After thirteen consecutive winters in Southern California the last thing we want is to spend this one dreaming about it from the cold and damp of London, which is where we’re moving to. And while winters in Barcelona are not as ‘safe and warm’ (to steal another line from The Mamas and the Papas classic lyric) as LA’s, they’re certainly balmy enough to cushion the blow.
We’ve leased an eccentric, wildly impractical loft apartment in Encants, which is named after the city’s largest and oldest Flea Market and is a twenty minute walk from the ever changing construction site which is La Sagrada Familia. Like most things here our rent is remarkably inexpensive and Francisco and Raquel, our landlord and landlady are so charming and helpful that complaining overmuch seems churlish and entitled, especially in light of the high unemployment and tough times this city is going through. So we are (mostly) taking it in our stride that operating more than one appliance at a time blows out the power, that there are three versions of the mailing address, none of which seem to work that well, that our obstinate neighbour upstairs refuses point blank to allow a TV repairman into her flat to fix the building’s satellite dish and that the internet speeds are consistently glacial.
Adjacent to everything but a magnet for nothing in particular, Encants is about as close to a real place as you’ll find in Central Barcelona. Perfect for a three month sojourn during which, with no particular effort on our part ‘staying’ has morphed into ‘living’ here and in what seems like no time we’ve made that transition, navigating the mass transit system like pros, shopping, dining and putting out the trash where the neighbours do, going to the hairdresser once a month, taking out gym memberships and even (and this is the true test of taking fine weather for granted), going to the cinema when the sun’s out. All the regular stuff of life in other words.
With no pressure to ‘tick off’ sights, even Gaudí’s whimsical, otherworldly buildings and public works, while as entrancing as ever are something to be enjoyed from a café terrace or for their original purpose, rather than as a series of must book, timed entry experiences. So Montjuïc’s Park Güell, with its mosaic-tiled salamanders and fairy tale buildings is a place for hot chocolate and churros and an afternoon stroll in the sunshine overlooking the city, rather than a must see cultural attraction and La Sagrada Familia is a lovely local church for a carol service at Christmastime.
The morning we left LA I ran barefoot with a heavy heart along Santa Monica beach for the last time, so Barcelona’s four kilometre stretch of sand, which is just a tram ride away, is also easing the pain of separation. Better yet, the promenade (Passeig Marítim) which runs the full length of the beach is chock full of restaurants and bars starting from the tangle of 1950s tower blocks and food market in Barceloneta and the old port at one end, to the art installation lined Olympic Park at the other. Perfect for a weekend lunch facing sun and sand with space heaters warming our backs, quaffing pitchers of sangria as the seafood keeps on coming.
As in most great cities it’s the places ‘in between’, the ones that don’t make the ‘Top 10 things to see and do’ lists, that will stay with us long after we leave here. A case in point is Gràcia, which used to be a town in its own right until the 19th century expansion of the Eixample district swallowed it. It’s an authentic, proudly independent neighbourhood lined with beautiful apartment buildings, quirky craft stores and small restaurants, which reminds us a lot of Paris’s Marais. A lunch we had in one of the many small squares was especially memorable for a cinnamon baked apple served in brown parchment paper, which was like a green precious stone when unwrapped.
Also little visited is the Cimenteri de Montjuïc, where many of the city’s great and not so good are interred in staggeringly ornate mausolea, having no doubt taken their last journey there in one of the extraordinary horse-drawn hearses exhibited in the adjacent Museu de Carrosses Funèbres (Museum of Funeral Carriages), arguably the city’s most obscure cultural attraction
Equally esoteric and uncrowded is the lovely 18th century Parc del Laberint. Situated on the adjacent ridge to Tibidabo Amusement Park, you can hear the screams of delight of the riders on the Panoràmic ferris wheel as you negotiate the rather more sedate charms of the cypress hedged labyrinth of Horta, in search of the statue of Eros at its centre. Close by is the melancholy, decrepit but decidedly picturesque ruin of the Torre Soberana, the former country house of the Marquis of Llupià and Alfarràs, who originally laid out the park, which is the oldest in the city.
Barcelona also does the monumental extraordinarily well, especially in and around Parc de la Ciutadella with its gilded triumphal cascade and fountain (worked on by a young Anton Gaudí when he was still an architecture student and inspired by Rome’s Trevi fountain), its vast Art Nouveau iron and glass Hivernacle, designed to house tropical plants and adjacent Castell dels Tres Dragons, now a Zoological museum. The city’s bullring even proudly calls itself ‘La Monumental’ and is the only Modernista one in Spain, designed in 1916 by Ignasi Mas Morell and Domènec Sugrañes Gras and covered with blue and white tiles, the arena is laced with Moorish arches and punctuated with towers supporting outlandish ceramic eggs. Happily, the bull fights themselves have been banned since 2010.
