Girona comes under siege

Girona's old quar­ter is used to wan­der­ing groups of vis­i­tors. Yet last month, there was an­other ex­pla­na­tion for the crowds of tourists tramp­ing around the nar­row streets of the city's Barri Vell, as the film­ing of HBO's Game of Thrones got un­der­way. While crowd bar­ri­ers and se­cu­rity guards pre­vented by­standers see­ing too much of the film­ing for sea­son six of the TV se­ries, most vis­i­tors were happy to get a few pho­tos of the Sant Martí steps con­verted into a me­dieval-style mar­ket.

The film­ing began by turn­ing the city cen­tre into a stand-in for Braavos, the bustling city that has be­come the home of Arya Stark, played by Maisie Williams. In fact, the two weeks of film­ing began with pho­tos of Williams cir­cu­lat­ing on Twit­ter, with the actor her­self post­ing her thanks on the so­cial net­work with the hash­tag, #Girona.

The cam­eras began rolling on Sep­tem­ber 3, with scenes fea­tur­ing Williams' dou­ble. In fact, it was not only Williams' pres­ence that raised ex­pec­ta­tions in the first few days, as Tom Wlaschiha, who plays Arya's men­tor Jaqen H'ghar, was also spot­ted. How­ever, film­ing began in earnest on Sep­tem­ber 6, with a fight scene on the Braavos set. Over the next few days, Girona's Arab Baths and the Ar­chae­o­log­i­cal Mu­seum were out of bounds, and ex­cite­ment rose with ru­mours that Niko­laj Coster-Wal­dau (Jaime Lan­nis­ter) and Lena Headey (Cer­sei) were soon due in the city.

Dur­ing this time, fans con­tin­ued to make the jour­ney to Girona in the hope of see­ing some­thing of the film­ing. Maria and Laia made the jour­ney from Canet de Mar: “We are fans of the se­ries,” said Laia, whose birth­day it was: “The best birth­day gift would be a photo with a Lan­nis­ter,” she added. Three friends from Ripoll – Rubèn, Sal­vador and Núria– had come from Ripoll. Fans of the books and the TV se­ries, they had to be con­tent with hear­ing the sounds of a fight being filmed: “We are happy with that,” they de­clared, while Al­bert from Sabadell had stopped off in Girona on his way back from a week­end in Paris.

Yet, it was the fol­low­ing week that the film­ing reached its cul­mi­na­tion with a spec­tac­u­lar scene planned for the cathe­dral steps. Sep­tem­ber 13 began with ac­cess to the cathe­dral shut off, fol­lowed by re­hearsals all morn­ing. A scene was being pre­pared in­volv­ing Jaime Lan­nis­ter rid­ing a horse up the cathe­dral steps, with the build­ing stand­ing in for Baelor's Sept in King's Land­ing. By mid­day, the cathe­dral was back in the hands of the tourists, who took pho­tos of the green sheet­ing left hang­ing on set, needed for the Chroma Key tech­nique used in spe­cial ef­fects. The sheet­ing cov­ered the build­ings at the foot of the steps, even Casa Pas­tors, which was being used as an im­promptu HQ for the Thrones team.

On the same day, pro­gramme cre­ators David Be­nioff and D.B. Weiss were seen with pro­ducer Bernie Caulfield talk­ing on the cathe­dral steps. At the same time, there were re­ports that John Bradley (Sam), was in the city, sug­gest­ing Girona will also stand in for Old­town.

Sep­tem­ber 14 was the big day and from early ac­cess to the cathe­dral was again shut off, as some 150 ex­tras, most dressed as Tyrell troops, filed on to the set. Al­though the scene will only run to four min­utes when it even­tu­ally makes it to the screen, it took all day to film, with Coster-Wal­dau, Jonathan Price (the High Spar­row), Na­talie Dormer (Mar­gaery Tyrell) and Dean Charles Chap­man (Tom­men Baratheon) all pre­sent.

Two days later the film­ing was over and every­thing was being put away. Girona now had a chance to re­turn to nor­mal­ity, al­though some would say it will never be the same again.