Miró mural at the airport

After the inauguration of T1 terminal at El Prat airport, the activity of the old terminal has been reduced basically to low cost companies and airlines that are not members of any alliance. Thus, most of the passengers arriving to Barcelona by air see the modern, white, photogenic new terminal, but they will not be able to enjoy a piece of art that has been greeting us for ages when we came home: the Miró mural.

In 1968 one of our world-renowned artists decided to devote and donate four works to the city where he was born: the sculpture "Woman and Bird", at the Parc de l'Escorxador, the mosaic at Pla de l'Os on the Rambla, the Miró Foundation and this ceramic mural, that was installed on the facade of what today is the T2 terminal building.

Miró mural has always been associated to something special: a welcome, a farewell, a trip, a gathering, a homecoming...if the wall could talk, it would certainly explain thousands of stories of all kinds!

Added floors in the Eixample

I often say that this blog not only talks about the things I like from Barcelona, but also those other things that may seem ugly, uncomfortable or even disgusting.

And a good example of something really Barcelonian and really ugly are the added floors that have been built on many buildings of the Eixample. I know we have not been particularly careful to Cerdà's plan as it was conceived, and that for a time many people tried to take full advantage of a ground that was considered wasted. So, taking advantage of the improving building techniques and of their cheaper costs, and with the necessary collaboration of political powers, many homeowners and builders decided to gain two, three, four and even five floors, as the building showed on the picture above.

It is virtually impossible to restore the building as it was originally, because the people living on this floors do it in a completely legal way, so we must get used to the added floors. If at least they were made with good taste!

Besos thermic power plant

Some days ago I was walking along the Besòs river Park, a restored space of nature and leisure, at the mouth of the river.
When you walk through that area you can't avoid noticing the presence of the power station, with its three tall smokestacks. Although the station is not in the municipality of Barcelona, it is clear that its uniqueness and visual power are a milestone in the northern coastal landscape of the city, from the moment it was built in the 70s. Three smokestacks 200 meters high don't go easily unnoticed.
The plant has been controversial since its inception as it is still today, although it is under partial demolition. Its construction generated many protests, which actually caused one death. During the decades of operation, the plant generated black rains in the municipalities of Sant Adrià and Badalona, that made cars and clothes dirty. In 2008, when its closure was approved, people from Sant Adrià decided in a referendum to keep the three chimneys of the plant as a symbol of identity of the city, although participation in the vote was very low.
Theoretically the plant must be used to host a public facility, but its future is very uncertain right now, partly due to lack of funding, and there are many voices saying that the smokestacks should be demolished and the landscape restored as natural as possible. What do you think about it?

Winter storms

One of the good things people often mention about Barcelona is its nice weather, especially its soft winters. This is basically true, but sometimes we are visited by a phenomenon that makes the beaches empty of bathers and surfers. I am talking about storms coming from the East.
The northern wind known as Tramuntana is renowned for its vigour and intensity, but the east wind, which is more constant, sometimes gets mad and destroys beaches and boardwalks of our coast with heavy its rains, low temperatures and strong waves. Sometimes this combination even makes snow pop up near the coast of Barcelona.
There are storms like this throughout the year, but the most common time is for them are spring and fall. One of the most famous is the one that happened during Boxing Day 2008, but in 1911 there was one that affected the entire Catalan coast and Barcelona and caused 28 deaths only in Barcelona. As the singer Raimon says, rain doesn't know how to rain in our country...
To protect the beaches and prevent regression caused by eastern storms during winter, the municipality built between 2006 and 2010 three dams that stabilize the shoreline.
The storms, however, continue visiting us.

La Pedrera - La Casa Milà

Sometimes, we are so used to something that we take it for granted. In Barcelona that happens often. We  walk without paying attention next to architectural wonders, as if they were the most common thing.

Although the intention of this blog is not to list the main attractions of Barcelona, that does not mean that sometimes I have to stop at buildings that leave astonished to both tourists and barcelonians. And if they are celebrating an special date, like La Pedrera, which celebrates its centenary.

The Casa Milà is one of the most famous modernist buildings of the architect Antoni Gaudi, who designed it when he was in his artistic summit, and where he showed without any complex his admiration for the organic shapes of nature, in addition to applying innovative structural solutions.

