Cathedral Cities of Spain

by W. W. Collins

A relic of Loyola, the sword that he offered on the Altar of the Virgin at Montserrat, is still preserved in the old Jesuit Church of Nuestra Señora de Belen.

Among the many notable buildings in Barcelona is the Casa Consistorial, or Town Hall. It was built in 1378, and has a very original Gothic front. A beautiful patio with slender arches and twisted columns adds to the interest of the interior.

The Casa de la Diputacion opposite contains the picture on which Fortuny was at work when he died. The patio here is perhaps better than that in the Casa Consistorial. It is in three stages, from the topmost of which huge gargoyles of all sorts of devils and monsters rear their ugly heads.

In the old quarters of the city, where the five-and six-storied houses almost touch, the streets are very tortuous and not considered safe at night.

In this respect, however, Barcelona does not stand alone. Any one who ventures into the low parts of a Mediterranean seaport after dusk generally does so at his own risk. Very few brawls commence among the hot-blooded lower orders of the south without the finale of the knife.

By far the most interesting suburb of the city is Barceloneta. This self-contained town is entirely given up to the fisherfolk and seafaring portion of Barcelona's inhabitants. Philip V., when planning his citadel, now demolished, turned out the people who dwelt where he afterwards erected it. To compensate them for loss of home and property, he built this well-planned and well-paved suburb out along the coast to the north-east. With the breeze coming in every afternoon off the sea my favourite walk was through the park to Barceloneta. Of all the seaports I know, Naples not excepted, though the Sta. Lucia of five-and-twenty years ago might have beaten it, the harbour front of Barceloneta is without an equal. Here one may watch the boat-builders at work under the oddest roofs imaginable, carpenters busy with the shaping of masts and oars, and ship's painters putting the finishing touches to boat accessories. I used to stand awhile admiring the inventive turn displayed on the exterior embellishments of the marine-dealers' stores. Wonderful pictures, of ships that could never float, from brushes wielded by very local talent in glaring vermilion and green. I watched the holiday-makers sitting in ramshackle booths, rapidly putting away all sorts of curiosities of the shell-fish order, and I wondered if they would survive the day. Perhaps the copious draughts of wine they took was an antidote, at any rate their laughter and good humour gave point to my unspoken thought—"let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die."

Going on, I often spent some time comparing the drill of artillery recruits, whose instructors marched them up and down on a quiet bit of the roadway, with those at home, and I generally finished my walk and sat me down on the glorious stretch of sand that runs away north as far as eye can follow. The evening would then draw in, and the twinkling lights on the ships in the harbour warn me it was time to return. While twilight lasted I retraced my steps homewards along the quay-side, invigorated by an afternoon of sea breeze and salt spray.

The focus of Barcelona's life is the celebrated Rambla. The derivation of this word is Arabic—"Raml-sand"—a river bed, for a small stream at one time meandered down to the sea where now is the liveliest street in the north of Spain.