| Barcelona is the second largest Spanish
city in population and the principal industrial and commercial center
of the country. The chief manufactures are textiles, precision instruments,
machinery, railroad equipment, paper, glass, and plastics. Barcelona
is a major Mediterranean port and a financial and publishing center
of Spain.
Barcelona is now Spain's hippest town. Summer gives way to periodic
lapses in sanity with week-long festa fun. But year-round the city
cooks - it's always on the biting edge of fashion, architecture,
food, style, music and good times.
The buildings, featuring the work of an eccentric genius named
Gaudi, will blow you away. The art, with significant collections
by Picasso and Mir?, will make you clammy all over. The people,
with their exuberance, their duende, their persistent egalitarianism
and clamour for a separate identity, will fascinate you.
The oldest section of the city of Barcelona, formerly enclosed
by walls, was built on the harbor and is traversed by the Rambla,
a paved thoroughfare extending from the harbor to the Plaza de Catalunya,
the focal point of the city. The streets of the old section are
narrow and crooked; in the newer sections they are wide and straight,
and the buildings are modern. Dominating Barcelona's skyscape are
the fantastic openwork spires of Templo Expiatorio de la Sagrada
Familia (Church of the Sacred Family), a huge, unfinished cathedral
notable for the elaborate patterns and undulating curves characteristic
of its builder, the Catalan architect Antonio Gaudy Cornet.
Barcelona is one of the most dynamic and exciting cities on the
western Mediterranean seaboard, sedulously promoting itself as a
European metropolis, a link between the sub-Pyrenean peninsula and
the heartland of Western Europe. It is a city that is inconceivable
until you get there, unbelievable while you walk its streets and
unforgettable after you've gone. You'll need plenty of time to take
it all in. |
Athens
