Barcelona – Placa de Espanya

Arenas de Barcelona, the bull ring right next to one of Barcelona’s busiest roundabouts at the Plaça de Espanya, had been closed for years. Bull fighting has its supporters throughout the Iberian Peninsular but it never had such a fan base in Catalonia as it did, and still has, in the likes of Andalusia and Extremadura. Come the 1970s and it’s owners considered it wasn’t a viable concern. For bull fighting fans that wasn’t such a total disaster as there was another large ring only a few kilometres east along the Gran Via de Les Corts Catalanes at Monumental.

Palau de la Música Orfeó Català – Barcelona

If you have any interest at all in Modernisme (the Catalan name for what is called Art Nouveau in Britain) then any visit to Barcelona has to take in the unique Palau de la Música Orfeó Català at the Via Laietana end of the narrow Sant Pere Més Alt. The work of the Barcelonan Moderniste architect, Lluís Domènech i Montaner (whose other great monument to Modernism is the Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau) this one building encapsulates all the aspects which arose time and again in the short 20-30 year period of Moderniste dominance which straddled the 19th and 20th centuries. Love it or hate it you can’t ignore it!

Casa Barbey – A Modernist summer house in La Garriga

Modernism is not restricted to Barcelona as many towns throughout Catalonia boast at least a few examples of this late 19th early 20th century architectural style. La Garriga, about 30 kilometres north of Barcelona, developed as a spa town at the same time as the heyday for this fashion and Casa Barbey is one of the best examples in the town.

Architecture

Els Encants Vells, Barcelona

There’s been an open air, general and for a lot of the time unorganised and unregulated market in the area of Las Glories of Barcelona for centuries. Even though I’ve been to Barcelona many times over the last 20 plus years I’ve never made it to that place until this year (2015) – which might be a shame (in retrospect) but then shopping and markets ave never been my thing and my experiences of walking through the Madrid Rastro (never with any serious negative consequences (it’s a pickpockets and general thieves paradise) but coming away wondering why I had gone through the experience of jostling through thousands of people when there was never anything I might have wanted to buy). But I was glad that on my most recent visit to Barcelona I made it an effort to go to Els Enacants Vells, at Plaza de Las Glories.

San Joan de Reus University Hospital

Innovative modern architecture is evident in the recently opened San Joan de Reus University Hospital, on the outskirts of the city in the southern part of Catalonia. This is yet another example of where the countries of Europe lead the way when it comes to modern architecture.

Mies van der Rohe Pavilion, Barcelona

If, after a few days in Barcelona, you’re suffering from a surfeit of Modernism (too much Gaudi or Domenech i Montener) then you could do much worse than visit the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion in the exhibition and conference area, between the Plaça de Espanya and the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya.

Catalan Culture

The Castellers de Sant Adrià de Besos, Barcelona

Anyone who has travelled around the not totally foreign tourist dependent areas of Catalonia in the summer months might well have come across a group of castellers, the people who construct human towers which vary in height and complexity dependent upon the number, size, experience and expertise of the colle (group). I’ve only seen these towers a few times in real life (although quite a number of times on the television – a similar experience I have to bull fighting) and didn’t really understand much about the practice until I had the chance to attend a practise session of a group that has recently been formed, the Castellers de Sant Adrià de Besos, Barcelona.

Platja d’Aro Carnival 2014

Thirty or so years ago Platja d’Aro was just a quiet village on the northern coast of Catalonia. With the development of tourism and the creation of the ‘Costa Brava’ the town mushroomed and now is predominantly a place of hotels, apartment blocks and summer homes for the Catalan wealthy. From the end of the summer season in September/October until Easter the following year the place reverts to its original population levels, summer homes being closed for the winter. Apart, that is, until it’s time for the Platja d’Aro Carnival.

Carrers Guarnits in the Festa Major de Gracia, Barcelona, 2012

Every year the Barcelona district of Gracia organises a street based competition during its Festa Major in August. The carrer guarnits (decorated streets) are a tradition going back just under a hundred years and attracts visitors from all parts of the world.

Eating and Drinking

Can Joan, Carrer del Lleo, Badalona

It’s good to travel alone as it’s possible to take the credit for every achievement but from time to time it’s relaxing to go to a place where you know people who know people. Through this network I had been given a guided tour of Baetulo (the Roman town that pre-dates anything in Barcelona) in the Badalona Museum. Not only that our guide recommended a place near-by to eat and that’s how, on a Wednesday afternoon at the end of February, I went for my lunch in Can Joan, Carrer del Lleó, Badalona.

