Barcelona & Columbus

Photograph of the monument in 2023 by RayAdvait, reproduced courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Grove Koger

Barcelona’s Columbus Monument, or, as the Spanish know it, the Monumento a Colón or Mirador de Colón, stands proudly at the lower end of the city’s most famous avenue(s), Las Ramblas.

Maggie and I have walked by it many a time, but it’s only recently that I’ve gotten curious about it.

According to Robert Hughes’ 1992 history Barcelona (Knopf), the monument was the “first symbol” of what Hughes calls the “‘new” city, one born (or, rather, reborn) out of the Universal Exposition of 1888. The event was the port’s first World’s Fair, and the monument itself was commissioned by the mayor of Barcelona, Rius i Talet (1833-1890), and designed by Gaietà Buïgas i Monravà (1851-1919).

John Marcus Dickey’s 1892 book Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia (Rand, McNally) includes a detailed account of the work’s construction. As Dickey explains, it “was cast in the workshops of A. Wohlgemuth, … and was made in eight pieces.” The base alone weighed 31.5 tons and the capital itself weighed 29.5 tons, while the statue of Columbus weighed an astonishing 41 tons. The total cost ran to one million pesetas, a third of which was collected by public subscription, while the remainder was contributed by the city itself.

Those are the cold facts, but, as Hughes remarks, the “mood of the time has been captured better by fiction than by history,” and recommends Eduardo Mendoza’s “saturnine and brilliant novel” The City of Marvels (1986) for its take on the city during this period.

But why Columbus, who was, after all, born in the Italian port of Genoa? At one time, Barcelonans apparently chose to believe that he was a native of their own city. After all, he had sailed on his first historic voyage to the New World for Spain, although it was actually from Palos de la Frontera, in the country’s southernmost region, that he set out.

And, after all again, he had later sailed into the Spanish port of Barcelona to report his discovery personally to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. Never mind that, upon his return from the New World, he had first anchored in the Azores (a Portuguese possession), and then in the Portuguese capital of Lisbon, before reaching Palos de la Frontera again, and then, finally, Barcelona.

And yet, there the monument is, rising to a height of 197 feet or so above the port’s waterfront. (If you wish, an elevator will take you up to the top, but I’ve always been much happier with my feet firmly on the ground, so we’ve passed up the opportunity.) The figure of the explorer points out to sea toward … the coast of North Africa. But then it wouldn’t make sense for a sailor to point out across the Iberian Peninsula, would it?

If you’d like to subscribe to World Enough, enter your email address below:

And if you’ve enjoyed today’s post, please share!

Barcelona’s Beaches, Then & Now

Pablo Picasso, *Barceloneta Beach,* 1896

Grove Koger

On our visits to Barcelona, Maggie and I have always made a point of visiting at least one of the port’s beaches. Any modern vacation along the shores of the Mediterranean is likely to involve sunbathing and swimming, but the story here over the past decades, not to mention centuries, seems to have been different.

Barcelona wasn’t quite without beaches in the past, as Pablo Picasso’s 1896 painting Barceloneta Beach indicates, although I don’t believe that it or the city’s other beaches attracted many swimmers. As you can see from the photograph below, the following decades didn’t bring a lot of changes.

However, the situation underwent a spectacular change in the run-up to the 1992 Summer Olympics. That’s when the city cleared away the aging industrial areas along its shoreline to create 3 miles or so of recreational beaches, primarily with sand imported from … Egypt. (I’m always surprised when I think about that source, since Egypt is at the other end of the Mediterranean, some 4,000 nautical miles away, but then maybe Egyptian sand is really good sand.)

The result is a wide, more-or-less continuous strip of fine, golden sand running along the city’s shoreline, divided a bit vaguely into 8 or so individual beaches with slightly differing characteristics. Over the years, we’ve swum along several. Our 2018 photograph, taken from the northern end of Barceloneta Beach, shows freighters anchored in the port’s roadstead, with the imposing silhouette of the W Hotel punctuating the southern tip of Sant Sebastià Beach.

Things have changed!

☼ ☼ ☼

If you’d like to subscribe to World Enough, enter your email address below:

And if you’ve enjoyed today’s post, please share!

The Mystery of Aérea del Mediterraneo

Grove Koger

I admit up front that I really don’t have much to say about Compañia Aérea del Mediterraneo. So far as I can determine, there’s really not much to be said.

