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About Barcelona
Orientation
Population: 1.5 million
Country: Spain
Time Zone: GMT/UTC +1, +2 during daylight-saving time (last Sunday in March to
last Sunday in October)
Telephone Area Code: none, though all Barcelona numbers start with 93
Barcelona
Spain's second city is now the country's hippest town. Summer gives way to weeks
long festa fun, but year-round the city is on the cutting edge of fashion, architecture,
food, style, music, and good times. Barcelona is one of the most dynamic and exciting
cities of the western Mediterranean seaboard.
The buildings, many of which feature the work of an architectural genius, named Gaudi, are breathtaking. The eccentric modernist architect has left his mark on the city from the smallest iron lamps in the Placa Real to the fantastic curvilinear masked balconies of the Casa Batllo. But it’s his last unfinished piece that draws the crowds. The eight soaring, skeletal needlepoint spires of his cathedral, Templo Expiatorio de la Sagrada Familia (The Church of the Sacred Family) are Barcelona’s unofficial symbol.
The buildings many of which feature the work of the architectural genius, Gaudi, are breathtaking. Practically the life’s work of Barcelona’s favorite son, Antoni Gaudi, the magnificent spires of the unfinished cathedral imprint themselves boldly against the sky with swelling outlines inspired by the holy mountain Montserrat.
They are encrusted with a tangle of sculptures that seem to breathe life into the stone. Gaudi died in 1926 before his masterwork was completed, and since then, controversy has continually dogged the building program.
Nevertheless, the southwestern (Passion) façade, with four more towers, is almost done, and the nave, begun in 1978, is progressing. Some say the shell should have been left as a monument to the architect, but today’s chief architect, Jordi Bonet, argues that the task is a sacred one, as it’s a church intended to atone for sin and appeal to God’s mercy on Catalunya.
The artists:
Picasso and Miro are significantly connected to Barcelona and the Museu Picasso.
It’s housed in three strikingly beautiful stone mansions on the Carrer de
Montcada, which was, in medieval times, an approach to the port.
The museum shows numerous works that trace the artist’s early years, and is especially strong on his Blue Period with canvasses such as The Defenceless, ceramics and his early works from the 1890’s.
The second floor shows works from Barcelona and Paris from 1900-04, with many of his impressionist-influenced works. The haunting Portrait of Senyora Canals (1905) from his pink Period is also on display. Among the later works, all executed in Cannes in 1957, are a complex technical series (Las Meninas,) which consists mostly of studies on Diego Velazquez’s masterpiece of the same name.
