Barcelona - Old City and New City

We are back in Barcelona, so we need to talk more about the planning of the city after the Bourbon walls came down.  I will provide a bit of a review about conditions for the workers and how their lives should have been improved by the expansion of the city.

The old city, the medieval centre, was surrounded by the Bourbon walls.  Life for the textile workers living inside these walls in the nineteenth century was abysmal.  They were poorly paid,  crammed into basements without light or heat and living spaces averaged 90 square feet per person.  The people were ravished by epidemics, malnourishment, toxic fumes from chemicals and poisonous dyes.  There was no education and child labour was the norm.

The first modern city plan was Barceloneta, a grid system of streets near the sea.  This was also when the Ramblas was created, a wide avenue running from the sea, in a straight line to the NNE, preserving the edge of the medieval city.  Today, the Ramblas is a horrid, touristy kitsch of a street.

In the early 1820s, a paved road was constructed from the top of the Ramblas out to the village of Gracia, the Passeig de Gracia.  Today the Passeig de Gracia is an upscale street with the highest concentration of Moderniste masterpieces.

The juncture of the Ramblas and Passeig de Gracia was the first breach of the city walls.  How to develop the triangle of land that formed between the wall and the barracks was in dispute.  The issue was never resolved, the space is the Placa de Catalunya and there is an awkward change from the old city to the new city when crossing this placa.

After the Bourbon walls were finally demolished, Barcelona held a competition for the design of the new city, the Eixample, or widening.  The design was awarded to Rovira, who deferred to the old Barcelona.  His plan involved extending the axis of the Ramblas to create a new square from which several avenues would fan out, dividing the city into wedges, this emphasized the old city.  However, Madrid stepped in and chose the plan of Cerda.

Cerda was a socialist and an engineer, not an architect.  Cerda planned a grid system with each block representing a social cross section of people, he envisioned the workers and the wealthy living together with no hierarchy and no desirable or less desirable areas of the new city.  None of this came to be, of course.  A railway split the area, the property on the right side was more desirable than the property on the left side of the tracks.

Cerda’s plan ignored the long history of Barcelona and shifted focus away from the old city by designing three great avenues to cut through the new city.  The block plan was to have a set of 25 blocks with its own school, day care etc.  Only 1/3 of each block was to have buildings, the remaining space between apartments was to be patio gardens lined with trees and some blocks were to be left open for public parks.  All blocks were to have trees, some on the outside lining the sidewalks and many trees in the space inside the blocks.

Each block would have the corners chamfered at 45 degrees to allow for turning and loading space, the chamfers also opened up the Eixample to more light.

Building of the Eixample began in 1860, by 1870, there was not one building of any interest.  A building boom began in the 1870s which resulted in a slum of cell-like apartments for the working class along with the odd opulent building for the wealthy.  The public park space never materialized, clean drinking water and proper drainage were non-existent and disease swept the new city, just as it had in the old city.

Cerda’s plan of open space never came to fruition because of the greed of developers and landlords.  The internal patio spaces and the treed interiors were lost as the internal spaces were taken up with storage buildings and office space.  The ends of the blocks were closed off with multistory buildings and the height of buildings within the blocks were increased or attics were added to the tops.

The result was really a travesty, the Eixample became a monotonous series of fortress-like blocks.  The only departure from the plan that was wonderful, were the private streets which cut across some of the blocks, which are lined with charming houses with front gardens.

However, the Eixample is filled with the most amazing and creative Moderniste buildings, they are a total departure from the banal and flourished in the streets of the new city.

I also want to talk about another Moderniste architect, his work is wonderful, we absolutely love it.

Josep Puig i Cadafalch 1867-1956

Puig was very much a traditionalist and deeply Catalan, he argued that good architecture in any country rose from local culture.  He also thought that medieval art was the most adaptable to modern structural building technology.  Puig liked Gothic architecture of the fifteenth century with its play of stone lines across dramatic voids.

He was a draftsman, he translated graphic effects into the age-old Catalan crafts of iron, tile, wood and brick.  His expertise was in surfaces and materials.

Puig, very much the Catalan, did not draw inspiration from Moorish architecture, there was not much Moorish historical architecture in Catalunya, since the Moors were driven out fairly early on.  Rather, he drew inspiration from the north, admiring German culture and its industrial drive and Flemish painting, as Catalan High Gothic painting was essentially a local version of Flemish painting.