My interest in the Spanish airline has been sparked by a reproduction of a sign I bought years ago in Palma, the capital of the island of Mallorca. It was market day, and vendors had gathered behind long tables to sell everything under the sun, including postcards and other forms of paper memorabilia. And it was in one dealer’s tray that I saw a reproduction of what, I believe, would have been an enameled metal sign—an advertisement for a company identified as Aérea del Mediterraneo, S.A. (The initials stand for “Société anonyme,” more or less the equivalent of our “Incorporated.”). The name meant nothing to me, but the image was immediately arresting. To this day, its wonderfully balanced but dynamic arrangement of shapes, letters, and colors is one of the most graceful pieces of design I’ve ever seen.

Wanting to know more, I’ve taken a careful look at the reproduction. In tiny letters on the right side of the sign I can make out what may be the name of the artist—“Merino”—but I can’t identify anyone by that name active during the 1930s.

Next, I’ve spent some time tracking down what little information about the company I can find online, and I’ve turned up a handful of references.

On September 24, 1933, for instance, the Gaceta de Madrid carried a notice that Ginés Mayoral Andreu, the managing director of Aérea del Mediterraneo, had been granted a concession to carry passengers and small packages between Barcelona, the Balearic Islands, and Valencia. The company was said to have at its disposal two Dornier “Wall” aircraft with engines built by Hispano-Suiza. Along with information about ticket prices, the notice also stated that the first three flights—and this may be pertinent—were to be considered “test trips.” This notice was repeated on September 27 by La Vanguardia.

The company’s planes were flying boats, versions of the Dornier Do J Wal (“Whale”). Each sported a wing mounted above its fuselage and two propellers—a “tractor” and a “pusher”—mounted above that. Models destined for civilian use could carry 12 passengers. In Flying Boats & Seaplanes—A History from 1905 (Bay View, 1998), Stéphane Nicolaou calls the aircraft (seen above in the harbor of Slite, Sweden, in the summer of 1925) the “greatest commercial success in the history of marine aviation.” You can watch a 1935 film of one departing from Bathurst, Gambia, here.

However, Aérea del Mediterraneo doesn’t seem to have been able to take advantage of its Dorniers. In “La Aeronáutica Española de 1898 a 1936,” L. Utrilla Navarro mentions that the company “only made a few flights on the Barcelona-Palma-Valencia line.” In “Das Flugboot Dornier ‘Wal’ (DO J),” Günter Frost calls it “rather short-lived.”

And that’s it. I can’t determine what factors led to the company’s early demise. Like much of the rest of the world, however, Spain suffered during the years of the Great Depression (1929-1939), with its economy suffering a slowdown of about 20 per cent. So, was the economic situation to blame? Did it doom a concern relying on people’s ability to travel? Were those three “test runs” the only flights? The answers may lie in a forgotten file in some dusty archive in Spain, but I’ll never know.

Aérea del Mediterraneo’s life, like that of many businesses, seems to have been brief. But in commissioning a talented artist to create a sign, it left a lovely memorial to its brief passage.

□□□

If you’ve enjoyed today’s post, please share!

Barcelona’s New Old Port

Grove Koger

Unable to travel overseas for the last couple of years, Maggie and I have been enjoying webcam videos of some of our favorite sites in Europe over coffee every morning. And the one you can see here, of Barcelona’s Port Vell, is one of the best.

I hadn’t given the name any thought, or even realized that a port might need a name of its own, but once I started investigating the situation, I understood that I’d taken most of Barcelona’s extensive waterfront for granted. It turns out that the city actually has several ports, including a commercial-industrial port and a tariff-free industrial park. In addition, there are Port Olimpic and, farther north, Port Fòrum Sant Adrià, both designed to accommodate yachts.

