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Published: July 14th 2014
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arriving at Plaza d'Espana, July 8, 2014 When I heard this year's bi-annual conference of the IOHA (International Oral History Association) was going to be in Barcelona from July 8-12, I jumped on the band wagon and decided to attend. The flight from Paris was only an hour, and then it took half an hour from the airport to get to Plaza de Espana. From there I took the metro to where I was staying -- a very nice university residence on the Calle de Hospital, not far from the famous La Rambla boulevard. The residence, where lots of Spanish professional and professorial people of about my age were also staying, was a great base for my 5-day stay; it was conveniently located near the conference
andthe Rambla, Plaza Cataluna and the old Gothic quarter of the city. The first night, I went for a leisurely stroll down the Rambla, took some photos, and had a paella in a small restaurant near the Cathedral.
The next day was the opening ceremony of the IOHA conference at the original building of the University of Barcelona, which is lovely. The large auditorium reminded me of the auditorium (was it the same one?) in a scene from the French film
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View of the MNAC (National Museum of Catalunya Art) seen from below "Auberge Espagnole" where a foreign exchange student gets up and complains that the courses are in Catalan and not in Spanish and that she came to Spain to learn Spanish, not Catalan. (BTW, the film aptly depicts the student atmosphere and the numerous young people that you see everywhere in the city). As of that afternoon, the rest of the conference would be held at the History and Geography Faculty, which is housed in a modern building across from the Barcelona Modern Art Museum.
Skipping the conference in the afternoon, I decided to take one of those top-of-the-bus, get on/get off tours of Barcelona. I didn't get off but stayed on the whole time (about 4 hours!) doing the red, blue and green routes. Doing this, I got an overview of the whole city, including the "1992 Olympic Village" site on the water that has been redeveloped for housing, hotels and restaurants. Barcelona is certainly a colorful and vibrant city, combining historic monuments, great architecture and modern neighborhoods. Throughout my stay, the weather was lovely--sunny, about 24° C (75°F) and slightly breezy.
The next morning, I listened to some interesting oral history papers but I again decided to
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La Rambla that afternoon take the afternon off. (It was hard to sit in a conference hall or classroom for hours on end when Barcelona beckoned!) Leaving the university about 2 pm, I took the subway and funicular up to Montjuic Park and the Joan Miro Foundation, which houses an extensive collection of the artist's paintings and sculptures. Fantastic! That evening was the conference dinner in a downtown restaurant attended by oral historians from all over the world, some of whom I knew from attending several previous conferences (in NYC, Goteborg, Istanbul and Rome) over a 20-year period. After dinner, we were treated to a concert of Catalan music and song.
I spent my last complete day in Barcelona going on a day's excursion to Montserrat, the mountain and Benedictine monastery an hour's train ride from Barcelona. At the ¨Plaza de Espana train station, I bought an all-inclusive ticket that included transportation (metro, train, cable car), an a.v. presentation, entrance to the museum, 2 funicular rides
and lunch--a good deal for 47 euros. The introductory audio visual presentation was very informative. I saw slides about the monks' daily life and was surprised that they enjoy all the latest amenities--including having laptops! I also
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Placa Catalunya that evening saw slides about the famous Montserrat boys' choir. All in all, I enjoyed visiting the museum and the basilica, but the crowds inside the basilica were off-putting. I hesitated, but finally didn't have the patience to stand hours in line to see the famous statue of the Black Madonna and Child. So I decided to take the funicular further up the mountain instead and then to hike back down to the monastery. Observing the unusual rock formations all around, I remembered a documentary I'd seen in Paris on Gaudi mentioned that he used to visit Montserrat and that the unusual mountain peaks probably influenced his conception of the Sagrada Familia.
I got back to Barcelona in time to see a 5 PM performance of "Porgy and Bess" at the gorgeous Liceu Theater on La Rambla. It was quite an enterprising production by the Cape Town Opera Company, accompanied by the orchestra of the Liceu. I had a bit of a comprehension problem, though: Although I recognized a lot of the Gershwin songs, I realize now that they must have been from the
musical version of "Porgy and Best" and not the
opera. The Capetown opera singers sang the tunes
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the University of Barcelona - original building I thought I knew in very heavily-accented English, and, not remembering the story very well, I tried to read the supertitles, but they were in Catalan (not Spanish, which I would have understood). Still, the dancing and physicality of the group were great, as was the setting. Guess what, though? Instead of South Carolina, the whole story was transferred to Soweto, which made the fishing boats being lost at sea slightly incongruous, to say the least.
Before heading out to the airport, I decided I couldn't leave Barcelona without returning to Monjuic Park and the MNAC (National Museum of Catalan Art). I had read in all the guide books about their world-renowned collection of Romanesque murals, panels and artefacts taken from Catalan churches in the Pyrenees. I was so glad I went, as there are rooms and rooms of Romanesque treasures that, as a video presentation explains, art historians and technicians painstakingly took down from the walls of churches, transported and then redisplayed in chapel-like structures at the MNAC.
I left Barcelona enthralled with it all -- the art, the architecture, the animation, the ambiance. (Note: I have posted 49 photos, so please scroll down to see them
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poster for the IOHA conference all.) And please do leave a comment, esp. if you've enjoyed reading this blog.
More to follow in my next posting from the Balearic island of Menorca...
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Tom Camp
non-member comment
You are having fun
You are a busy bee skipping all the serious things in order to gather all these pictures around the city. Now that you are out on the island, tell me all about how that is going. Love T