Casa de la Punxes - The House of Points 1903-1905

This is an oddity in a Mediterranean city.  There are four round towers topped with a witch’s hat spire, the main tower has an elaborate lantern.  The roof has sharp gables and finials.  Plain brick walls break out into High Gothic tribunes and miradors trimmed with ornamental stonework.   Sant Jordi and the dragon are carved into the apex of the gable. Critics thought that this house was too Catalanist and politically subversive.  

We loved this building and stood around admiring it for a long time, the tourist hoards don't come to see this stunning building as it is not part of the parade of Moderniste buildings on Passeig de Gracia.

Casa Amatller

This was a redesign of an existing house owned by the Amatller family who made their fortune in the chocolate business, the house was designed in 1898 by Puig and completed in 1900.  This is a Catalan Gothic palace with a flat wall to the street and a large central courtyard from which a staircase ascends to the main salon on the first floor, much like the fifteenth century palaces in the medieval centre.

The first 2/3 of the wall on the facade is ochre and white stucco, looking more Italian than Catalan, then a Flemish stepped pediment rises, but it is decorated with polychrome tiles in blue, green and pink and is studded with florets.  The sheen and twinkle of the wall in the morning sun is said to be astonishing.

Medieval details include the entrance portal depicting Sant Jordi and the dragon.  There is a lot going on in the facade if one looks closely.  A lot of the decoration refers to the chocolate business as well as Amatller's hobbies, those of photography and reading.

This house really stands out with its sharp angles as it sits next to Gaudi's Casa Batllo with its undulating surface and aquatic blues and greens.  We will post some photos of Casa Batllo tomorrow.

Casa Amatller with Flemish stepped gable and ceramics

Sant Jordi fighting the dragon

Window and balcony detail

Critter pouring chocolate 

A rat photographer

A donkey reading a book

Pottery pigs

Glass blowing frogs

Letter A intertwined with branches and leaves of an almond tree

The train from Valencia to Barcelona took about three hours, train travel is such a comfortable way to travel, there is plenty of leg room and space.  We took an early train, so John headed to the cafe car to get us cafe con leche, we also took snacks along as we didn't have time to eat or drink anything in the morning.

The metro station is very handy to the train station in Barcelona and everything is so well signed that there is no doubt that one is going in the correct direction.  Our metro stop is very close to our hotel in Gracia.  Gracia is north of the old Barcelona and north of Eixample.  It is a really quiet area that is pretty much devoid of tourists.

We dropped our luggage and then walked down to the medieval core to pick up the tea that we forgot when we were here about four weeks ago.  Then we checked out Placa Reial and the Boqueria Market.  The market was chock full of tourists, the market in Valencia is far better with no tourists, more reasonable prices and better products.

It is great to be back in Barcelona as we really like this city, but it is very busy compared to a month ago.  There are just tonnes of people about, lots of tour groups and school groups, it is really jammed. However, Gracia is a calm oasis, so we are glad we decided to stay up here for the last portion of our trip.

We picked up the last of the food supplies we need and are already lamenting the last of our shopping at the fantastic Spanish food stores and markets.  The hotel left us a small bottle of really good cava and we stocked up on some more for the next few days.

The rest of this trip will be all about architecture, everybody should be starved for good architecture by now, so get ready for the final onslaught.

Toy Soldiers

We wanted to explore the old area of Valencia today, so we walked to the heart of the old city where two placas meet, the Placa de la Virgen and the Placa de la Reina.  We decided to have a café, so after avoiding the café people who solicit tourists, we made the rounds and noticed where the old people chose to frequent.  Our thinking was that the wise old people would choose a non touristy establishment.

Maybe chocolate is the elixir of youth or something, as we ended up in a chocolate shop.  We were the only people in the place that ordered a café con leche, the rest had chocolate con churros.  This undeniably decadent looking snack, is a café cup full of dark chocolate to which they dip the churros, which are deep fried, long tubes of dough, they receive several in one order.  As if that wasn’t enough, some people doused the churros with sugar prior to dipping.

After our café con leche, we went off to visit the L’Iber Museum of Toy Soldiers.  As one that has an interest in military history and has the stunning collection of four, Britains Knights of Agincourt ( I cannot do the collecting thing) the Toy Soldier Museum was the highlight of our day.

