The entrance to Mercat Sant Josep from Las Ramblas is packed with summer tourists stocking
up on nuts and candy. 
Dried fruit, nuts, fresh vegetables and fruits are their own mosaics beside fish that are
still moving their lips in the Mercat de Sant Josep. |
EXCERPT FROM SARA’S JOURNAL August
18, 1999
Barcelona
Rambling
Barcelona’s historic avenue Las Ramblas is said to be the most famous street in
Spain. It’s a wide, tree-lined boulevard with traffic on either side, flanked with
hotels, restaurants and cafes, junk shops, flower stalls, fast-food joints, a wax museum,
a sex museum. It also includes a plethora of street performers, painted gold and silver,
mimicking American Indians, cave and jungle men, and statues that change poses when you
throw a coin. A five o’clock shadow clown offers balloon animals with a scowl. A man
sleeps under a Gaudi lamppost with seven dogs (a performance?). Placa de la Boqueria is in
the middle, a square with a Miro mosaic facing an Art Deco dragon – a former umbrella
shop with its own umbrella façade. La Boqueria, on the other side, is an 1840’s
style open market occupying the former patio of a convent. Dried fruit, nuts, fresh
vegetables and fruits are their own mosaics beside fish that are still moving their lips,
gasping for water while they chill off on ice next to crabs and lobsters. Beside the
sheep’s heads, sausages and steaks, there’s a stall devoted to obscure animal
parts.
The name Las Ramblas comes from the Arabic ramla, meaning the dried-up bed of a
seasonal river. Barcelona’s 13th century city wall followed the left back
of what was once a waterway from the hills of Collserola down into the Mediterranean. In
the 16th century the opposite bank of the river was where convents, monasteries
and the university were erected, beyond the maze of the Barrio Gothic and with the
peaceful surroundings of the river. As time passed the riverbed was filled in and those
buildings were demolished, remembered only in the names given to the five sections that
make up the promenade: Canaletes, Estudis, Sant Josep, Caputxins and Santa Monica. The
avenue stretches for maybe 2 kilometres from Barcelona’s modern centre Placa de
Catalunya to its Port Vell (old port), finishing at the water with the Monument to
Columbus. It seems enthusiasts "rediscovered" Catalunya’s role in the
discovery of the Americas and convinced themselves that Columbus was Catalan (actually, he
was from Genoa, Italy). They built a massive statue of the explorer, but instead of posing
Columbus to point at the Americas, the majestic statue mistakenly gestures toward Libya. |