The Catalan word vell means “old” in English, and the contradiction embodied in the title of today’s post is a reference to the fact that Port Vell was actually built just prior to the city’s 1992 Olympic Games. Over the preceding decades, the area had deteriorated badly, but now it presents a gleaming and attractive face to the world, offering a warm welcome to the myriad vessels that visit it regularly. If you’re one of the millions of people who’ve entered or departed from Barcelona by ferry or cruise liner (or even yacht, since it includes a marina), you’ve probably passed through Port Vell.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is barcelona-port-authority.jpg

This new/old port is also the site of a mall, which we’ve never paid attention to, but at its edge, we’ve regularly admired three older structures (there goes that contradiction again!)—a 197-foot column celebrating Christopher Columbus; the neoclassical Aduana, or Customs Building; and the Port Authority Building. The Columbus Monument was designed by Catalan artist Gaietà Buigas I Monravà for Barcelona’s first World’s Fair, the Exposició Universal de Barcelona of 1888, and stands at the foot of the city’s celebrated, tree-lined avenue, La Rambla. The Aduana was the work of architects Enric Ferran Josep Lluis Sagnier and Pere Garcia Fària and opened in 1902, while the handsome Port Authority Building, the work of architect Julio Valdés, opened originally as a customs house and passenger terminal in 1907.

Port Vell is also adjacent to Sant Sebastià Beach, the first of a long string of inviting man-made beaches stretching for several miles up the coast. (The sand, in case you’re wondering, was shipped from Egypt!)

Our photograph at the top of today’s post shows the entrance to Port Vell; the sail-like structure on the right is the W Hotel, completed in 2010. Our second and third photographs show the Aduana and the Port Authority, while the fourth shows Barcelona’s most popular beach, Barceloneta, and the W Hotel from the north; the ships you see on the horizon are anchored in Barcelona’s roadstead.

□□□

If you’ve enjoyed today’s post, please share!

A Walk in the Park in Barcelona

Grove Koger

If things had turned out differently, Maggie and I would be in Barcelona about now, and one of the city’s many attractions we’d be visiting would be the 70-acre Parc de la Ciutadella—the Park of the Citadel.

At the time we made our hotel reservations in 2018, we were only vaguely aware of the proximity of the park. That changed quickly after we checked in, as we stared out from our fifth-floor window onto a sea of green across the street. However, there was … something … golden, so shiny that it was hard to discern in the bright August sun, far below us amidst the trees.

As we explored the park that afternoon, we realized, more or less, what it was that we had spied. I phrase it that way because it took some time and study to make out what we were seeing, but even then it wasn’t quite clear. The Font de la Cascada almost defies description, but Robert Hughes comes close in his book Barcelona (Knopf, 1992). “With its triumphal arch and steps, its quadriga [four-horse chariot] and its water-spouting griffins, its Neptune and Leda and Amphitrite and Danaë, its river gods and its central group of a chastely draped marine Venus in a flamenco posture, standing on a shell on top of what appears to be a mass of artificial lava dragged, against friction, by four sea horses, the Cascade is a work of almost unsurpassable ugliness, pomposity, and eclectic confusion.”

As you might have guessed, the Cascade is the work of a committee. In its original, and undoubtedly more satisfying, form, it dates from 1881, but that simple design apparently didn’t sit well with a public hungry for Culture. As a result, a clutch of architects (including young Antoni Gaudí) were commissioned to make it artier. And they did …

Digging into the park’s history, we learned that its name can be traced back to 1714, the year that marked the end of the Siege of Barcelona and, with it, the conclusion of the divisive War of the Spanish Succession. In the conflict’s aftermath, the victorious Philip V, whom the Catalonians had opposed, tore down a section of the port’s Ribera district to erect an enormous five-cornered citadel—which Barcelona’s citizens themselves were forced to build and pay for. By the middle of the following century, however, the hated citadel was no longer needed and many of its walls and buildings were razed. Juan Prim, who was briefly Spain’s Prime Minister, ceded the land to the city on condition that it be turned into a public park.

Parc de la Ciutadella’s extensive grounds were landscaped by architect Josep Fontsére in the early 1870s, and a few years later, in 1888, the park was chosen as the site of the Exposició Universal de Barcelona. It was thanks to this event that the park took on the general aspect that we see today, as it involved, among other improvements, the construction of the fanciful Castell dels tres dracs, or Castle of the Three Dragons (seen in the background of the photograph at the top of today’s post), and, what’s since become my favorite Barcelonian landmark, the truly magnificent red brick Arc de Triumf, or Triumphal Arch, which served as the main entrance to the fair.

The park also offered us more modest pleasures. We couldn’t help enjoying the antics of its many flocks of green parrots (Myiopsitta monachus). Descendants of unwanted South American pets, they’ve taken up raucous residence in and around the city—much to the consternation of the area’s garden farmers, who’ve seen their fields of tomatoes ravaged by the hungry invaders. Best of all, we sighted a delightful Eurasian hoopoe (Upupa epops) one afternoon bobbing its way across the grass near where we were sitting.

