The Rough Guide to Barcelona [antikvár]

Intrcductionto Barcelona Barcelona - Spain's second city, and the Mediterranean's most exciting destination - sets the template for urban style, hip design and sheer nonstop energy. Where others tinker at the edges, time and again Barcelona has reinvented itself, from medieval maritime power to Olympic city, from neglected Franco-era backwater to dominant national force, while its celebrated - often outrageous - architecture speaks volumes about the city's tireless self-confidence.This is a place whose most famous monument, Anton! Gaudi's Sagrada Família, is an unfinished church of indescribable invention; whose most celebrated street, the Ramblas, is a dawn-to-dark maelstrom of human activity; and whose vibrant restaurants, bars, shops and galleries are in the vanguard of European style and fashion. Visit for the first time, expecting a traditional city break, or the fiftieth, thinking you know it inside out, and Barcelona never fails to surprise. Much of the impetus for Barcelona's almost overpowering self-promotion stems from its political and cultural identity. You're left in no doubt - by way of language, tradition, cuisine, even sport - that, whatever the map might show, you're no longer in Spain but in the autonomous province of Catalunya (Catalonia in English), which can trace its distinct history back as far as the ninth century. This makes Barcelona the capital of what many regard as a nation, and adds another level to the pride the locals naturally feel for their city. Galleries and museums, for example, hold "national" collections of Catalan art and histor)^, while the 1992 Olympics - which kick-started the dynamic rebuilding process - were indisputably Barcelona's Games, and not Spain's. The city fosters an independent spirit, setting itself apart from the wider country and single-mindedly pursuing its own social, economic and cultural agenda. Nowhere is this separate face of Barcelona seen more perfectly than in the otherworldly modernista (Art Nouveau) buildings that stud the city's streets and avenues, dating from