The Berkeley Guides:
Berkeley Guide to Europe:
Spain:
Barcelona
Catalan poet Joan Maragall dubbed Barcelona la gran encisera (the great enchantress), and most visitors to this gorgeous city fall quickly under its intoxicating spell. No matter who you are--history hound, hedonistic partyer, architecture buff, beach bum, fashion slave, or disco queen--you'll find what you seek in this city that's still glowing from the 1992 Olympic spotlight. From the cool, dark dampness of its Barri Gòtic (Gothic Quarter) and the breezy splendor of the broad, geometric avenues of the Eixample (Enlargement) to Las Ramblas, Barcelona's famous, flower-lined pedestrian street, Barcelona has become everyone's favorite city.
Well, almost everyone's favorite city. The Madrileños have long competed with the residents of Barcelona for economic, cultural, and political supremacy. By the Middle Ages, Barcelona had been built up from wealth generated by brisk trade with the rest of the world. However, the conquest of the New World and Madrid's new wealth from plundering it, as well as the switch of focus from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, resulted in Barcelona's eventual loss of economic primacy.
During the 19th century the industrial revolution found a home in Barcelona, and the city developed into the industrial capital of Spain, which was still overwhelmingly agrarian. The industrial revolution set the stage for the beginning of a golden period in Barcelona's (and Catalunya's) history called the Renaixenca (Renaissance). As artists and architects began to redesign the burgeoning city, the growing spirit of Catalisme, Catalan nationalism, was expressed in the artistic style known as modernisme, emphasizing traditional Catalan building techniques such as stained glass, tilework, and iron grills. To this day, the city has remained on the cutting edge of design, and architecture students from around the world still come here to study (and play) in this unique, open-air classroom.
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