El Glop – Taverna del Teatre – Barcelona

I had just walked around L’Eixample for three hours or so, following a route that took in various Modernist buildings, and finished down by Plaça Catalunya. I had originally planned to head off to a restaurant recommended in one of the guide books but couldn’t find it on my map and, anyway, it would have been another 10 minute or so walk so decided on one that I passed just before the end of my itinerary El Glop – Taverna del Teatre (the theatre in question being Tivoli cinema house).

Le Nou – Restaurant – Barcelona

If you’re going to eat one main meal of the day in Catalonia the best you can do, in terms of value for money and often in terms of quality, is to go for a ‘Menu’. Although in a place like Barcelona they are used to foreign tourists the pronunciation of this is phonetic, no fancy messing around with the ‘n’ as if it were a Castilian ‘ñ’.

Contemporary Calalunya/Catalonia

Independence for Catalonia!?

As a referendum about Scottish Independence approaches I thought it would be useful to hear about another region of Europe that wants the same thing, Catalonia wanting to separate from Spain. Here are the ideas of a Catalan from Barcelona.

Charity is the answer!

Charity from the Catholic Church or asking for other hand-outs is the suggested way out of the crisis in Catalonia, according to a judge. In Britain and the US the answer is in the growing number of ‘Food Banks’ to provide emergency food aid.

One o’clock in the morning – La Rambla, Barcelona

The Rambla in Barcelona is considered to be one of the ‘must’ places to visit if you are in the city. Publicity pictures and videos will show you hoards of smiling people, brightly dressed, relaxed as they take in the sun at the same time as they take in all the sights the Rambla has to offer. There are cafés aplenty, the human statues (although they were strangely absent when I was there recently), the smell from the flower stalls half way down, the artists waiting to paint your portrait down at the bottom end. But a different form of tweeting now comes from the part of the Rambla where the bird sellers used to be based, the sale of wild birds having been banned since 2010.

IVA increases – small businesses cash in

The level of Spain’s purchase tax (IVA) went up on many goods from 18% to 21% on September 1st 2012. Are small businesses cashing in on this increase and causing inflation in the cost of some of the most basic of everyday purchases?

La lucha continua becomes La lluita continua

The practice of storming supermarkets, filling trolleys with the basic necessities of life and then leaving without paying is spreading. After starting in a couple of places in Andalusia groups with a similar agenda have carried such activities in Merida, Extremadura and most recently in a town in Catalonia.

‘Privatisation’ of Parc Guell?

The Barcelona municipal council are considering charging admission for entry into Parc Guell, one of Antonio Gaudi´s gems, in order to get more money from visiting tourists, without improving access or services. This is opposed both by tourists and the local residents.

Walking in Catalunya/Catalonia

Montseny Natural Park and the Congost Valley

The Montseny Natural Park, just to the north of Barcelona in Catalonia, contains a wide variety of flora and fauna and offers many opportunities for the walker. On its western edge is the Congost Valley, historically one of the escape routes for those fleeing the Fascists towards the end of the Spanish Civil War.

Els Tres Monts – Stage 1 – Montseny-Tagamanent

Els Tres Monts (The Three Mountains) is a waymarked route from the village Montseny (in the Natural Park of the same name) to the hilltop Monastery of Montserrat. In the process it passes through the Sant Llorenç del Munt I L’Obac Natural Park affording an opportunity to experience the diverse landscape in this part of Catalonia, from soaring peaks to sheer cliff faces, from Romanesque churches to Modernist extravagance, from large farmhouses to peasant cottages.

Four days of Els Tres Monts

Els tres monts long distance walk starts in the village of Montseny and over a (suggested) period of six days arrives at the mountain top Monastery of Montserrat, 110 kilometres away. On the way you pass through a varied countryside and after some steep climbs you arrive at other sanctuaries seemingly stuck on to hill tops, offering views of the natural parks and as far as the Pyrenees.

Santa Creu i Sant Pau Recinte Modernista

Posted on 14/04/2014 by Michael

Hospital Santa Creu i Sant Pau – Administration Building

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Santa Creu i Sant Pau Recinte Modernista

Although it’s always been possible to get an idea of the place (I first had the chance to walk around in the late 1990s) it was still used as a working hospital up to 2009 so access was limited to what you’d find in any hospital in the UK. Following its closure as a medical facility it has undergone a clean up and restoration and all I can say is that they have done a magnificent job – it looks as if it had just been completed rather than having the first stone laid on January 15^th 1902.