The museum is housed in a beautiful Gothic palace, the former residence of the Marquis of Malferit.  The entry is through the gorgeous patio with the typical outdoor staircase to the main level.

The museum only displays a small portion of the collection which numbers more than a million toy soldiers.  Some of the displays are of battle scenes, the Battle of Almansa, a battle between the Hapsburgs and the Bourbons during the War of the Spanish Succession, has more than 9,500 figures on display.

A lot of the toy soldiers are Spanish guards, but they also have the Battle of Waterloo and the Napoleon retreat from Russia, where the Russians pummeled Napoleon’s army.  I vaguely recall writing a paper on the battle in university, a long time ago, gah!

The collection also covers Spanish colonialism, with battles against the Aztecs, Mayans and Incas.  There are also Roman Legions, Visigoths, Celts (with tartan trousers) and Alexander the Great’s defeat of the Persian, Darius.

After we left the Toy Soldier museum, we continued our walk through the old centre of Valencia, visiting a few old city gates.  There were some brass bands playing in the centre of the city and the density of people increased significantly as the day wore on.

Tomorrow we take an early train to Barcelona for the final few days of our travels in Spain.  Every region is so different with various customs and food.  Valencia is the city for real paella, as the paella rice is grown just outside the city.  Paella pans are sold all over the place, our apartment is equipped with a paella pan as well.  But there is also a lot of crap food here, the stuff of American fast food chains and they seem to do a fairly brisk trade.

They like to set off firecrackers here, of course, the ultimate fire extravaganza, known as Las Fallas, takes place on March 15th.  They build figures and then set them ablaze in the streets.  The whole thing begins on Tuesday, when they set off firecrackers every day.  Today, in the Placa, parents were throwing down ball shaped firecrackers for the little kids to stomp on.  There are quite a few firecrackers exploding tonight as well.

La Lonja de la Seda (The Silk Exchange)

Placa de la Virgen with Cathedral in background and a fountain representing the Turia River in foreground, Neptune reclines in the centre of the fountain

Patio of L’Iber Museum

Jousting tournament

The background is painted

This one is really neat, a regimental dinner of some sort

There is a whole series of these, they are hand carved out of balsa wood, extraordinary in detail

Battle of Waterloo, horse and rider down, rider even has a severe head injury

Conquistadores demolishing the Incas

These have elaborate helmet decorations

The Romans loading the catapult

Fantastic elephant in battle

Torres de Quart, we took the stairs to the top

Placa de Torros

Blog Hiatus

Blog posting is cancelled today because we are too lazy and our random thoughts are of no interest to anybody but ourselves.  We didn’t do much today, we basically took the day off from our usual half-crazed travel itinerary.  We did have to take care of mundane domestic chores, by the time we completed our household duties, we rationalized that it was too late to do much.  I am sure we will make up for it tomorrow.

Valencia

This morning we walked a couple of km to the Mercato Central, which is in the old part (Ciutat Vella) of Valencia.  This is a huge food market in a wonderful Moderniste building made of cast iron.  The market wasn’t too busy when we got there, mostly just locals grocery shopping, but it started to get a lot busier by the time we left.  There are more food products in this market than you can imagine, we purchased enough supplies to last us to the end of our stay in Valencia.  We were foaming at the mouth over the beautiful, crisp heads of romaine lettuce, for about .75 Canadian per head.

After we came back to our apartment to drop off our groceries, we went out to walk down a portion of the Turia Riverbed park, which is a 7 km green space that runs through the city.  The Turia river used to flow through the city, but after severe flooding, the river was diverted and the riverbed is now a park.

We walked by the Palau de la Musica so we stopped in and purchased tickets to a concert by the Valencia Orchestra and the Philharmonic Chorus for this evening.  I asked the woman at the ticket desk to pick the seats for us, as we had no clue which seats to select.  There were not that many seats left but she selected good seats for us in the balcony section.  Then we walked down to the City of Arts and Sciences.

The City of Arts and Sciences is a group of futuristic looking buildings designed by the Valencian architect Santiago Calatrava.  He really went wild with his designs.

