Barcelona has remained true to her traditions. She is still, as of old, a city of merchant princes, a hive of industry, at once the Liverpool and Manchester of Spain. To those who visit the capital of Catalonia after an acquaintance only with the moribund cities of Old Castile, this vision of España Moderna comes as a shock and a revelation. The first impression is not pleasing. You approach the city through a vast wilderness of suburbs, teeming with life, and breathing apparently through grimy factory chimneys. We realise that we have returned to the civilised twentieth century. But the brighter side of modernity is soon revealed. In its heart Barcelona is clean, bright, and spacious. The boulevards are unequalled in Europe—except perhaps by Budapest—and the street prospects are worthy of Washington. The Rambla is the most delightful of promenades; in the Calle Fernando the contents of every shop window tempt the unthrifty. A noble, beautiful modern metropolis, still worthy of Cervantes’ encomium: “Flor de las bellas ciudades del mundo, honra de España, reglo y delicia de sus moradores, y satisfacción de todo aquello que de una grande famosa, rica, y bien fundada ciudad, puede pedir un discreto y curioso deseo.”
Barcelona is richer in monuments of the past than many a more ancient-looking city. Foremost among these is the Cathedral in the very heart of the town, one of the grandest examples of Gothic architecture in Spain. Its extreme sombreness and apparently massive character produce a similar impression to that created by the much larger Cathedral of Seville.
Street thinks very highly of this church, and remarks on the skill with which the architect has contrived to make it appear much larger than it really is. He observes “the architecture of Cataluña had many peculiarities, and in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when most of the great buildings of Barcelona were being erected, they were so marked as to justify me, I think, in calling the style as exclusively national or provincial, as ... was our own Norfolk middle-pointed.... Besides this, there was one great problem which I may venture to say that the Catalan architects satisfactorily solved, the erection of churches of enormous and almost unequalled internal width.”
The primitive Cathedral was built by Count Ramón Berenguer between 1046 and 1058, and considerably enlarged in the year 1173. The building, not yet satisfying the needs of the thriving city, was entirely rebuilt at the beginning of the fourteenth century. The design is attributed by Street to Jaime Fabre, a native of Majorca, who was succeeded as master of the works in 1388 by Master Roque. The last stone of the vault was placed on September 26, 1448.
In plan the church is externally a parallelogram, semicircular at the east end. The transepts do not project beyond the line of chapels opening off the aisles, and form each the basis of a tower, 170 feet high. The old timber roofs of these towers have been removed (as from our castles) laying bare simply the vaulting covered with tiles. Over the Puerta de San Ivo by which you enter the north transept, a series of reliefs illustrates a combat between a knight and a dragon. The former is not St. George, the patron of Aragon, but a legendary hero, one Villardell, who by Divine favour was armed with a miraculous sword. With this he slew the monster which had been let loose by the Saracens, and exultingly cried, “Well done, good sword, and stout arm of Villardell!” But at that instant some drops of the dragon’s blood fell on his arm, and he at once expired. He was thus punished for taking the credit of the victory to himself.
The west front, only finished ten years ago, compares very unfavourably with the older portions. The dome over the first or westernmost bay of the nave is also modern. Little else of the exterior can be seen. Inside, as I have said, the church is extremely sombre, and very conducive to what an eminent divine called Gothic devotion. This is due partly to the dark colour of the stone, and partly to the smallness of the windows, which are filled with beautiful fifteenth-century stained glass. The windows of the chapels in the south aisle open into a corresponding row of chapels in the adjacent cloister. Everything, in fact, has been done to keep out the torrid rays. The chapels are continued all round the church, there being no fewer than twenty-seven. The choir is, as usual, in the middle of the nave, being separated by the crossing from the chancel. Twenty massive and somewhat inelegant clustered columns separate the nave from the aisles and the chancel from the ambulatory, and from their capitals spring the nineteen arches forming the vaulted roof. Nave and aisles are alike 83 feet high. The cathedral is dedicated to a local martyr, Santa Eulalia, whose body since the year 1339 has reposed in the crypt beneath the chancel. The shrine of the saint was the work of Fabre and is in Italian Gothic style. The ark is sculptured with scenes from the saint’s life.
There is little remarkable about the High Altar. The choir-stalls are richly carved, and date from the late fifteenth century. Like the stalls of St. George’s Chapel at Windsor, they are decorated with coats of arms—those of the knights of the Order of the Golden Fleece, in commemoration of the chapter held here by Charles V. (then only King of Spain) in 1519. Among the Knights present were the Kings of Denmark and Poland, the Prince of Orange, and the Duke of Alva. The rear wall of the choir is beautifully adorned with columns, and reliefs of Bartolomé Ordonez, and Pedro Vilar of Zaragoza, representing scenes from the life of the titular. It is a fine example of the Spanish Renaissance style. Before beginning an examination of the chapels, attention may be called to the huge Saracen’s head hanging from the organ in the north transept—a common feature in Catalan churches, and symbolising the reconquest of their sites from the infidel.