The history of the hospital itself goes back a long way. The first Santa Creu (Holy Cross) was established in the Raval area of Barcelona with the foundation stone being laid on February 13^th 1401. This became a large Gothic structure designed along the lines of an ecclesiastical cloister. However, after 500 years it was showing its age and not really up to the demands of ‘modern’ medicine and was also taking up space in the centre of an expanding industrial city. (The Raval area includes what is presently known as the ‘Barrio Chino’, for some a no-go area on the southern side of La Rambla, more or less the area behind the Liceo Opera House.)

The money to kick-start the development came from a bequest in the will of a Catalan banker, Pau Gil i Serra, who made his ill-gotten gains in Paris – it’s his statue that stands above the fountain on the steps up to the main entrance, with Charity looking after the sick and poor in front of him and huge frogs on either side (I don’t know what they signify). He stipulated that the hospital should take up the challenge of the rapidly increasing advances in medical science and also that it should be dedicated to Sant Pau (Saint Paul), so his name was added to the original Santa Creu.

Hospital Santa Creu i Sant Pau – Pau Gil i Serra

There was a competition but none of the three submissions were considered adequate so the commission was given to Domènech i Montaner (obviously no hint of nepotism or cronyism there!).

By all accounts he did his research and studied what was happening in hospital architecture throughout Europe and came up with the arrangement which had separate pavilions, devoted to different aspects of medicine, and then connected them all together with an extensive underground passageway system, providing access without having to go outside. That idea has gone out of fashion now and most modern hospitals are huge all-encompassing buildings, few of them seeming to have been designed with a scintilla of imagination.

The complex seems vast now but it’s only just over half of what was in the original plan as Domènech i Montaner planned 48 buildings, only 27 were actually constructed. He died, in 1923, before even that number was completed and the work was continued by his son to make the hospital ready for its official opening in January 1930.

The jewel is definitely the main building on the corner of Carrer de Cartegena and Carrer de Sant Antoní Maria Claret. The building embraces the corner of the two streets and the approach is up the wide steps in the centre (with the statue and fountain). If you scan the façade of the building you start to notice those signature elements of Catalan Modernism: nature, the female form and Catalan nationalism as well as the use of the locally produced (then) building materials of brick, tiles, glass and wrought iron.

Hospital Santa Creu i Sant Pau – Entrance Hall

Once inside you’re greeted by intricate and colourful tile work which continues as you walk along the passageways and into the rooms off them. When there’s a natural break, a doorway or a corner, there’s a different style and/or colour. I’ve still not really understood why this all works. In other buildings (most notably the Palacio Real in Madrid or the Baroque Basilica de San Juan de Dios in Granada) when I’ve been faced with such extremes of ornamentation I’ve felt physically sick and have to leave to get some fresh air (or a beer) but that isn’t my reaction to Modernism. Something ‘softens’ the attack of colour and design and the overall effect becomes less of an assault on the senses.

The plan is to use the Administration Pavilion as an event/conference venue and that has meant that some of the spaces have been adapted for a future use but as far as I could see this had all been done whilst at the same time maintaining the integrity of the original designs.

A couple of spaces are worthy of special mention. The first is what would have been the chapel which is now called the Montaner Hall. You really have to look for Christ as he’s on a cross on the back wall of a first floor balcony. There’s no obvious altar now so I assume that it would have been a table structure on the ground floor underneath that crucifix. There’s the words of a short prayer (in Catalan) forming the balustrade of the balcony on three sides of the hall; an image in relief of Sant Jorge (Saint George) slaying the dragon above one of the doors; and a large mosaic which is more geometric with stylized plants and flowers rather than anything religious – this mosaic is underneath the crucifix.

Hospital Santa Creu i Sant Pau – Chapel

These mosaics, made from small pieces of ceramics and called ‘trencadis’ in Catalan, is very much a feature of Domènech i Montaner’s style of working. His style is much more in the tradition of the Roman mosaics where it’s possible to discern an image, be it of a plant, decorations on columns or pictures of choristers (as it is in the Palau de la Música). On the other hand Gaudí’s style was to break the tiles into larger pieces and creating a colourful design without necessarily wanting to represent anything identifiable – as is the case on the benches in Park Güell. His use of the smaller pieces on the Dragon on the fountain is to create colour rather than form as the creature is made out of stone onto which the tiles are fixed.