Did you know that the point where this building was built was the exact boundary between Barcelona and Vila de Gràcia on Passeig de Gracia, the main axis of the new bourgeoisie of the time?
Did you know that the people of Barcelona named it La Pedrera (quarry in Catalan) due to its appearance? 
Did you know that it is a World Heritage Site since 1984?

Eixample corners: Sea or Mountain? Besòs or Llobregat?

"Let's meet at 10 in a bar at the corner of Bruc and Diputació streets".

If you are a true Barcelonian, you will notice that there is something missing in the sentence above. What is it? Very easy: you need to say in which of the four corners of the intersection is the bar where you are supposed to meet if you don't want to be waiting in different places!

The code we use is simple: Sea side or Mountain side (which meaning is very easy to figure out), and Besòs side or Llobregat side (this may make you think a little bit more; there is even people who prefers to say "Girona side" and "Tarragona side", in order not to mess up the two rivers that delimit the city.

You must admit it is a foolproof method to give directions!

Rooftop antennas

The image that any city shows, just like with most things in life, is not unique, and it often depends on the viewer's gaze. Above the asphalt of sidewalks, pedestrians and shops at street level there is another reality that is only noticeable by birds or from high places: the rooftops.
Anyone who has lived on a high floor of Ciutat Vella, Gràcia or Poble Sec will probably know  what I am talking about, a very specific image that fits naturally in the chaotic Mediterranean spirit of Barcelona.
These roofs are used for many things: hanging clothes, holding neighborhood meetings or sunbathing, but what I like to see are the antennas. And I do not mean satellite dishes, but the traditional aerials, which look like small twigs of fragile static trees.
I know that for many people the antennas are "dirty" visual elements, and that they have many drawbacks, including the difficulty of access, the higher maintenance costs and a lower quality of reception of channels, and I know that they will gradually disappear.. that's why I like looking at them thinking they are an endangered landscape.
I leave two images: a Picasso painting titled "Roofs of Barcelona" (1903) and the cover of a very good album: El món en un cafè, by the band 4t 1a.

PROVISIONAL MARKETS

One of the good things that Barcelona has done in the last years is the recovery, refurbishment and modernization of fresh produce markets in all the districts of the city. Through its history, Barcelona developped a special small-store model, which is getting now hard to maintain. Many of us like this model, compared to having huge, impersonal malls in the suburbs.
Some time ago I posted on this blog about the Born market and its eternal building works, but now I want to write about other elements that accompany us for years: those fresh produce markets that set provisional big tops while the building is refurbished
Among others, the city has refurbished in recent years the market of Barceloneta and Santa Caterina (Ciutat Vella), Clot (Sant Martí) and Llibertat (Gracia), and during the works, the big tops have been placed in nearby open spaces.
Some of these works last so long that the concept of "provisional" seem to become "definitive" but generally we know that the tops will only be there for a certain time. And then they will disappear to leave free way, again, to the original market.
Now Sant Antoni market is being refurbished, and I am looking forward to the ending of the works because a building as spectacular as this one, inaugurated in 1872, will be for sure gorgeous.

Balcony blinds

When the good weather starts, one must assume an objective fact: Barcelona, in the summer, is a hot city.
And long before there was air conditioning, it was already hot. So the locals had to protect themselves against the sun. And they found a solution that is ideal from my point of view: the shutters on the outside, leaving them hanging over the balcony.
Thus they stop direct sunlight, but they also let the air in in order to get the natural cross ventilation (if there is a little breeze blowing, the heat is more bearable) and, unlike horizontal blinds, they preserve a certain degree of privacy.
I will not say I thank an air conditioner in the summer in the city, but if we don't have one... what could be better than the these typical blinds?

The Vain Giraffe

The sculpture of Flirty Giraffe has always aroused some fascination on me.

At the end of the Rambla de Catalunya, on the corner of Avinguda Diagonal, she has seen and keeps seeing all the locals and tourists walking around, with an attitude that I consider at the same time seductive and a bit indifferent.

The sculptor, Josep Granyer, engraver and illustrator was close the style Art Deco, and created an entire universe himself, with surreal and humorous touches, as animals are represented in human attitudes.

Thus, it seems that the giraffe is flirting and relaxed at the same time, waiting for someone to come get her. It could be, for example, the bull that we can find at the other end of the Rambla de Catalunya, meditating at the junction of Gran Via, evoking the thinker of Rodin. The sculptures are in the same location since 1972 but the bull still hasn't had the courage to ask out the giraffe. He keeps meditating...

