BARCELONA.
OLD HOUSE IN THE CALLE DE SANTA LUCIA.
AS Prescott[55] observes, "The City of Barcelona, which originally gave its name to the county of which it was the capital, was distinguished from a very early period by ample municipal privileges. After the union with Aragon in the twelfth century, the monarchs of the latter kingdom extended towards it the same liberal legislation; so that by the thirteenth, Barcelona had reached a degree of commercial prosperity rivalling that of any of the Italian Republics. She divided with them the lucrative commerce with Alexandria; and her port thronged with foreigners from every nation, became a principal emporium in the Mediterranean for the spices, drugs, perfumes, and other rich commodities of the East, whence they were diffused over the interior of Spain and the European Continent."
Amongst its other merits was that of having established in 1401 the first bank of Exchange and deposit in Europe—as well as of having compiled the first written code amongst the Moderns of Maritime law. Her great merchants were "magnificos" ennobled, not degraded as in Castile, by connection with trade.
The long civil war which began in 1462 and ended with the surrender of the city to King Juan in 1472 was the first great check the city received in its splendid career of prosperity.
The house I have sketched was doubtless well adapted to such troublous times, affording comparative safety on its lower floors and comparative air and comfort as its occupants mounted higher and higher. It was probably built shortly after the middle of the fifteenth century, revealing here and there traces of a French mason's handicraft. It follows the type, not of the merchant's, but of the cavalier's house. Such towers, half residence, half fortress, were, especially in the south of Europe, far more numerous than one may now be justified in supposing; and the more frequently Italian street views in pictures and illuminated manuscripts are studied, the more natural and usual appears what we now fancy to be strange and rare. With the introduction of Renaissance architecture, the character of these quasi-mediæval structures changed altogether.
Navagiero[56] writing of the condition of Barcelona in 1524, says that "the houses are good and commodious, built of stone and not of earth, as are those of the rest of Catalogna. Although lying on the sea it has no port, but an arsenal, in which many galleys were wont to be constructed, now there are none. Bread and wine are scarce, but of every kind of fruit there is abundance. The cause is said to be that the land is stripped of men through the war with King John on account of his son Don Carlos."
Depopulated the city may have been, and its commerce may, no doubt, have suffered in consequence, but the Catalonian character was energetic, and the city still preserved much of its previously accumulated wealth. Merchants too have a knack of prospering in troublous times, especially those who thrive on profits upon imports. Hence we still find merchants' houses of great comfort, although evidently constructed during the evil days of Barcelona. Of one of these I furnish (in my ninety-sixth sketch) a good example, offering an interesting theme for comparison with the sketch now given.