The other area of special note is the main stairwell immediately to the left as you enter the administration building. Here the supporting arches are covered with ceramic tiles and the spaces in between contain geometric mosaics made again by smaller pieces of, this time, white and beige tiles. Also interesting here is the skylight that’s very reminiscent of ‘The Sun’ above the main auditorium of the Palau de la Música. The large wrought iron lamp on the banister half way down is also a one-off in the building.

Hospital Santa Creu i Sant Pau – Main Stairwell

In order to get to the other buildings you head down into the basement and then along part of the network of underground passageways that unite all the separate parts of the original hospital. You can’t explore all of these as the pavilions that are out in the garden are either used by different organisations or have yet to be restored. Nonetheless you do get an idea of what Domènech i Montaner was aiming for, keeping all the servicing of the hospital’s requirements underground and creating the ability to get to all the pavilions without having to pass through or disturb any of the others.

Hospital Santa Creu i Sant Pau – Basement

Once outside the main administration building it’s easy to see why Sant Pau was sometimes referred to as a ‘garden hospital’. In fact, if you didn’t know the different buildings were part of a medical complex you would be hard pressed to come to that conclusion. Used, as we are now, to generic, functional and normally boring and uninteresting structures where we go to have our medical requirements fulfilled (the new hospital in Reus being a noteworthy exception to this ‘rule’) the buildings seem to be more like homes for the rich than wards and laboratories.

Although I find their exteriors fascinating I wouldn’t have liked to have spent any length of time either working in them or being a customer (what used to be called a ‘patient’). Photographs of the wards make them seem cold and austere, however much they might have been ‘state of the art’ on their completion in 1930.

Only a few of the buildings have been fully restored and now have a new lease of life as offices for different organisations that look for attractive pictures to put on their publicity. When I visited it was part of the open days and some of these organisations allowed people to look into their space but I assume that on a regular basis it would only be the outsides that are part of the tour. But the outsides are enough and stylised plants and fruit made from colourful tiles sits well with the orange trees below.

Hospital Santa Creu i Sant Pau – Garden Pavilions

Also worth looking for whilst out in the garden are the different mosaics which decorate the sides of some of the pavilions. There are a couple of Sant Jorge and also (just above the entrance to the obligatory souvenir shop cum exit) depictions of the planning of the project and the laying of the first stones.

Hospital Santa Creu i Sant Pau – Mosaic

At the moment only eight of the buildings have been fully renovated. The initial plan, for which a budget of €100 million has been allocated, takes in 12 buildings and they are those around the central building of the garden as well as the administration building itself. That still leaves 15 (assuming they have all survived into the 21^st century) and some of them are very large indeed so whether the finance will be there in the future must be in some doubt. The present funding was secured before everything went down the pan and we are now rewarding the bankers with ever-increasing bonuses means there’s less for other projects.

Hospital Santa Creu i Sant Pau – Pavilions

I’ll finish this introduction with a couple of anecdotes.

During the Spanish Civil War the hospital was taken over by the Republican local government of Barcelona. As in all civil wars things get dirty and the antagonism between the Catholic Fascists of Franco and the atheist Republicans was intense. Church buildings were burnt by the Republicans and Catholic Priests blessed and gave absolution to the Fascists as they murdered those who were fighting in defence of the legitimate government. So it’s no surprise that this had an effect on the hospital.

The religious name was changed from Santa Creu I Sant Pau to the General Hospital of Catalonia. All the pavilions had been given religious names based on Saints and the Virgin Mary (as they are now) and these were replaced by numbers. This was the case until February 9^th 1939 when matters reverted to the pre-war condition with the entry of the Fascists into the city of Barcelona.

The young Pablo Picasso was friendly with one of the surgeons of the hospital and for some reason when he went to Sant Pau to meet his friend in 1903 they decided to visit the mortuary. A women that he saw there inspired Picasso to paint La Dona Mort (The dead Woman) which is an example from his ‘Blue Period’.

Although the queues were literally around the block between February 25^th and March 16^th, 2014 when it was free to enter as a celebration of the completion of a significant part of the restoration the Sant Pau Recinte Modernista (as it is now called) still hasn’t got into the guide books and won’t be attracting the same crowds as other Modernist sites in the city. It’s still possible to get tickets at very short notice so go there soon before it gets swamped. As the plan is to make money from the likes of conferences and exhibitions in the newly renovated space you would be well to check the news section on the website to make sure access is possible when you might want to visit.