We really walked a lot today, something like 5 hours or so, it is more difficult to walk on flat, hard surfaces than it is to walk up and down mountains.  Although, this is a great walking city and the sweet scent of orange blossoms is everywhere.  We have noticed that the Valencians carry substantially more body weight than people in other parts of Spain, we think this is due to the flat terrain here, they don’t have to trudge up and down steep hills, so they don’t burn off the Valencian oranges and pastries that they are eating.  This is quite the food city, people eat and drink everywhere and at all hours.

We were lazy but had to keep moving when we got back from our long walk, as we had to have tea and then get dinner cooked so we could go to the concert tonight.  We were sitting at the concert wondering where all of the concert goers were, then they all blew in at the last minute and the concert hall was almost full.

The conductor was hilarious to watch, he knows the dimensions of his podium because he was quite dynamic and glided around the podium, sometimes very near to the edge.  The first piece was for violin, by Camille Saint-Saens, the guest violinist came from Israel.  He was very good and the audience gave him three ovations, then he came back and played an encore.

It was time for intermission so we went to wander around the building, they had cava stations set up, selling glasses of cava along with some small snack plates of some sort.

The next piece was by Rossini, this included a soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor, and a bass singer, as well as the huge choral group.  The piece was long, lasting 70 minutes or so and we didn’t want it to end, it was absolutely fantastic.  The acoustics in the concert hall were exceptional and the choral group was unbelievable.  The conductor became even more animated, he did not have the sheet music to read, he just knew it all.  The concert really was spectacular, we were quite in awe.

After the concert, we walked back to the City of Arts and Sciences to take a few nighttime pics, then we walked back to the apartment, there are people on the streets everywhere at night.  It took us about an hour to walk back, now, we really were fed-up with walking for the day.

Mercato Central

Palau de les Arts - Opera house

Museu de les Ciencies Principe Felipe - Science museum

Hemispheric - Imax theatre (on the right)

Palau de les Arts - Opera house

l'Agora (in background)

Sort of a futuristic looking greenhouse

Museu de les Ciencies Principe Felipe - Science museum

Valencia Orchestra and the Philharmonic Chorus

Travel Snags

More than a few things go off the rails when we travel, some are self-inflicted, some just happen, as that is the nature of travel.  More often than not, the snags resolve and in some minute way, we tend to benefit from them.

The language barrier tends to complicate things more than usual.  We loved having a diesel car as we didn’t have the inconvenience of trying to figure out how to do something so simple as fuel up at a service station very often, as the car went forever on a tank of diesel.  Sometimes you have to pay ahead, sometimes you don’t, the pump speaks Spanish and we stand there wondering what it is saying.  We had to be extra vigilant with the diesel car, the pumps were colour coded in Catalunya, blue for diesel, there is no colour differentiation in Valencia.

Then there is the problem of trying to find an address of an apartment on a street that doesn’t seem to exist in the GPS or in google maps.  When we drove to Teruel, the GPS took us through a huge municipal cemetery, which is a series of buildings and crypt areas, we got out of there only to end up nowhere near our destination.  We called the owner who communicated with difficulty that he didn’t know where we were either.  However, we noted we were right beside a car wash, which we needed, more about that later.

So off we drove, we just happened to go in the correct direction and saw the old aqueduct, he told us to stop under it, so we did.  Then he could not find us, problem was, we were parked on the upper level and should have been on the lower level, of course we didn’t know it even existed.  Finally, we were given a more common street, we plugged that into the GPS and found our way to the correct location.

When we left Teruel today we thought we had better wash the car as it was in a mess after getting covered in dust in Catalunya.  Rather than complicate matters in Valencia, we wanted to get to the car wash in Teruel which was near the cemetery.  For some reason the GPS no longer had that location in its brain, so we just drove north as that was the direction from which we entered Teruel a few days before.  Luckily we saw a sign pointing to the cemetery, so we drove through it again and found the car wash.

Stupidly, we didn’t check how much coinage we had before going to the car wash, we had one euro and a .50 Euro, it would have to do.  Then we had to figure out which button to push for soap, luckily, a guy just starting washing his car in the next bay so I walked into his bay and looked at his panel and chose the same button, we put the euro coin in and John started spraying like a madman to get the car washed before the time ran out.  To switch to rinse, I just checked the panel in the next bay again and we got the car washed and rinsed in time.

