Story: A Green Glimpse of Barcelona

The incomparable singer Rufus Wainwright knew about Barcelona in 1998, and Freddy Mercury floridly extolled its glories. It took me until 2008 to get there, following the path blazed by my son Oliver and his roommate Elizabeth, undergraduates at the University of Barcelona.

Crazy me don’t think there’s pain in Barcelona
Nothing really does compare to Barcelona

Rufus Wainwright © 1998 SKG Music.
Released under DreamWorks Records.

Barcelona is the second city of Spain after Madrid and the capital of Catalonia (Catalunya), a region proud of its differences from Spain. Many Catalonians desire independence.

“You mean,” I said to Oliver, “that I am not really in Spain, in Barcelona?”
“It’s pretty different, yeah,” he replied. He has lived in Spain off and on for three years, traveling countrywide.

I wanted to see how Barcelona is doing in greenness terms. Is it working toward sustainability? The city has a good reputation for talking the talk. Does it walk the walk? What follows are some of the green (and not so green) places and pleasures of Barcelona.

Ancient wisdom
Oliver and Elizabeth live in a narrow street on the western edge of El Raval, a neighborhood of ancient ill repute west of the elegant old city, the Ciutat Vella. Their neighborhood has also been called Barri Xino, meaning Chinatown, to signify its exotic (or grubby) nature. Today it bustles with immigrants from Pakistan and India, the Middle East, North Africa, Indonesia and the Philippines.

To return to their apartment after class, we walk south from the University along a handsome European boulevard. Dodging into a narrow crack of a street where a discount clothes store faces a murky government office, we enter a narrow canyon world of close-packed five-storey older apartment houses separated by narrow streets, lined with small shops, and punctuated by the beeping of service and delivery vehicles.

Turning right into a narrower residential alley, the racket dies away. From the bottom of this city canyon, I see the narrow sliver of sky above and walls festooned with clothes drying on laundry lines strung from balconies.

Across from a shop selling bananas, rice, eggs and juice, Oliver unlocks his front door and we enter a gloomy, ill-lit hallway, narrow and peeling, leading to a vertiginous stone staircase with a minimal metal railing.

The stairs twist steeply upward, and I am panting by the time we reach the fifth floor. At either side of the stairs on the landings are openings into shafts that plunge through the center of each interlocked building. These “light patios” provide ventilation and, for residents on the top floor, actual sunlight that enters the kitchen window obliquely for a while each day.

On the narrow top landing we enter a handsome, compact stone-floored apartment. Down the central hall beyond the small dining nook, daylight shines through the tall window with balcony, over the street we just left.

We are cozily tucked into an ancient housing form designed to cope with heat, cooling and ventilation in a hot, dry climate. Consider the insulating qualities of several square miles of continuous thick-walled stone buildings: not too hot and not too cold. Sunlight cannot enter directly.

Cross-ventilation between the light patios and the balconied windows provides a continual breeze. There are few dryers or air conditioners in this immigrant neighborhood. A plug-in heater guards against the winter chill. In elegant parts of the old city, apartment dimensions are more generous but the same basic building principles apply.

And its opposite
“You have to see this crazy bad place, that we found when we went over there for a concert.” They did not find the concert – but they did find the Fòrum, as did I when Oliver led me there via the Metro.

The Fòrum is a massive dirty-blue triangular convention center on stilts, built atop the delta where the Besòs River reaches the Mediterranean Sea. It is like a spacecraft that, when landing, heat-fused the surrounding landscape into a vast pitiless uniform concrete surface. Wandering this desolation covering the river’s natural delta, a landfill, and a bulldozed neighborhood, I tried to be positive. I told Oliver, “It is creative re-use of an environmentally degraded area.”

But he is right: this is an anti-green place. As we tromped across the pallid pavement down amphitheatre steps to a manufactured inlet, a mutant mega-yacht motored toward a marina, behind a power plant.

On the other hand, a bad mess has been cleaned up here. The northeast edge of Barcelona is delineated by the Besòs River, draining the hills inland of Barcelona to the Mediterranean Sea, itself among the world’s most polluted water bodies. Sewage and waste have anciently made their way into this beautiful, shallow sea with devastating impacts to ecosystems and public health.

For two decades, the Besòs ranked among the most polluted rivers along the Mediterranean shoreline (as did the Llobregat, Barcelona’s other river). Municipal sewage, industrial waste, and farm chemicals washed out to sea.

What has been lost, paving over the Besòs’ mouth to the sea? The natural landscape is gone: the river delta is buried under concrete and roadways. Human settlements were bulldozed for the “common good.”

On the positive side, the power and sewage treatment plants have been upgraded to control water and air pollution at the Mediterranean’s edge. A giant tilted concrete roof covered in photovoltaic cells reduces greenhouse gases, juicing the grid with solar-generated electricity. The paved surface provides a public area for swimming, sports, performances, exhibits. But this is not green or sustainable.

Old green places to explore
Barcelona has taken good care of its older parks and eccentric spaces. A happy day can be spent in these older, greener places of public amusement.

Parc del Laberint d’Horta
I love labyrinths. Most compelling for me is a centuries-old maze of green hedges, shaved to perfection and bristling with frustrating dead-ends. In the center you find a bench or statue, and then you have to get back out. Watching from above are labyrinth veterans, chortling as you painstakingly try out each …dead-end. You cannot look cool while decoding a maze.

An old labyrinth like Barcelona’s is otherworldly. The portal to a parallel universe might be there. Two hundred years ago, labyrinths were the latest fashion, and every country home and palace garden had to have one. Across Europe, labyrinth builders constructed frustrating patterns of interlocking green pathways. These mazes were also sexy, places where lovers could get lost together. The statue at the center of this labyrinth is Eros, Greek god of, hey, lust. Labyrinths remain edgy places for adventurous hearts.

When I found out Barcelona had a labyrinth, we were up there (the Mundet Metro stop) when it opened on a cool February morning. The Laberint d’Horta is situated above downtown, in the hills at the top of the city’s watershed. Cisterns capture water off the hilltops to descend via pools and charming streamlets, framing an old villa with an aura of romance – and cooling relief from the heat. A city park since the 1970s, at the heart of the gardens is the labyrinth.

My heart was a-flutter as we approached its green walls, twelve feet high. Oliver ran full-speed into the entrance – and vanished totally. He knows old magic when he sees it! I followed, surrendering to its green secrecy. Once inside I encountered Elisabeth and Laura a couple of times, but we were pursuing separate theories on how to find the center, and could spare no time for greetings.

After trudging in blissed-out good humor for twenty minutes, I saw claustrophobia peeking over the hedge, and decided to cheat. Having read a book about mazes, I knew this one was of standard design. I went out, tried another entrance, and got to the center in one minute. Oliver was there, looking good next to Eros, and the young women soon joined us. It is absolutely quiet – muffled – at the center of a labyrinth.

I tried a different passage out, one that reminded me of a certain tight-turning wet canyon passage, key to the route through a well-loved Kentucky cave. A small brown figurine of a saint had been placed on the gravel path to point the way. Stepping into the passage, I was met with a sharp-cornered dead end…the saint was a feint. By the time I finally emerged out into the surrounding gardens, the youngsters were above me on the terrace, looking down into the labyrinth and grooving in the heat of winter sunshine.

We wandered the gardens for another hour, enjoying the centuries-old ironic game of human-built natural landscapes, viewing secret grottos, winding streams, and a faux hermit retreat. Emerging from the front gate, we decided to walk to the green heart of Barcelona, Antonio Gaudi’s Parc Güell.

Barcelona’s Green Man: Antoni Gaudi
The classical and the wild
As he aged, Antoni Gaudi’s mental boundaries loosened, and he became less conventional, more hermit-like, bearded and reclusive. When he fell under the wheels of a tram in 1926 at age 73, he lay at a pauper’s hospital for a day, and soon died. The city had lost its genius gardener and architect – Barcelona’s Green Man.

You know who the Green Man is. Maybe he got his start as Pan, or another nature spirit. You see his face in the carved stone facades of old English churches, where he was, they say, tamed to serve Christianity. But not really tamed! He remains the wild, the edge, the oldest. Tolkien’s Tom Bombadil is one of his many names. Gaudi, for all his fervent Catholicism, was a modern manifestation of the Green Man.

Entering Park Güell at the main gate, you climb a set of colorful stairs and walk beneath a massive roof supported by closely-packed Roman columns: the orderly world imposed by humans on nature. Outside and above lies Gaudi’s sprawling natural world, convoluted and curving, full of natural forms that writhe and curl, barely contained into this park overlooking Barcelona.

It took us two hours of puffing up very steep city streets, with a fortifying lunch, to reach Parc Güell from the Laberint. Panting behind my young companions, far above I could see the top of the city’s hills. In my American fashion I called it – between gasps – “the pass.” Parc Güell was on the far side of that pass. Two-thirds of the way up a steep sidewalk, Oliver stopped to laugh at a side-street name: Street of Complaints.

Through the “pass,” the street trended downward and a path beckoned us into the Parc. We were halfway up a cascade of steeply-sloping park layers. A stone staircase headed upward for hundreds of feet, around the hill’s crest, and down the other side. I could see people creeping along up there. We dropped down, via stone stairways lined with shade trees, emerging onto a curved pedestrian promenade cantilevered over unseen levels below. Tourists strolled and posed for photos in decorated niches, gazing out over Barcelona to the sea beyond. As we too strolled, the level below came into view at a bend. An undulating row of twisting stone tree-trunks supported the promenade, with deep chambers beyond.

We descended through woodlands to the vast plaza that is the center for seeing and being seen at Parc Güell. Edged with seating in whimsical stone shapes with mosaic decorations, the plaza was full of happy people and a decked-out Japanese bride and groom (perhaps a fashion shoot), with blue sky above and early springtime in the air.

Following a staircase downward into the rows of stone trees, stalactites dangling above stone goddesses, I realized that the plaza, now above me, was the roof of the massive hall of Roman columns. I looked at the orderly columns, upward to the natural forms of the stone trees, and thought about that staircase to the hilltop. I saw nature rising, free from civilization.

In retrospect, there are no easy approaches to the Parc Güell on foot. After descending yet more staircases to depart via the Parc’s front gate, we continued descending steeply through the charming, jewel-box Gràcia neighborhood for fifteen minutes before reaching the Metro.

Tibidabo: More surreal than sustainable
Oliver Renwick takes up the tale.

Catalunya/Catalonia is fixated on pairing high altitudes with religious structures. An hour from Barcelona is the Benedictine abbey of Santa Maria de Montserrat, perched 1500 meters above sea level among sandstone peaks. Looming above Barcelona atop 540-meter Tibidabo Mountain is the Church of the Sacred Heart – along with stranger sights.

If you’ve seen Pedro Almodóvar’s films or know Spain, you’ll be aware that the country is also fixated on lurid pairings. The Sacred Heart Church is a destination for the devout, and around it is a hot night-life entertainment district. There is an amusement park on the doorstep of the church, with a wide promenade, open-air café, self-service cafeteria, and snack stands.

To get there from downtown, we started in the Plaça Catalunya, with difficulty locating the FGC, the Ferrocarriles de la Generalitat de Catalunya. The train shot us uphill to the Plaça John F. Kennedy, where we scorned the elevator, spiraling up eight flights of stairs on foot –“I twist like a corkscrew,” Rufus would say – to the surface. One can, says the travel brochure, then board the picturesque and historic Tramvia Blau, but the tram was nowhere to be seen. Yes, there were buses running the same route, but Spanish public transit lacks clearly-marked signs. (In Spain, clear explanations are generally lacking.)

The final climb is via the old Funicular del Tibidabo. In the lobby we thronged amongst becamera’d tourists to the train, seated calmly at a wicked slant. After a leisurely wait, the operators got in the bottom carriage and threw the switch. The funicular lurched energetically up the slope, gradually displaying all of Barcelona, from its sprawling upper reaches to the crowded shoreline below. When the train stopped, clean cold air whistled through the windows; better breathing above the dust and smog.

A spectacle greeted us as we emerged: the Temple de Sagrat Cor (Church of the Sacred Heart) shooting skywards, topped with a Rio de Janeiro-like Christ figure. The church’s foundations form the boundary of the Tibidabo Amusement Park, where the top of the Ferris wheel approaches the height of the Christ statue. Standing on the Basilica’s overlook, we viewed the airplane ride, the bumper cars and pirate ships.

Presented with this union of Catholic severity and American fun house, we bought tickets for the Museum of Automatons. A room about fifty feet from end to end, its surreal nature lends itself to the themes of an Almodóvar film.

This museum of mechanical toys begins with a gypsy-esque dancing female torso and a black peddler with a monkey. Next is a Parisian scene, “La Orquestre Prodigieuse:” a jazz quintet of black men dressed in white suits. “Truly prodigious,” explains the interpretive sign, is the pianist – a chimpanzee in a matching white suit.

Continuing past this racist display, we viewed an uncomfortable cultural history of what has shocked, fascinated, and amused people over the past century: a depiction of Hell, a Harlem dance club, a ski slope, a boxing ring.

Occupying one wall of the museum is a red velvet curtain, four feet high and ten feet wide. We pushed the button, gasping as the curtain drew back to reveal a city square in Madrid, bedecked with paper lanterns, with foot-high couples dancing to the tune of a music cart that a puppet man tirelessly wound.

I looked at the scene, with graffiti on the walls, a hot chocolate shop behind the dancers, balconies with flowers and laundry, the popular festivals, and recognized the Madrid of 2008. The date on the interpretive sign was 1951. This animated display captures my evolving understanding of Spain, as both up-to-date and in denial about its past.

Spain is working hard to break the systems, habits, and forms established by nearly forty years of Fascism under the dictator Francisco Franco, who ruled from 1936 to 1975. The systems remain embedded, the habits are personal and daily; the forms are not just governmental or economic, they’re cultural and long-lasting. In Spain, political fights are personal fights over this shared and hidden past. In many ways, the country is an automaton, stuck in its old pastimes, its old habits, and its old machinery, creakily dancing to the same, century-old tune.

The third establishment next to the church and amusement park is the Adventurers Club, a café that amplifies the museum’s theme of imperialism and Eurocentrism, with African game heads on the walls and a massive Balinese statue. Hanging from the ceiling are a hot air balloon basket and a 20-foot long “native” canoe. Regarding Tibidabo, old is not good. Tibidabo is more surreal than sustainable.

Also consider
The nearby Montseny Biosphere Reserve, established in 1978 as part of the United Nations program that recognizes landscapes where humans and nature live in relative balance.

Good Books
Robert Hughes, Barcelona, 1993. Vintage Books.

David Levering Lewis, God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215, 2008. W.W. Norton & Company.

George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia, 1938. Harcourt Books.

Giles Tremlett, Ghosts of Spain – Travels Through Spain and Its Silent Past, 2006 and 2008. Walker & Company.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind, 2001. Translation 2004 by Lucia Graves. Penguin Books.