Tour de Barce

December 27, 2013

On my first full day in Barcelona, I went on a free walking tour, because those are always awesome and free. Haha. The tour went really well and I'm going to tell you all the things I learned. Some of this might be boring for you and I give you permission to skip it. Just look at the pictures if you want. :)

These are the steps.

We started our tour in Plaça del Rei, where our spunky tour guide gave us a rundown of some history in Barcelona. The interesting thing about the Plaça del Rei was that it is said that it was in that plaza that King Ferdinand and Queen Isabel greeted Christopher Columbus when we returned from his first voyage to the New World. Interesting, huh? Obviously, it is disputed, but who knows, it could be true.

Our next stop was the Cathedral of Barcelona. We only saw the outside, but apparently we were lucky that we got to see that because not too long ago, they (I don't know who "they" is) had just finished a pretty lengthy cleaning process of the cathedral. Our tour guide said the whole front facade had been covered by a picture of the front of the cathedral for quite awhile. She thought it was funny that tourists before were taking pictures of a picture of a church that was hanging on the church. Ha. Needless to say, I have a picture of the actual cathedral because the cleaning process was finished. (Side note: If you choose to read all of these blogs, you will actually see that I got lucky a lot with being able to see buildings right after they were done being remodeled or constructed) Anyway, the Cathedral of Barcelona is the seat of the archbishop and it really is pretty on the outside. It is partly named after Santa Eulalia, who is a patron saint of Barcelona. She was a martyr who was killed at the age of 13 and there are some interesting stories about her. I'm sure you're not too interested in the stories, but I will tell you anyway, because I want to remember them. The Romans supposedly put her through a lot because of her religious beliefs. For example, she was crucified naked in public, however, it is said that a huge snow storm came and the snow covered up her body to save her innocence. After this happened, the Romans chose to throw her in a barrel with a bunch of glass and knives and rolled her down a hill 13 times. Of course, she came out of the barrel unharmed so they chose to decapitate her, which did the trick. But Eulalia got the last laugh, because apparently a dove flew out of her neck after the decapitation. So now, she is a saint and her crypt is in the Cathedral of Barcelona and 13 white geese protect it. I think it was this cathedral that the tour guide told us (but I could be mistaken, I saw a lot of churches), but apparently if you get too close to the crypt you could go blind. I didn't go in to test it, but yea. That's rough.

Catedral de la Santa Creu i Santa Eulalia

You can tell how clean the front is
compared to the bricks on the right

A street called "Saint Eulalia's descent"
The street where she was supposedly rolled down 13 times in the barrel

Our next stop was the only Picasso painting in the world that is free to view. It is a mural and it depicts a popular La Mercè Festival, which goes on in Barcelona each year. I actually didn't know anything about this festival, but I like all the crazy things that people do in Spain. For example, in Barcelona, during La Mercè and other festivals, groups of people make human towers, or castells. The towers can be short or tall and they actually look pretty dangerous. There is only one person that is now required to where a helmet and that is the person at the top of the tower, which is usually a child that is around 5 to 7 years old..crazy! I'll let you see for yourself...

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The only free Picasso painting. The human tower is depicted
in the middle and the gegants, which are giant
puppets are depicted on either side.

Next we learned about the flag of Catalonia, which I originally thought was the one with the blue triangle and star, but come to find out it's not. The flag is yellow with four red stripes and it comes from when Wilfred the Hairy (a count of Barcelona) was killed and Charles the Bald gave him a coat of arms by wiping his bloody fingers across Wilfred the Hairy's plain yellow shield. So that is how Catalonia got their flag, but then why are there other flags that have stars and triangles? Well those flags are more political, any flag with a star on it means that that person is pro-independence. If you don't already know, Catalonia has been trying to be independent from the rest of Spain for quite sometime now, like the Basque Country. So that is why there are stars on some of the flags, then the triangles define what party they support. Blue means the person is Republican and yellow means they are socialist. I don't know a lot about politics, but I will add that I'm pretty sure the Republicans in Catalonia are from the left side (which is unlike what we in the U.S. know as Republicans). Anyway, long story short, people hang their political views on their porches. Our tour guide said it's not really a big issue in Barcelona and she made a joke that it would be more dangerous to hang a Real Madrid (the Madrid soccer team) flag on your porch in Barcelona.

