Barcelona

Only the mentally deranged would have one believe that the works of Isaac Albeniz, Salvador Dali, Joan Miro, Francesc Trabal, and Joanot Martorell are "mediocre". In classical literature, Cervantes, father of the novel, considered Martorell's "Tirant lo Blanch" to be the best chivalry novel. In classical music,the great pianists, Claude Debussy and Olivier Messiaen, gave Albeniz's "Iberia" the highest praise, with Messiaen referring to it as, "the wonder for the piano; it is perhaps on the highest place among the more brilliant pieces for the king of the instruments". And who,in their right minds, with any modicum of taste and understanding of our artistic heritage, could ever doubt the genius of both Dali and Miro. This is a good book. Barcelona is a great city. Visca Barcelona! Som Catalans!

For instance: You could see traces of that ancient, tattered dandyism in Barcelona twenty-five years ago. Today, none remains. It lived at all levels. The Catalan gypsies of the Parallel had it in abundance. Corbero swears that he owes his conception of the dignity of his metier as an artist to three gypsy friends back in the early 1960s, old-cloths sellers who went under the nicknames of Puca (Flea), Flanel (Flannel), and Plastic. They were brilliant salesmen. They sold the worst, the rattiest clothes as though they were the newest English tweeds from Bel on Passieg de Gracia. They were so good that the artist, amazed, suggested that they go upscale. Why not put some of the take back into buying better merchandise, things that -- compared with the course rubbish they now sold with such virtuoso effect -- would walk out of the cart? Flea, Flannel and Plastic listened to the suggestion gravely and with scorn. "You may be right about the pesetas," concluded Flannel, dismissively. "But what about art?"

I read Hughes' Barcelona before I went to Barcelona for the first time, and it made all the difference in the world. I arrived not as a stranger, but as a student of Catalan culture and history. The book gave me the background to have an informed perspective on what I was seeing. It may be long, but it has tons of information. My only complaint is that Hughes assumes the reader has a knowledge of history that I, for one, don't have. So there were things I didn't understand.I liked that Hughes sometimes talked about the big things -- big events, important people, and he sometimes talked about the little things that make a place distinctive. His love of the place came through to me, and I fell in love with it too.