Block interiors of the Eixample

It is nothing new to say that the differences between the original Plan Cerdà for Barcelona and how the city was finally urbanized are more than remarkable. In fact, even though the locals are now proud of our orthogonal Eixample and can not imagine the city with any other street design, the truth is that the Plan Cerdà was not very appreciated by the people from Barcelona at that time, even less among the middle classes.

Thus, one of his ideas was to leave the central areas of the blocks free of buildings, in order to install gardens, usually as "corridors" between two parallel strips of houses.
It goes without saying that the block interiors were filled with buildings, often family workshops and small factories, and eventually ended up joining the two strips, closing the blocks completely.
And this way was, very briefly, how it was born another typical landscape of Barcelona's Eixample: what we see from the windows overlooking the courtyards in the Eixample.
The good news is that in recent years the City Council is making an effort of recovery of these gardens, and there are 44 block interiors recovered, open to us all.

Antoni Tapies Foundation

On a blog like this one, that speaks about those things that define Barcelona, I have to mention the loss of one of our most famous citizens. Antoni Tàpies was always proud of Barcelona and Catalunya from his universality.

As I don't have a clue about art, I will leave that for experts and I will recall a landscape that the artist leaves us: the Tàpies Foundation, at Aragó street, an impressive building designed by the architect Domènech i Montaner and topped by the sculpture "Cloud and Chair". Inside the building there is a reduced version of the controversial sock that was supposed to be exposed at the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya.

Beyond aesthetic controversies, the building of the Tàpies Foundation is already an icon of the landscape of Barcelona.

Rest in peace Antoni Tàpies.

Pruned planetrees

I'm sure we all agree that the tree that we most associate with the streets of Barcelona is the planetree (also known as London planetree :) ).

In fact, more than a third of the approximately 150,000 trees that grow on the streets of the city are platrees. The reason is that they are quite bright and colorful, grow fast, adapt easily to various conditions and provide shade during the hot summer months.

It should also be noted, however, that not everybody loves planetrees. Many people suffer from pollen allergies during spring, and autumn leaves always fill the sidewalks. Some people even say that those leaves are slippery and dangerous. Also, many of these trees are sick and have pests. Who knows, maybe.

Therefore, and in order to counteract the historic dominance of planetrees in Barcelona, the city tries to replace them with other species that are considered best for the city, such as Mediterranean hackberries and cherry plums, especially on those streets with narrow sidewalks.

Planetrees rapid growth and the freedom they need to grow up happy can not be found in many streets, so they have to be pruned, and in a quite severe way. That brings us to a landscape that is also typical of Barcelona, as shown in the image: a street full of banana trunks. It doesn't matter how pruned they are, the trees always find the way t recover. I do not know you, but I like the planetrees.

The Born market...always under construction

Contrary to what many people think, the Born market has not always been under construction!
Actually the building was completed in 1876 and it is, along with the San Antonio market, the main example of iron architecture in Barcelona. This was a popular architectural and construction trend of the second half of the nineteenth century, and arose thanks to the availability of new materials as an effect of the Industrial Revolution.

After the demolition of the citadel and walls of the city, Barcelona needed a market for the supply of fresh produce, mainly fruits and vegetables. The Born market was a very modern building: quite large, under cover and ventilated. This market was in use for a century, until Mercabarna opened in 1971. The location of the Born was obsolete and there was a need of a new market, more powerful and far from the city center.

And so the emblematic building of Born was left abandoned for 30 years, while someone figured out what to do with it. Finally it was decided that it should serve as the main building of the Provincial Library in Barcelona, ​​but the discovery of some remains of the medieval and modern city made the works stop. If everything goes as expected, it seems that in 2012 a cultural center will open there, and it will include the archeological site and a display of the War of Succession and the subsequent loss of freedoms of Catalonia.


That would be great, but it is a promise that has been progressively delayed since 2005, so I have some doubts about it. I start to think that those works will be forever!

