Barcelona Vibes

Architecture, urban design, and a numbers game

Plaça de Catalunya, Barcelona. All photos © Cheryl A. Ossola

I’m in Barcelona as I write this, and in some ways I feel like I’m still in Italy. There’s the same bar culture, with coffee and a pastry serving as breakfast and outdoor tables packed with locals and visitors enjoying an Aperol spritz or a glass of bubbly (prosecco in Italy, cava in Spain) in the afternoon. Also similar: the degree of friendliness, the pausa (siesta) observed by neighborhood shops, the leisurely approach to dining. But there are differences, of course. For me, a big one is language; the other—and more surprising—is visual. Here in this city famed for its Modernist architecture, I, a fanatic about anything at least 500 years old, am uncharacteristically drawn to the less-old.

So, the language. After living in or visiting only America and Italy for the past 16 years, it’s disconcerting to be unable to communicate. And surprising. You see, I thought I’d be able to get by pretty well with a mix of Italian and Spanish. My newfound cousin in Argentina and I message each other that way, she in Spanish and I in Italian, and we understand each other just fine, even without Google translate. But here in Barcelona, Catalan rules (at least in the neighborhood we’re in), and even when someone speaks Spanish to me, it’s hurled at a speed that would leave most Italians in the dust. My bubbly taxi driver played tour guide from the airport to my destination, while I did a lot of nodding and okay-ing, missing about 90 percent of what he said. Some people speak English of course—usually very limited, I find, and mostly in touristy areas, though even there I’ve found it more the exception than the rule. I’m getting better at figuring things out, but boy oh boy, that first meal here with a menu written in only Catalan was quite the culture shock. At least most signage is in both Catalan and Spanish (and in many cases, English as well).

The other big surprise for me, someone for whom the words “historic center” have a kind of mad power, is that the part of this city that’s stolen my heart is the Eixample district. This is where you’ll find most of the Catalan Modernist buildings (an extension of Art Nouveau that spanned the years from the late 1880s to 1911), including those by Antoni Gaudí and his contemporaries Lluís Domènech i Montaner and Josep Puig i Cadafalch. With wide streets, huge plazas and fountains, and high-end stores and hotels, Eixample oozes elegance. The fantastic, sometimes almost surreal, often colorful Modernist buildings beat out the drab stonework of the Gothic quarter (Barrio Gótico in Spanish, Barri Gòtic in Catalan) by a long shot. That said, the El Born district (also part of the historic center), around the Picasso Museum and east of the Cathedral, is charming.

A street in El Born.

El Born is lovely, but Eixample is spectacular. Today, it’s the geographic center of Barcelona, and it feels like it. It wasn’t always so—“Eixample” means extension, and this area was designed to accommodate old Barcelona’s growing population by spanning the area to the north and linking the historic center with what were then independent villages, Gràcia (the neighborhood I’m staying in) and Sarrià. The gridwork street layout is the first urban design of its kind in Europe.

The city planners and designers were smart, because several important features make the Eixample area feel airy, expansive, and elegant even when you’re not on the main avenues. Wrought iron—often ornate, adorning balconies, windows, doors, and terraces—is a key design feature, including in the parts of Gràcia I’ve seen. And speaking of balconies, their number is astonishing. Italy, which is no slouch when it comes to those little slices of outdoor living, can’t even compete.

Balconies! Wrought iron!

But I think the key to this feeling of openness, this airiness, is the way intersections are treated. The buildings on each street corner were designed with lopped off, or chamfered, corners so that more light gets into each building, both by virtue of having more surface area for windows facing the intersection and because other buildings don’t block as much light. In addition, each block has an internal courtyard, again for light and in some cases a bit of green space. Very civilized!

A chamfered building, complete with balconies and wrought iron.

Apropos of the above (though not terribly relevant, I admit): our sunroom faces one of those courtyards, and one day we watched a couple across from us try to snag, with what looked like a long wire with a bagel-shaped weight on the end, a fallen bedsheet, three stories below. After 20 minutes of persistence, they managed to hook one pocket of the sheet (luckily for them it was the fitted type) and haul it up. We cheered and clapped and they laughed and gave us a thumbs-up, and we felt very much like neighbors.

If Spain outdoes Italy in numbers of balconies, it also takes the lead in numbers of dogs. It’s no exaggeration to say we see at least one dog per block, and often two or three. Most are straining at the leash, and we wonder if that’s because there seem to be very few green spaces where dogs can run or play. Though Barcelona does a good job adding small parks and long promenades for pedestrians, everything we’ve seen is paved.

Now for some numbers trivia. Along with desirables like balconies and dogs, Barcelona has impressive numbers of some high-“ugh”-quotient businesses. The city has far more American chains than I’ve seen anywhere in Italy: McDonalds, Burger King, KFC, Popeyes, Domino’s, and Taco Bell are all here, and if you regret passing one up, it won’t be long before you find another. (We walked past a Taco Bell near the Sagrada Familia yesterday where the line wrapped around the block. Crazy.)

The city also has, particularly in the El Raval district west of the Gothic quarter, a mind-boggling number of cellphone accessory stores. I’m talking a half-dozen of them within blocks, often across the street from one another, and all of them, on the evening we walked that neighborhood, empty of customers. There is no possible way they can get enough business to stay afloat, so we speculated that they’re money-laundering fronts or something else equally nefarious. (If anyone can explain their survival, please let me know.) Also in copious quantities—taxis and, at least at this time of year, pesky flies that seem to love human skin.

I have one more day here, and though I’ve enjoyed my stay, I miss Italy. I’ll take my Renaissance heroes over Picasso and medieval walls over Modernist architectural undulations and hallucinogenic details.

La Sagrada Familia, Antoni Gaudì.

One final set of numbers, three things that (in my opinion) Italy does better than Barcelona. Coffee, gelato, and perhaps most important in this aesthetically unique city, men. Not to say there aren’t beautiful Spaniards; I’ve met plenty of them in the U.S. But honestly, here in Barcelona I’ve seen only one man I’d call truly bello. Am I biased? Probably. But I stand by my judgment—for men that make you whip around for another look, get thee to Italy.

Sorry, no book and poetry recommendations this week due to being on the road.