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!

The knife grinder

Some weeks ago I heard on the radio that some traditional trades that were disappearing are now coming back because of the economical crisis. The main reason is that, in hard times, we prioritize fixing things before replacing them with new ones.
Among those trades that are surviving there is one that is very related to our streets, a mobile profession associated with a repetitive melody of flute: the knife grinder.
If we have to judge me by the number of times I've sharpened my knives, knife grinders would already have disappeared, but luckily there are people who still do it, and some grinders still survive on the streets of Barcelona. The photo of this post, for example, was taken a couple of weeksago in the Rambla del Poble Nou.
In a city subject to all kinds of loud noises, there are some sounds that do not go unnoticed and that currently resist: that of "Butanoooooo" for example, is one of them. The knife grinder's "Tiruriroriroriro" is another very typical one. Hopefully, after the crisis, there will still be knife grinders circulating with their old mopeds on the streets of Barcelona.

An additional curiosity: Dani Cortijo explains in his blog altresbarcelones, that after the defeat of Barcelona in 1714, it was forbidden to have more than one kitchen knife per family at home, to prevent possible uprings or riots against Spanish troops.
Moreover, this single family knife had to be tied with a string to the kitchen table, and people who didn't obey this law could be punished even with the death penalty. Thus, the grinders did their work moving through the houses of Barcelona, and specifically working in their kitchens!

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.