You can see the three varieties of flags in this picture

One last thought about flags, sorry. The Barcelona flag is a mixture of the Catalonia flag and the Cross of St. George (Flag of England) because St. George is also a patron saint of Barcelona. And last thought, it is illegal in Barcelona (maybe in all of Catalonia) to fly the Spanish flag without flying the Catalonia flag, with the exception of some military buildings.* Speaking of things being illegal, it is illegal to be topless in public, but not illegal to be completely naked...what?! And when Franco was in power, it was illegal to speak Catalan unless you were at a soccer match, because it was physically impossible to arrest everyone in the stadium.

Since I am talking about Franco and politics, I might as well keep it up right? Several bombs were dropped before and during the rule of Franco. One specifically in Plaça de Sant Felip Neri during the Spanish Civil War. This plaza is cool because 1. Antoni Gaudi liked to pray in the church that is in that plaza (You'll here a lot about Gaudi in my next post) 2. An Evanescence video was filmed there. You can also still see that chunks of bricks are missing on the church from the explosion of the bomb.

After this the tour began to wrap up kind of. We talked more about bombings, then moved onto the Jewish quarter where we learned that there really isn't much of one anymore. The Jewish quarter was large before, but was they were forced to move inward so the streets are tiny. We also learned that because the Jews were secluded from the rest of the city, when the plague struck, people thought that the Jews were somehow revolting because they didn't get sick due to their seclusion, so the city struck back and killed many of them. So even now, there are very few Jews that live in the Jewish quarter and in Barcelona. We also learned about the 1992 Olympics and how that really helped turn Barcelona around. So in reality, Barcelona is still a growing city that only just became healthy 22 years ago. Also, the sand on the beaches is from Egypt and the palm trees are from Florida. They imported them for the games. Cool, huh? Anyway, that's where I'll end my three hour walking tour. Sorry, if I have bored you, but I'm not done yet.

After the walking tour, I took a quick trip to see the Arc de Triomf, which is similar to the Arc de triomphe in Paris that everyone knows so well. After seeing this, I walked back to the hostel, with some other people from the hostel that were on the tour and I met the girl I would be traveling with for part of my break. Her name is Aliyya and she is from Buffalo, NY. We hadn't met previously, but when I was looking for someone to travel with, I put somewhat of an add up on our English teachers in Madrid page and she answered and voila, instant travel buddy. It actually turned out really well and I am so glad it did. It can be tough sometimes traveling with someone who you don't know, but it worked out perfectly.  

We didn't waste anymore time and we left the hostel once again to walk around more. We went to Plaça d'Espanya, which is an important plaza in Barcelona. The bull fighting area is located there and it is at the bottom of Montjuïc, which is a mountain that has the Catalan National Museum of Art, the Olympic Stadium and museum, and a fortress at the top. There is also a magic fountain at Plaza de España, but it was under maintenance so we didn't get to see the light and water show while we were there.

View of La Sagrada Familia (you'll learn about that
in my next post) and Barcelona from Montjuic

Inside of the Olympic Stadium

Outside of the Olympic Stadium

Telecommunications tower designed by Santiago Calatrava (of course)
It was built to transmit television coverage for the '92 Olympics.
It also works as a sundial.

Me with the port and the Mediterranean Sea

Catalan Flag

After the long day of walking and exploring, we walked back to the hostel and relaxed for quite sometime, then ventured back out for a quick dinner on La Rambla. It was a long day, but it was really cool to learn everything and hear and see a lot about the city of Barcelona. Again, sorry it was so long, but I hope you enjoyed it. And stay tuned for my next couple blogs to see how the rest of my days in Barcelona were. :)

*I stand corrected. Read comments below. Remember that I am receiving the majority of this information from a tour guide and it's highly likely that I get things messed up when I am trying to recall the information.