A floor runs round the church above the side chapels and is carried across the west front. The upper rooms were never used as places of worship. The chapels are closed by mediæval grilles of wrought iron. They date mostly from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and present no very interesting features. This is fortunate for the painstaking sightseer, as the obscurity renders an examination difficult. A crucifix in the uppermost chapel in the chevet is a memorial of the battle of Lepanto, where it was carried on the prow of Don Juan’s flagship. The image is believed by some to have bent its head to avoid the Turkish bullets. In the chapels of San Miguel Arcángel and Nuestra Señora del Patrocinio, close by, are the fine Gothic tombs of Bishop Berenguer de Palau (died 1240) and of one of his successors, Poncio de Gualba (died 1334). Leaving the ambulatory by the north, the chapel on the right contains another good Gothic monument to Bishop Escaler. The finest tomb, on the whole, is that of Doña Sancha de Cabrera, lady of Noalles, in the chapel of San Clemente, in the south aisle; and three chapels farther on is the sarcophagus of the great Catalan saint, Ramon de Penafort. The two wooden urns covered with crimson velvet in the wall between the south transept and the sacristy enshrine the ashes of Count Ramon Berenguer the Old, and his consort, Almodis (died 1070). Opening off the south aisle, close to the main entrance, is the large square chapel of the Holy Sacrament, or of St. Olegarius, with a fine star-vaulting, the seventeenth-century monument of the titular, and some paintings of Villadomat, a local artist of some repute, who lived in the first half of the eighteenth century. There are also some paintings of merit by the Tramullas, father and son, of Perpignan, but generally speaking this fine cathedral is poor in painting and statuary.
Cloisters are nearly always charming, and those adjoining the Cathedral on the south side are certainly so, with their palms and fruit trees and fountains. One of these last is adorned with a statue of St. George, a jet of water serving as a tail to the horse. In one corner is a goose-pond. I saw nothing of the cats who, Street says, were prowling about the cloisters and church, and contrived to get into the choir-stalls just before service, whence they were forthwith chased by the choristers and such of the clergy as happened to be there. I have witnessed such scenes in French churches, where they are very distracting to the devout. The cloister was begun by Master Roque and finished in 1448. The architecture has been variously criticised, and the tombs for the most part are poor. On these the profession of the deceased is indicated by the implements of his trade lightly graven. The resting-place of Mosém (Monseigneur) Borrà, the jester of Alfonso V. of Aragon, is distinguished by the cap and bells. In the Chapel of the Conception there used to be, says O’Shea, a picture painted by order of the municipality in gratitude for the cessation of the plague in 1651, at the intercession of the Virgin. The keys of the city, made in silver, were presented to her on that occasion. In the chapel of Santa Lucia, at the south-west angle of the cloister, Street recognised a fragment of the old cathedral. The entrance into the south transept is of the same date. By the graceful Puerta Santa Eulalia we pass into the street.
We presently pass the Bishop’s Palace, an eighteenth-century structure incorporating some late Romanesque arcading. But leaving other interesting buildings in this the oldest quarter of Barcelona for the moment, we will seek the next most notable church in the town, that of Santa Maria del Mar. It occupies the site of the earliest shrine of Santa Eulalia, over which Bishop Aetius built a temple in the thousandth year of our era. This modest church was replaced by another in the year 1329, which was restored and reconsecrated after a disastrous fire in 1383 under the reign of Pedro the Ceremonious. All classes of the community assisted in the work. Those who could not give money gave their labour, and in commemoration of this two small bronze figures carrying stone and timber adorn the principal door. The edifice is a good example of the Catalan church in its breadth and height of nave and simplicity of plan. Like the cathedral, it forms a parallelogram rounded at the east end, and presents an unbroken line of wall to the exterior. Churches of this type usually consist of nave only, but Santa Maria del Mar has two aisles. Enormous octagonal columns carry the main arches and the groining ribs which all spring from their capitals. The wall rib towards the nave is carried up higher than the main arches, so as to allow space between them for a small circular and traceried clerestory window in each bay. The arches of the apse are very narrow, and enormously stilted. There are small windows above them, but they are modernised. The aisles are groined on the same level as the main arches, a few feet, therefore, below the vault of the nave, and they are lighted by a four-light traceried window in each bay, the sill of which is above the string-course formed by continuing the abacus of the capitals of the groining shafts. Below this are three arches in each bay, opening into side chapels between the main buttresses. Each of these chapels is lighted by a traceried window of two lights, and the outer wall presents a long unbroken line, until above the chapels, when the buttresses rise boldly up to support the great vaults of the nave and aisles.[A] The interior, though still simple and dignified, has been marred by modern restorations. Another peculiarity remains to be noted: the choir is placed behind the high altar. Of this latter, a costly but churrigueresque erection, the less said the better. The royal pew in the south aisle, recalling the days when Barcelona was a capital, was connected with the palace by a gallery now destroyed. The church contains some good glass and examples of the art of Villadomat, a painter of whom Catalonia can boast. His fate was extremely sad: for the last seventeen years of his long life, he was paralysed in both hands.