A city with charm

Women Trav­ellers in Cata­lan Lands

The charm of Barcelona, lies, I think, in a few early build­ings, to wit, the four­teenth cen­tury Town Hall, the unique old Par­lia­ment House of Cat­alo­nia and the beau­ti­ful fif­teenth cen­tury Gothic cathe­dral where the streets sur­round­ing it have their un­mo­lested being with the shad­ows and nar­row­nesses of palace walks of the same epoch. There is an old palace (with fa­mous ceil­ing) built by Charles V, that left Fran­cis the First in awe of Span­ish wealth when he was kept pris­oner in 1525 -do you know it?

I found the Cathe­dral par­tic­u­larly im­pres­sive in­side and out. The fine an­cient glass and carv­ings of the leg­endary Knight and Dragon, the foun­tained court where white geese and pi­geons still plume them­selves, the al­tars pro­tected with the bent-iron screens of the ear­lier church, all please one's taste for ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal ar­chi­tec­ture and its or­na­ture.

Out­side this ed­i­fice, walk­ing in the cob­bled by­ways, one's at­ten­tion is drawn to the dec­o­ra­tive fig­urines of com­po­si­tion im­mured back of the glass in the base­ment shop win­dows where scenes fa­mil­iar to the two Span­ish re­li­gions-mean­ing the life of Christ and the gay lit­tle “ases del Toros” of the Bull Ring- can be pur­chased ei­ther in groups or singly. They are the pret­ti­est to be found in all Spain. I have some care­fully packed for pre­sents.

The or­di­nary show-win­dows of Barcelona pro­claim the pros­per­ity of the Cat­alo­ni­ans in the high grades of chic ap­parel and toi­let ac­ces­sories. All this fin­ery is a no­tice­able change from the av­er­age Span­ish city where the an­tiques in the shops are the only temp­ta­tions to the tour­ing artist. The pro­pri­etors of these shops tell me they are now thriv­ing on the de­mands of Ital­ian buy­ers who find no more Ital­ian an­tiques in Italy to sell to the tourists and are comb­ing Spain for a sup­ply.

The Cat­alo­ni­ans going about their ac­tiv­i­ties, singing their songs in their own lan­guage and speak­ing Castil­ian to the out­side world, have brought Barcelona into a hec­tic nine­teenth cen­tury pros­per­ity. Dis­in­ter­est­ed­ness of the peo­ple to strangers on the streets in­di­cates an­other plane of thought or Span­ish ed­u­ca­tion. All classes are busy mak­ing money-the vig­or­ous Goths and Alanes are com­ing into the ex­pres­sion of racial dis­tinc­tion. Around six o'clock young men and women crowd the hotel din­ing rooms to drink their tea and dance Amer­i­can Jazz. Per­haps some like to sit in the clubs fully asleep or flirt (as you said they did) from the win­dows, as do the army of­fi­cers and cock-mid­den gen­try of Madrid or Sevilla. But I doubt it, for this one rea­son-Barcelona is like Mi­lano, (Mus­solini's adopted province in Italy) . . . the men come out to seek the ladies with all the vim of a full de­vel­oped van­ity! Also there is plenty to talk about . . . Primo de Rivera and the new change of Gov­ern­ment, for Barcelona is up­roar­i­ously “politico”. Every­one here has the feel­ing of “change”. There is much fret­ting under the Dic­ta­tor­ship. Lib­er­als there are enough to sup­port a jour­nal that prints of­fi­cious ed­i­to­r­ial opin­ions of “Don Al­fonso”. The an­ar­chists, as in every other coun­try, are tak­ing their soap­box stands here and there but they don't make a scratch over the lac­quer of deco­rous­ness which proves all Spain to be in­ac­tively suf­fi­cient unto it­self.

The new Barcelona has been crys­tal­lized by the needs of the grow­ing Me­trop­o­lis. Broad fine streets are well lighted with lamps that on the longest av­enue have their set­ting in beau­ti­fully mod­ern ce­ment benches which at noon are filled with clerks from the stores. The lat­ter day streets are faced with over-trimmed apart­ment houses, some de­signed in a fash­ion that leaves one lost. For ex­am­ple, there are the de­lib­er­ately af­fected forms of the cave dwelling ar­chi­tec­ture, by Gaudi, where three or four-sto­ried apart­ment houses loom up in ir­reg­u­lar lay­ers like one cave on an­other but fit­ted in­side with the con­ve­niences of Amer­i­can homes.

Be­fore I got around to the sev­eral churches dat­ing from the tenth and eleventh cen­turies (not being in­ter­ested in the 18th-cen­tury con­glom­er­ates) I took a run out to­wards the edge of the city to what was to have been the new Cathe­dral of The Holy Fam­ily. It is a ter­ri­ble half fin­ished mass of bad sculp­tures that creep and crawl, stran­gling the feel­ing for ar­chi­tec­tural pro­por­tions and so ex­pres­sive of the devil and all his evils that it will be a long year be­fore I can re­move Don Gaudi's fan­tasy from my spe­cial cham­ber of hor­rors! I asked the dri­ver what this un­fin­ished tow­er­ing mass might be and he im­me­di­ately won me by shrug­ging his shoul­ders and re­ply­ing, “Oh, Madame, that is a mad-house for the owls and bats” - a per­fect pic­ture of the util­ity for which it now stands

So you see I have had a crowded day, and you may won­der how I did it. One's ca­pac­ity hap­pily stretches under the ne­ces­sity if one has a sense of humor and the es­tate of lov­ing un­com­mon ex­hi­bi­tions of things com­mon to all mankind as ex­pressed by his ge­o­graph­i­cal pos­si­bil­i­ties. […] If I had had my usual health I should have made sev­eral stops en­route -or even taken the day train in order to see the an­cient cas­tles which are said to be within sight of the poky train. My am­bi­tion now is to take a lit­tle boat for the Balearics and drive into the in­te­rior in order to have an idea of that civ­i­liza­tion be­fore going back to France and to a re­li­able Médico.