Chestnut stalls

Every year, a couple of weeks before the festivity of All Saints (November, 1st), stalls selling chestnuts and sweet potatoes are settled in the streets of Barcelona. They are with us until well after Christmas and Epiphany. In fact, selling chestnuts in the streets of Barcelona is an ancient tradition. There is evidence that in the late eighteenth century there were over two hundred stalls stops on the streets of Call, La Boqueria and Hospital.

Many of us imagine the figure of chestnut sellers roasting chestnuts in front of the fire, warm enough, giving us a cone made ​​of newspaper, full of steaming chestnuts. They are energetic fruits that are supposed to help us beat the cold.

But it's been more than a month since All Saints and it is still warm in Barcelona. In fact, this was the second warmest month of November of the last century. I have a theory that states that the seasons come now later than before, but that is a feeling without any scientific basis, so I'll leave it for another time...

Finally, if winter ends up showing up and you feel like eating chestnuts, there are twenty-eight stalls scattered around Barcelona. You can even see their location on the website of the City Council. After all, they are and have always been part of our landscape!

The fountain of...Canaletes?

Continuing with the subject of  the previous post, today I am writing about another place where the people from Barcelona usually meet (if we are able in the middle of so many people) when we go to the city center. It is, of course, the fountain of Canaletes.

Formerly, when the city was still walled, there was a water fountain at the top of La Rambla, that brought water from Collserola. This source, which at first was inside a building, was at some time diverted, flowing thus outside, and it was very crowded with people coming from the whole city. The water was coming down a drain (canaleta in Catalan, and therefore its name) to a trough, and it was considered of a very good quality. So the locals queued to take some home, the same way that it happened and still happens in many towns.

Today the water from the fountain is not particularly good, it is supposed to have other properties. Tradition says that whoever drinks from the fountain comes back to the city.

The current fountain of iron, with four springs and a lamp on the top, is not unique. This is a design made ​​for the Universal Exhibition of 1888 and there are currently more than 15 distributed around the different districts of Barcelona. We can also find some outside the city, and even quite far away. This one on the picture, for example, is 12,000 kilometers away. Specifically, in the Plaza de Barcelona, of Buenos Aires, Argentina. A fountain from which, just in case, I drank!

Let's meet at the Zurich!

This is one of the most usual sentences among the locals!

And this is the ritual: you get to Plaça Catalunya by underground or railway, go up the stairs and see if you are the first to arrive. If you are, and you have to wait, there is nothing to worry about: waiting couldn't be more fun.

The Zurich is our cafeteria, and has been forever, and it is been like that for so long that we often take it for granted.

Next year it will be 150 years since its opening as the bar of a train station, the liner that went up Balmes street, although ti was then called la Catalana and was a kind of kiosk that gave service to travelers.

During this century and a half, it has stood there, witnessing the beating heart of the city. Demonstrations, rallies and celebrations, assaults and persecutions, building works and alterations, recordings and concerts, even wars.

But above all, people arriving. People waiting. People looking. People finding people. People getting there and away. Above all, people.

La Carretera de les Aigües

.... or rather, the view from La Carretera de les Aigües (literally, the road of the Water)!

In Barcelona we have a green treasure. Actually it's not only ours, but we share it with other municipalities around, and its name is Collserola. And yes, those who say that the park suffers many attacks are quite right, but it is still a privilege to have a space like this, which can be reached by public transportation. As they say, it is one of the largest metropolitan parks in the world.

The Carretera de les Aigües is the secret that the people from Barcelona keep in this green park. A walk along its route helps restore your spirit. At least it happens to me. And when I sit in one of the benches along its route, I admire the esplanade of Barcelona and I think .... Wow! No matter if the day is sunny and the visibility is good or the atmosphere is dirty, foggy, and cloudy...it always happens to me... Wow!

The laundry in Barceloneta

The streets of Barceloneta have always had a special personality. A fisher district created in the eighteenth century on land reclaimed from the sea four centuries earlier. It became an important industrial area, when the City Council banned the installation of industries with steam inside the walled city. Simultaneously, many of its houses were divided into smaller dwellings, thus creating the famous "quarters of house".
The Barceloneta has always been a sailor district, popular, full of workers, and in recent years it has been subject to a growing tourist pressure. The washing hanging out in its balconies just reminds us all what the neighborhood has always been: the narrow houses, the Mediterranean character of its people, the popular spirit and the desire to build a public space together. As long as I see the clothes hanging in the streets, I'll feel happy: Barceloneta is still here.