Location:

Sant Pau Art Nouveau Site
C. Sant Antoni Maria Claret, 167
08025 Barcelona

Website:

Sant Pau Recinte Modernista

How to get there:

Metro (L5): Sant Pau / Dos de Maig

Visits:

SELF-GUIDED

Cost and Timetable:

General: €8

Over 65, Aged 16-29 and Disabled: €5.60

Under 16: Free

November – March

Monday to Saturday 10.00 – 16.30

Sundays and holidays 10.00 – 14.30

April – October

Monday to Saturday 10.00 – 18.30

Sundays and holidays 10.00 – 14.30

GUIDED

Cost and Timetable:

General: €14

Over 65, Aged 16-29 and Disabled: €9.80

Under 16: Free

November – March

Monday to Saturday 12.00, 13.00, 16.00

Sundays and holidays 12.00, 13.00

April – October

Monday to Saturday 12.00, 13.00, 16.00, 17.00

Sundays and holidays 12.00, 13.00

Closed:

1st and 6th January, 25th and 26th December

Free:

25th January, 12th February, 23rd April, 24th September, first Sunday of the month

Book Online HERE

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Arenas de Barcelona – Placa de Espanya

Posted on 15/03/2014 by Michael

Arenas Bull Ring – Placa de Espanya – Barcelona

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Arenas de Barcelona – Placa de Espanya

In some ways that was a pity. The building was completed in and opened as a fully functioning bull ring in 1900. For more than 70 years it provided those with a thirst for blood the opportunity to see a fine young animal fight a losing battle for its life. No doubt Hemingway would have been one of the paying or, perhaps because of his fame, not paying guests. In 1977 the place closed for good.

From the outside it’s a beautiful structure. Catalonia was the first region of what became Spain to have defeated the Moors so there are few examples of Moorish, or the later Mudejar architecture, in Barcelona. The architect for the original building was the Modernist August Font i Carreras, not one of the more radical of the architects of the time, such as Gaudí (of Park Güell and Sagrada Familia fame) or Domenech i Montaner (designer of Hospital de La Santa Creu i Sant Pau and the Palau de la Música Orfeó Català), but one who looked to those architectural devices of the Moorish past that are common, even ubiquitous, in cities like Granada, Cordoba and Seville.

The exterior of the structure takes on the same geometric design as what is to take place inside, that is it is circular. I mention that because that’s fairly unusual for a bull ring, at least most of the ones I’ve seen in different parts of Spain. Most have square walls at entrances or where the bulls might be corralled before facing slaughter. This is the situation at the other Barcelona bull ring at Monumental. However, Font i Carreras opted to put all these services inside the shell and so it makes for a very pleasing sight for the eyes.

The Arabic arches over the doors and windows are all around the circular building, following the normal pattern of getting smaller as they are reproduced higher up the structure. The crenellations over the entrances, the alternating stripes of brown/ocre and white, the use of blue and white tiles will not surprise anyone who had visited the south-western part of Spain.

Over the principal entrances, together with an homage to the Spanish crown there’s the red and orange stripes representing Catalonia. Although I haven’t seen pictures of it I would have assumed that these would have been blanked out during the Fascist period under Franco. This happened in those iconic buildings of Catalan Modernism, such as the Palau de Musica, so I see no reason to believe that they would have disappeared on this bull ring.

The Arenas de Barcelona was just left to rot after the last bull fight in 1977 and must have been a bit of an embarrassment for the City Council and Regional Government located as it is at one of the most important traffic junctions in the western part of the city. Not only that the Plaça de Espanya is the entry point to the city’s exhibition area and the highest point in the city, Montjuic. It was there the 1992 Olympics were staged, with the main stadium, swimming/diving pool and indoor sports hall all being found there. It is also the location of the Joan Miro Foundation.

In 2000 the contract for the project was given to Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (that’s Richard Rogers of Lloyd’s bank in the City of London – among many others – fame). Fortunately it was decided to keep the original structure, or at least the façade, but create within the space originally occupied by the bull ring a new shopping, leisure and entertainment complex. It opened in March 2011.

I knew what the plan had been but it was only last month I was able to see for myself. So it was with a certain level of apprehension that I approached the structure on a sunny day in late February – shopping is not really my thing.