I should mention that our hotel was the Motel One Barcelona-Ciutadella, which we had chosen not because of its name—“Motel One” must sound more exciting to European ears than to ours—but because it offers a rooftop terrace and bar. I ran across an article the other day headlined “Rooftop Cocktails in Barcelona!” The phrase has a pretentious air to it, but rooftop cocktails—gin and tonics, to be exact—are indeed what we enjoyed every evening of our visit as we stared out across the park and the city’s skyline to the open sea beyond.

If you’ve enjoyed today’s post, please share!

The Most Precious Spice

Grove Koger

Saffron is harvested from a species of crocus, Crocus sativus. At one time or another, it’s been worth more than its weight in gold—a fact due to the tiny yield from each plant as well as the arduous methods under which it must be harvested.

Each violet Crocus sativus flower blooms for only a week or two in the fall, and each produces only three stigmas—pollen-bearing structures resembling very short threads—of saffron. The flowers are harvested by hand in the morning, when they’re still closed, after which the stigmas must be plucked and dried within a few hours. You can see a short National Geographic video about the process here.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is saffron-2.jpg

Estimates of the number of flowers necessary to yield a specific amount of the spice vary, but one that I’ve run across says that it takes about 4,600 of them, or nearly 14,000 stigmas, to produce a single ounce of the dried spice. Our little bottle of Mancha-Ora brand from Barcelona weighs a gram (that’s less than four-hundredths of an ounce), so if my math is correct, it contained almost 500 stigmas when we bought it.

Saffron is grown commercially in Iran as well as in India and the countries on the northern shores of the Mediterranean. It may also have originated in Iran, or possibly Greece, where it was cultivated in the Bronze Age. Frescoes in the Minoan palace of Knossos show saffron flowers being picked by girls and, remarkably enough, monkeys, leading me to wonder how the creatures might have been trained.

Closer to our own day, Saffron proved popular in England, with Sir Francis Drake asserting that the “liberal use of saffron in their broths and sweet-meats” made the English “sprightly.” For a time, saffron was actually grown in Drake’s homeland, with one of the principal areas celebrating the fact in its name of Saffron Walden.

Dried saffron is generally deep red in color, but its other qualities are elusive, particularly for a substance that’s so precious. To me, it smells a bit like hay or dry grass and tastes both bitter and very slightly floral when steeped in warm water. It’s best considered, I think, as a substance that enhances other flavors. We use it in paella, and find that it adds a warm, golden color and “presence” to the dish.

□□□

A late note: Several days after I wrote the text for today’s blog, the Guardian carried a report that Spanish authorities had just arrested several people and confiscated more than half a ton of Iranian saffron that had been smuggled into Spain. The spice had been dyed to resemble Spanish saffron, adulterated with “flower debris” to increase its bulk, and priced to undercut the genuine Spanish product.

□□□

The photograph at the top of today’s post was taken by Xtendo (pixabay.com) and is reproduced courtesy of Needpix.com. The second photograph, of saffron stigmas, is by Fotoscot, and the third, of a reconstructed fresco from the Palace at Knossos in Heraklion’s Archaeological Museum, is by ArchaiOptix; both are reproduced courtesy of Wikipedia.

Barcelona’s Magnificent Basilica

Grove Koger

Every city seems to want an icon, and in the Basílica i Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família, to give the building its Catalan name, Barcelona has found a truly extraordinary one.

The Asociación Espiritual de Devotos de San José undertook a campaign for a church dedicated to the Holy Family in 1866, but it was only in 1882 that its cornerstone was laid. The architect at that time was one Francisco de Paula del Villar y Lozano, but he was replaced soon afterward by the young Antoni Gaudí i Cornet, and the stage was set for building what would turn out to be one of the most unusual religious structures in Europe.

Gaudí had studied architecture at Barcelona’s Higher School of Architecture and would make a name for himself with such projects as the ornate Art Nouveau Casa Vicens, on which he had begun work in 1883. In time he would be recognized as the most original figure of the Catalan Modernisme movement.

Thanks to an anonymous donation, Gaudí discarded his modest plans for the Sagrada Familia and developed a vision for a much grander structure. Over the following years, he and his team worked on the Sagrada as well as a number of other projects in the Barcelona area, including the Casa Calvet, the fantastic Park Güell and the sinuous Casa Milà, After 1914, however, the architect devoted himself entirely to the basilica.