We wanted to use the vacuum but only had a .50 and it needed a euro so we took off.  When we got to Valencia, we stopped before entering the city to fuel up before dropping the rental car off.  This place had a pump attendant in the fuel station who started the pump from the building and waved at us to indicate we could start fuelling, I guess he noticed us dithering too long at the pump.  As we were driving out, John noticed a vacuum, so we pulled in to vacuum the car as it was full of sand and gravel that our hiking boots left on the floor.  We thought we needed a euro coin for the vacuum, so John noted the word for vacuum and went into the station to get coins, turns out, you have to purchase a special coin from the attendant to run the vacuum.

Driving through Valencia was bit of a trial as we had to go right into the city to the train station to return the car.  They tend to straddle lanes here and just skim by each other.  We were happy to get behind a bus as we knew if the bus could get down a street, we could.  But they are setting up for the Valencia fire festival, burn stuff party, that happens in March, and the bus barely squeezed past parked cars on the street.  A lot of cars have scrapped side panels and crunched corners, this is the place to drive a crapmobile.

We got to Valencia way ahead of schedule and in e-mail communication with the apartment owner, we learned that we had to wait four hours before we could meet her at the apartment.  Since we were burdened with luggage, we made our way to a park at the end of our street and spent the time witnessing the mating rituals of pigeons and young Valencians, the overuse of camera phones, dogs soaking anything standing vertical and a guy in a John Deere tractor smoothing a small gravel surface with a tow behind blade for hours, seriously.

After meeting the apartment owner who was very nice, we headed out for some groceries.  When we got back with our two bags of supplies, there was a woman standing outside the door of the building communicating to us that the lock was broken and we could not get in and the old couple inside the door could not get out, bit of a safety failure in our view.  She also communicated that someone had been called to deal with it.  We were grateful we happened along when these people were there so we knew what was going on, otherwise we would have been in the lurch.

So we took off and sat outside at a table on the sidewalk at a bar/café and had a café con leche and made sure we waited a long time before going back to see if the lock was repaired.  When we got back, the whole lock mechanism had been removed, good enough.

Random, meaningless pics for a travel day....

Tortosa cannon aimed at local hospital

John's fascination with linked caterpillars

We saw these often while hiking

Village near Tortosa specialized in fan palm craft

Albarracin

Albarracin was a Moorish village with a defensive wall that runs behind the village on a steep hillside.  The landscape near Albarracin is rather bleak looking, with scrubby, dry hillsides, but the earth and the rock are a rich red.  That same colour is used in the buildings of this attractive medieval village that is tucked into the hills, while the Rio Guadalaviar meanders around it.

After parking the car in the substantial parking lot, we found the tourist information centre and requested a trail walking map in our attempt at Spanish.  This was understood and the attendant responded in English with a map and a recommendation for a 14 km, 4.5 hour walk.  She also provided a map of the village.

We walked through the village and immediately headed up the hillside to the walls.  There were portions of the wall that we could walk on.  One section had quite the incline and one had better not have vertigo if walking it was the aim.  We walked down this section and then down another section, but then we had to take to the ground to get up to the highest portion of the wall.

The views of the village from the wall were exceptional.  After we had enough of roaming the walls, we decided to take on the 14 km walk, so we grabbed our water and walked out of the newer section of the town.

The path ascended the featureless hillside but then entered pine forest which made for a pleasant walk.  The path then became a sandy red road that led to some ancient etchings made in the rock.  The etchings have been closed off with an iron fence and they have placed a steel board which shows the etchings, as some are rather difficult to discern.

We visited the etchings along the path and then ended up at a developed picnic area where a path, built like a freeway, led through the pine woods to more etchings and a mirador or viewpoint.  We encountered a few people attempting some ‘bouldering’ where they throw a thick mat down on the ground and then climb up the gigantic boulders.  It appears to be quite a popular activity as more than a few people were lugging around the big mats and there were several signs prohibiting bouldering in most of the area.

We then got on a really great hiking trail through some terrific rocky landscape, which led back to Albarracin.  The sharp contrast between the vividly red rock and the equally vivid green pine is impressive.  The walk took us about 3.5 hours.

We are only spending two nights here, which is the perfect amount of time.  Tomorrow is a travel day as we are off to Valencia, our final stop, prior to returning to Barcelona for a few days.

View of village

Buildings stacked up the hillside

We walked down and back up the incline

View from the wall

The red really lights up in the sunlight

View from the hiking trail

Ancient etching on the rock

Rock formations

Views from the mirador

The return route went past some interesting cliffs