Barcelona in Snip-its

After an early morning bus, followed by a few hour wait at the airport in Mahon, another bus upon arrival, and a 10 minute walk, I arrived at my new home for the next 3.5 days, the BCN Backpackers Hostel in Barcelona. What I could see of the hostel in my five minutes inside showed yellow walls, clean restrooms, IKEA influence, and a smattering of random travelers. I dropped my gear and headed out to see the city.

There are free walking tours that are offered by a few different companies and advertised throughout the hostel trade. I meandered the cobble-stoned, graffiti riddled street of the University and Catalunya areas in search of Placa Reial, the location for where the walking tours departed.

Placa Reial is a 19th century square designed by Francesc Daniel Molina i Casamajó that used to house the Natural History Museum (pretty much a taxidermy shop at the time and now a restaurant) and Antoni Gaudi's very first commission. Gaudí designed two lamp posts that are in the square on a commission from the City of Barcelona. The commission was supposed to go to another artist, but that artist died and thus it went to Gaudí , who refused to work for the fee that the city offered and in the end they paid him more (not what he wanted though) and refused to ever higher him again.

There were two different walking tours, I chose the Gaudí one to start with. The tour went to four different locations that are famous Guadi works in Barcelona. The first stop was Güell's Pala (Güell's Palace), then Casa Batlló, Casa Milà, and finally, Guadi's famous, yet unfinished, Sangrada Familia.

Güell's Pala was the home of Eusebi Güell i Bacigalupi (Count of Güell, textile industrialist and marquis's of Comillas son-in-law), Gaudí's benefactor and friend. Güell gave Gaudí unlimited financial resources and unlimited creative license. This lead to amazing works that were always made with the best materials, always over budget, always over time, and as a final result, amazing. Since Gaudí was a perfectionist, he would often tear down and rebuild numerous parts of the buildings he was designing if they weren’t up to his expectations.

The first thing that I thought when saw Gaudí's buildings was that he was on acid, a lot. His creations are straight out of fairy tales or from the depths of Alice and Wonderland. They're all whorls and curves, dragons, skulls, lollipops, and storm troopers. Everything that Gaudí made was unique and held a double meaning. Gaudí lived for four things, natural, architecture, church, and Catalonia. As a result there was lot of religious themes that made their way into his art. Rooftops that rolled represented the dragon that was slain by King George II. Metal grated balconies represented dragon scales on one level and the skeletal remains of the dragons’ victims (the persecuted) on another levels.

Gaudí was also a fan of making everything functional. Heads that looked like knights in armor were chimneys and gave George Lucas the idea for Darth Vader and the Storm Troopers. Christmas trees and lollipops and colorful swirly items were also the tops of stairwells that lead to roofs.

Gaudí was a Catalonian and very dedicated to that. This posed a problem during his lifetime, because at that time Catalonia was being subdued by Spain and its people persecuted. Gaudí met this challenge by refusing to speak Spanish (only speaking Catalan) and adding nationalist themes in his art. There are representations of the Catalonia flag, King George II, and other symbols of the Catalonian people throughout Gaudí's work.

It's thought that since Gaudí fasted a lot and rarely ate enough to really support his body, he may have hallucinated and his works could be a result of those hallucinations. Gaudí was also part of the group of artist at the time that partook in Absinthe so I'm not really sure what the real reasoning is behind Gaudí's work, but the final result is some truly spectacular creativity that I quite like.

I went on a tour of the old city (AKA the Barri Gotic or Gothic Quarter). This area is a mixing of dark imposing medieval buildings from the 14th and 15th centuries that crowd over the streets. Clothing shops, restaurants, knickknack stores, sites of historical significance all intermingle in these narrow corridors. The old Jewish Ghetto once was here, and was called the Call which translated to "narrow streets". The Ghetto was surrounded by a wall and when the population exploded over time, the people couldn't move outward so they moved inward and up. Thus the roads became smaller and the light lessened as the buildings arched heavenward.

La Seu originated as a Roman temple and then became an early Christian basilica, and is now Barcelona's cathedral. The cathedral is dedicated to the city's co-patroness, Santa Eulalia; a thirteen year old girl that was tortured and eventually crucified by the Romans for refusing to renounce her Christian faith. She’s buried under the parishioners’ seats and you can peer at her casket from behind wrought iron bars.

In the US Old Jolly St. Nick brings the good little and girls their gifts, but in Barcelona, it’s a creepy log with feet, a red Santa hat, and Rudolph’s red nose. The log is called Tio de Nadal or Caga Tió and is cared for from after El Dia de Inmaculada, which is December 8. Then, either on Christmas Day or Christmas Eve (it varies), the children beat the log (and throw him into the fire, if they have one) and sing songs enticing it to 'shit some presents'. And people think Americans have weird customs.

In addition to scaring the Santa log into shitting presents, there is another xmas custom here which has to do with owning a Caganer or “Little Shitter.” This is supposed to be a statue of a porcelain gnome-like creature with its pants down that is attempting to take a dump. Although in present day, it’s very popular to get shitters with famous faces on them. Every family puts the shitter somewhere in their house and the guests are supposed to locate it. Kind of like the Jewish tradition of hiding the afikomen at Passover. Like I said, the Catalonians are weird.
Parc Güell is another of Gaudí’s masterpieces. Gaudí got together with his benefactor and created the idea of making a housing complex where Gaudí would design all of the open spaces and the rich people that were going to live in the reserve would design their own houses. The project was a complete bust as a housing development because most of the aristocracy of the time hated the park and the idea. The only people that ever ended up living in the park were Güell, Gaudí (who had someone else design his house), and a lawyer friend of theirs. Today the park is filled with wandering tourists and is a way to see Gaudí’s genius (or psychosis depending upon your opinion of him) without having to pay a fortune (the park is free to roam around).

I convinced a few of my fellow hostel-mates to come on a ghost tour of the Gothic Quarter with me. We wandered to the now familiar Placa Reial and wondered how we were going to locate our guide among the hundreds of tourists crowding the place. This proved not to be a problem as an apparition in a black trench coat, top hat, and candlelit lantern ghosted its way through the square. Ty, our ghostly tour guide led the four of us (no one else came so we essentially got a private tour) through the narrow alleys ways of the old quarter and explained the ghoulish and macabre history of the area. I thought the tour was going to be about ghost stories and things that go bump in the night, but it was actually about the bloody history of the place and some of the tragic things that had occurred. It was awesome.

Since there were only four of us on the tour, we got to know Ty kind of well (as well as you can know someone in an hour) and so he invited us to tag along to a local ex-pat pub. We ended up in a very narrow, very crowded, Irish pub run by Londoners and packed with a shitload of crazy soccer fans all watching the Barcelona vs. Valencia (a rare event apparently) and random English games. It was entertaining.

On my second day in Barcelona I went to the City History Museum which essentially was an archaeological museum. The city is filled with museums of different types, but due to my time constraints, I was only able to see the one. I will have to come back sometime and spend an entire week in the city to be able to see everything that I’d like to see. There are some amazing things here. Anyways, the museum is built above the remains of part of the Roman city that at one time was Barcino or Barca. Your entrance fee gets you an audio tour guide and it takes about 1-2 hours to wander through the remains of the buildings and hear all of the information that’s provided to you. I recommend this place for all the nerds like me.

I managed to cram a bunch of hours of aimless wandering, getting lost, and discovery into my 3 and a half days, but I think this entry is long enough that I’ve lost most of my readers already. Until next time.