The city is also brilliant at re-purposing its eclectic buildings, so while the Fundació Joan Miró is in an extraordinary purpose-built space on the hill at Montjuïc, the luminous Camille Pissarro retrospective we saw was housed at the CaixaForum, a former textile factory designed by the gloriously named Modernist architect Puig de Cadafalch. A short walk up the hill from there is Poble Espanyol, a ‘village’ designed for the Great Exhibition of 1929 whose buildings are an amalgam of vernacular architectural styles from all over Spain. A little kitsch and overpriced for sure, but hanging out in one of the cafés in the village square under a canopy of orange trees, was a lovely interlude and the collection of Picasso’s Vallauris ceramics alone was worth the price of admission.
Barcelona knows how to party, too. It’s been a while since we’ve pulled an all-nighter on New Year’s Eve, but with a bit of egging on from our daughter we saw in 2014 with massive crowds by the Font de Montjuïc on Avinguda Christina, where a show staged by local Radical Theatre Group ‘Fura dels Baus’ featured the spectacle of a ‘magic fountain’, human pyramid and a 15 metre high ‘Milleni-man’ robot figure, followed by an impressive fireworks display, and we finished up in a dive bar across the street from La Sagrada Familia at 3am.
We’ve eaten some extraordinary food here, from the best croissants we’ve ever tasted at Pasteleria Gran Via (allegedly Ferran Adrià’s favourite café), to high end tapas at Lolita Taperia in Poble Sec, a fideuà of seafood (a Valencian speciality that uses pasta instead of rice in paella, as a DJ spun House music at Opium by the beach at Port Olimpic and sublime razor clams and red shrimp at Arenal in Barceloneta. But it’s the modest Tortilla de Patatas that we often eat for lunch at a tiny restaurant a few minutes walk from our apartment enjoyed with a small glass of Estrella and some nourishing sunshine, before I head back to my laptop and the creaky internet connection, that we’ll remember the best.
Tortilla de Patatas: Serves Six
Left over pork or whatever you have in the fridge
8 eggs, beaten
1 onion, halved and sliced
4-5 medium potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/2″ cubes
1 tbsp dried Herb de Provence
Salt and pepper to taste
Heat a large nonstick fry pan with 2-3 tablespoons of olive oil, add the potatoes, fry until golden, add the onions and season to taste. Cook until the onions are soft, remove from the heat onto a dish and let it cool slightly, add the eggs and the herbs, mix to combine. In the same pan heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil, then add the egg mixture to the pan. Gently cook on low to medium heat until the top is still runny but you can see most of the base is cooked. The traditional way is to cook it until it is set and then flip on to a plate, then slide if back into the pan and cook it some more. I like to cook it most of the way, and then put it under the broiler until it is golden brown. Sometimes it will stick on the bottom, so use a good nonstick pan. I like to serve it with a warm spinach and caramelized onion salad topped with Huckleberry vinegar dressing.
Fittingly after three months of art, culture, beautiful food and sunshine we serendipitously manage to combine all four on our last Saturday here. Casa Garriga Nogués, designed in an eclectic Modernista style by Enric Saigner houses the private collection of Francisco (Paco) Godia, one of Spain’s first Formula One drivers who raced for Maserati in the 1950s, which includes some important Romanesque sculpture. After an array of tapas at Arenal, our favourite beachfront restaurant in Barceloneta, we walk rather woozily up the beach promenade in perfect 20 degree sunshine, following the sounds of Carnival music to Raval and Sabrina spontaneously dances her way into the procession of Samba drum troupes which we accompany all the way to the Ramblas, past the ancient convent Hospital de Sant Creu with its secret garden, chancing upon a graduating student art show at La Capella right next door.
We’ll need to bottle this perfect Barcelona day and take it back to London with us on Monday, where temperatures are still barely in the double digits.
I had to double-check when this was written as it still sounds so au courant. We visited Barcelona perhaps a year or two before you and fell in love with the city, though we only spent about a week or so. We're stopping there for a few days before heading to Italy in May, and you're making me wish we had more time and could live there for a while. It's one of my favorite cities, probably for all the reasons you like it--so vibrant, full of art, history, incredible food and people, color and life. I can't wait to see what progress has been made on the Sagrada Familia, to revisit the other Gaudi landmarks, and to taste the tortilla de patatas (and try making your version when I get home!). Thanks for your virtual tour. California's still dreaming' on this winter's day. Hope to meet you guys if you make a return visit to this coast one day.
I love reading this story! That moment when we switch from “visiting” to “living”. I love how fast that happens for you two! Are you still wintering in Spain? Wish we would have met before you guys left LA!