At the time of Gaudí’s death in 1926—he had been struck by one of Barcelona’s trolley cars—the basilica was unfinished, and while it remains so to this day, there’s been a push to complete it by 2026. During our recent visits, cranes have been in competion with the building’s towering spires. If all goes according to plan, the Sagrada’s tallest one will be topped with a giant cross, making it an astonishing 560 feet high.

Opinions of the Sagrada Familia differ. In describing Gaudí’s work in an article in the Summer 2019 issue of Art Patron, I pointed out that the architect “based the elements of his style directly on natural forms and textures—caves and mountain crags, trees and animals. Combine this insight into the organic world with a deep religiosity and a preference for such architectural elements as the catenary arch, and you have a style that remains radical, even jarring.” He himself remarked that “nothing is art if it does not come from nature,” and ornamented the basilica’s facades with sculptures of such animals as snails, turtles, dogs and ladybirds. Praised by such architects as Louis Sullivan and Walter Gropius, the structure nevertheless has had its outspoken critics. George Orwell, who saw it when he was fighting with nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War, called it “one of the most hideous buildings in the world.”

And the controversy continues, with some critics arguing that the basilica should be left uncompleted. Adding ammunition to their argument is the fact that sculptor Josep Maria Subirachs, who has been hired to design one of the structure’s remaining facades, has departed from Gaudí’s own style.

Beautiful or hideous, complete or not, the Sagrada Familia must be seen to be believed.

□□□

To read my article “Barcelona & Beyond” in Art Patron, go to https://art-highlights.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Art-Patron-Summer-2019-reduced.pdf, pages 32-35.

□□□

The photograph at the top of the post is from our 2010 visit to Barcelona. The portrait of Gaudí dates from 1878 and is by Pau Audouard, while the photo below shows the basilica as it looked in 1915.

Barcelona’s Hotel Continental

450px-Hotel_Continental_(Barcelona_-_2014)

Grove Koger

Maggie and I stayed in the elegant Hotel Continental during our first trip to Barcelona in 1998, and we’ve tried to spend at least a night or two there every time we pass through the city. It’s located on Barcelona’s main thoroughfare, Las Ramblas, near the big Plaça de Catalunya, and on our most recent visits, including this year’s, we’ve asked for a room with a balcony overlooking the busy street and its spreading plane trees. It’s a grand view—but read on …

The Continental’s history goes back more than a century, and apparently it once occupied a building next door. Its ownership changed in 1931, but in 1936, in the opening months of the Spanish Civil War, those new owners were “invited” (as the hotel puts it) to leave the building so that the besieged local government could set up new headquarters in their place. George Orwell’s wife, Eileen, lived in the Continental while her husband fought for the duly elected Spanish Republic, and he mentions the establishment several times in his vivid account of his experiences, Homage to Catalonia.

Hotel Continental

In that book, Orwell described the “pressing shortage of food” gripping Barcelona, and the Continental, in 1937: “On that Thursday night the principal dish at dinner was one sardine each. The hotel had no bread for days and even the wine was running so low that we were drinking older and older wines at higher and higher prices.”

Today, in contrast, the hotel maintains a small around-the-clock buffet that includes both wine and beer.

Hotel Continental 2

In an article I published in 2011, I called cosmopolitan Barcelona the “capital of the world.” I don’t see any reason to change that admittedly over-the-top assessment, but I realize that there are some disadvantages to the situation. Since 1972, when I visited Barcelona for the first time, it’s become one of Europe’s most popular tourist destinations, and it can now be astonishingly busy. Maggie and I had just spent two weeks of blessed calm in Majorca before returning to the city, and we found the sudden onslaught of people and cars on the Ramblas overwhelming. And yet, there we were, in the Continental, and it was good to be back!

□□□

The photo at the top of the page is by Jordiferrer and is reproduced courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. The image in the middle appeared on a travel advertisement, probably of the 1930s, and is taken from the cover of a small notebook that now sits on Maggie’s shelf. The luggage label at the bottom probably dates from a little later, and is part of my collection of travel ephemera.

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Grove Koger

Today, in contrast, the hotel maintains a small around-the-clock buffet that includes both wine and beer.

Share this: