Barcelona guided walking tours - Juan Marsé's Barcelona

Photograph © Trevor. More featured photographers here.

Basic data

grade	easy
base	Barcelona
location tags	Barcelona, Carmel, Catalonia, Catalunya, Cataluña, Gracia, Grí cia, Guinardó, Monte Carmelo, Turó de la Rovira,
theme tags	bar, gypsy, literary, social history,
walking distance	6 km / 3.73 miles
walking time, excluding breaks	3 hr
total return travel time from base to walk	0.5 hr
total time from "hello" to "goodbye"	4.55 hr
comments, pingbacks, trackbacks	Show/hide kalebeul » The green of the louse/Lo verde del piojo says: May 21 2009 at 10:48 [...] Juan Marsé’s marvellously evocative Last evenings with Teresa/íšltimas tardes con Teresa for this Barcelona walking tour, I came across an interesting expression of which I knew the meaning but not the etymology: El [...] Reply kalebeul » Loft of gipsy homing pigeons painted in the colours of Spain and Andalusia says: August 7 2009 at 19:11 [...] by SG on a lovely clear day last week on a variation of this Barcelona city walk. The birds belong to three tired-looking gents who one would have said were hippophiles pertaining [...] Reply kalebeul » More Nordic body culture in Barcelona says: January 11 2010 at 08:54 [...] Seen during my Juan Marsé guided tour in Barcelona. [...] Reply kalebeul » Decadent graffiti art at nursery entrance in Carmelo, Barcelona says: January 18 2010 at 15:36 [...] Seen on one of the variants of this walk. [...] Reply Want to leave a (moderated) comment? Click here to cancel reply. Name (required) Mail (will not be published) (required) Website

Description of the walk

Cervantes prize-winning novelist Juan Marsé was born in Barcelona in 1933 and situated much of his writing in the neighbourhoods of Carmelo, Gracia and Guinardó, heavily marked by the post-war immigration from other parts of Spain. His marvellously evocative Last evenings with Teresa/Últimas tardes con Teresa sets the scene in the following passage:

Mount Carmel is a naked, barren hill located northwest of the city. Their invisible strings managed by the expert hands of children, you will often see brightly-coloured kites in the blue of the sky, shuddering in the wind, hovering above the summit like coats of arms announcing a warrior dream. In those grey postwar years, when empty stomachs and body lice required a dream a day to make reality more bearable, Mount Carmel was the favourite and fabulous field of adventure for the scruffy children from the neighbourhoods of Casa Baró, Guinardó and La Salud. They climbed to the top where the wind whistles to launch crude home-made kites constructed with flour paste, cane, rags and newspaper: for a long time there trembled and flapped fiercely in the city sky photos and news of the German advance on the fronts of Europe, death and destruction reigned, the weekly ration of Spaniards, misery and hunger. Now, in the summer of 1956, Carmel's kites no longer bear news or photos, nor are they made of newspapers, but rather of fine tissue paper bought in some shop, and their are colours garish, shocking. But despite this improvement in their appearance, many are still home-made, their frames coarse and heavy, and they gain height with difficulty: still the neighborhood’s warrior banner.

Accompanied by excerpts from Marsé's work, this walk introduces you to the remains of the shanty town that began to spring up around the Civil War anti-aircraft battery in the 1940s and the varied pursuits of the residents--including small-scale iron-mining, goat- and psychedelic-pigeon-keeping and finch fancying--and draws a contrast with the more settled part of Gracia where we begin our walk. We'll visit a couple of the more atmospheric neighbourhood bars to help you recover from any culture shock.

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