First impressions were good. The exterior was as I remembered it but now cleaned up and repaired. The huge roof that appeared like an unturned saucer looked strange from street level and the lift shaft just to the left of the main entrance looked out of place.

If you visit the building don’t do as I do. I went immediately towards this lift shaft and as they were only charging €1 for the return trip I decided to go up on to the roof before entering the building itself. I just assumed that if there was a lift that was the only way to get on to the top of the building, it was only when I was walking around on the upper pavement that I realised that access was available from the inside.

Now a euro is not going to break most banks but I now wonder if it might not have been better to have first experienced the interior of the building from below. The lift only takes a few seconds and is only of interest to those who might have a penchant for glass lifts on the outside of buildings – perhaps to be avoided by those who suffer from any level of vertigo.

However you get to the top it’s worth it in the end. You’re able to walk the full 360º, one side looking towards Montjuic and the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya (the museum which houses one of the biggest collections of Romanesque murals in the world as well as artefacts from late 18^th and early 19^th century Modernism), together with the steps that go on both sides of the fountains where there are sound and light shows on occasions, especially later in the year.

A walk of 180º from the lift and you can look down on to the small Parc Joan Miro, with its large bowling pin-like sculpture or up to the hills to the north, towards Tibidabo, where the silhouette of the Modernist Church of the Sacred Heart breaks the horizon. To the left of that is the spindly Torre de Collserola, the telecommunications tower, designed by another progressive British architect (or at least his partnership) and contemporary of Rogers, Norman Foster.

An attractive building on the outside it’s when you enter it that you see how vast has been the transformation from its original use. I came in from the top but would think you’d get a better impression of scale from entering at street level and then looking up.

What has been created is a huge engineering masterpiece that just uses the old structure created by Font i Carreras as a cloak to hide the intricacies of 21^st engineering skills. There’s no way that the circular brick structure holds any of the weight that’s inside. This is carried by huge tubes, at the cardinal points of the compass, that hold up the five levels above the basement.

All the shops, cafés and the multiplex cinema are around the edges and there’s a circular space free of anything at all in the centre at street level. This is much smaller than the bull ring would have been but refers back to that past. This looks tiny from the very top of the building but is quite significant in size when you actually walk across it. It’s a pleasant surprise to me that nobody has appropriated this space and set up some kind of stall. This circle was clear of any obstruction when I visited but I’m sure would have been used as a performance space, for example, on occasions.

Linking the different levels are long escalators through the centre of the building which don’t call at all floors. Shorter escalators on two sides connect each floor so you could well find yourself walking the long way around to find what you want. I’m sure this was part of the plan – if you pass more shops you might be encouraged to buy – the sole reason for the existence of this 21^st century structure. On one side there’s a lift with glass walls that goes from the very bottom to the very top of the building, all the workings being on show.

I thought it was a marvellous piece of engineering work in action and found myself going up and down escalators and lifts just for the fun of it – taking me back to the days of my childhood when we used to play on the first escalators to have arrived in one of the department stores in Plymouth.

I needed a reason to be there as there was nothing on sale – and everything was in a sale – that held any interest for me. All the shops were from a national or an international chain of some kind, really the only companies that could afford to be based in such a centre where more people shop with their eyes than their credit cards. One level was devoted to a multiplex cinema but even that’s no attraction as the overwhelming majority of cinemas in Spain/Catalonia show films which are dubbed and, as is the case in many countries, even ‘national’ films are confined to art house cinemas.

The whole of the basement level is devoted to a series of fast food outlets but then again mainly from chains or franchises. This increasing presence and dominance of such stores and outlets is something that is starting to take a greater hold in the peninsular. Going back 20 years or so there were few names that you would have recognised in the Barcelona shopping streets as most were one-off businesses. As the years go by they fall by the wayside as the bigger players chip away at the customers and soon walking down a Barcelona shopping street will be just like anywhere in Britain where the same names are above the doors whether you are in Brighton or Aberdeen. This has already happened with accommodation where the basic Pensiones are fast becoming a thing of the past.

Even if you’re like me and shopping provides as much joy as sticking a sharp sick in your eye the Arenas de Barcelona is definitely worth a look in if you are at this part of town for the exhibition centre, the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya or on the way up to Montjuic.

Practical Information:

Getting there: The quickest way is on the Metro, Line 1 – the red one and getting off at Plaça de Espanya, though many buses also pass through this junction on the way to Sants Railway station.

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