You’ve ‘Done’ Barcelona. Now what? (Part One)

Here you are in Barcelona. You’ve strolled down Las Ramblas, and fought your way through the scrum in La Boqueria market. You’ve queued to get round La Sagrada Familia: and in fact visited every other creation you can think of by Antoni Gaudí . At my insistence, you’ve visited the Hospital de Sant Pau (here and here). You’ve got a bad case of Museum Foot, and you’re fed up with the crowds.

Perhaps I could make a few suggestions? One’s yet another museum, but it’s only been opened a for a short while and you may have the place almost to yourself. It’s the Museu de l’Art Prohibit. Here’s the story:

During the ARCO 2018 edition, collector Tatxo Benet acquired an artwork by artist Santiago Sierra, titled Presos Políticos en la España Contemporánea (Political Prisoners in Contemporary Spain). Shortly thereafter … the gallery that sold the piece removed it from its stand. The mere labelling of ‘political prisoners’ triggered its CENSORSHIP…

This incident laid the groundwork for conceiving a distinctive collection. Five years later, the accumulation of works subjected to CENSORSHIP, CANCELLATION or DIVERSE FORMS OF ATTACK has given rise to the Museu de l’Art Prohibit. 

The Manifesto: Museu de l’Art Prohibit

Here, you’ll find work by the likes of Goya , Picasso, Banksy, as well as names less familiar to me like Amina Benbouchta and Charro Corrales. The works shown here have fallen foul of political, religious or sexual censors. It’s powerful stuff and I urge you to go and make your own mind up.

It’s not just repressive or totalitarian regimes that practice censorship. It’s not just the Catholic church or hardline Muslims who do so either. I was quite surprised to find that I too was practising self-censorship when deciding which images to share on a public platform. In the end, I went with these.

This MacDonald’s refuser really liked this one:

Yoshua Okon, 2014: Freedom Fries, Naturaleza Morta. A London gallery refused to accept this work in an exhibition of Mexican art, because of its ‘political nature’.

There was this:

David Cerny 2006: Shark. Saddam Hussein in a shark tank 2005. A Belgian town demanded its removal as being offensive to Muslims and off-putting to tourists.

Natalia LL: Consumer Art 1972-75. Following Natalia’s first works in this series, Poles posted posters of themselves eating bananas as a protest against government censorship. One of a large series .

It’s housed in an elegant Modernist building, the Casa Garriga Nogués. These windows give you a taste of it.

These windows are the work of Antoni Rigalt, who was also the creator of the windows at the Palacio de la Música Catalana.

I found the whole thing thought-provoking and was glad to have spent a couple of hours there. I wondered whether I’d been wise to go to the women’s toilets though. The featured photo shows what confronted me as I walked in.

Next week we’ll stay in Barcelona, but I’ll take you somewhere restful and restorative: that’s so long as you don’t get lost. And you will…

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Author: margaret21

I'm retired and live in North Yorkshire, where I walk , write, volunteer and travel as often as I can.

32 thoughts on “You’ve ‘Done’ Barcelona. Now what? (Part One)”

    1. Nope. Not Gaudí. You were the first to notice my now-corrected major typo- thank you! Gaudí can manage without my help. I’m after the less-visited, and I’m heading outside the city centre next.

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      2. Ah, thanks for sharing your post. We loved Pedralbes,both the monastery and the community surrounding it. Definitely worth making the effort to get out of the usual tourist rut.

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    1. That’s not a confession! It’s a wonderful city whose principal sights seem to get overcrowded and therefore exhausting to visit. I just wanted to showcase one or two other places. I avoid big cities these days. I’ll make an exception for Glasgow.

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