Catalonia – Page 11 – From Pyrenees to Pennines

A History of a Holiday in Fifteen Trees – Five

I told you about the railway line in Premià de Mar the other day. Nowadays, a number of underpasses beneath the road and railway link the town to its beaches. And quite a few of them are painted with scenes of the town, and with life above and below the surface of the ocean.

Palm trees march along portions of the shoreline, so let’s begin with an image of one from an underpass:

And here’s the main square, with the parish church of Sant Cristofol.

There’s more street art, some of it more interesting, in the streets above. I’ll save those for later.

TreeSquare

A History of a Holiday in Fifteen Trees – Four

The barri antic – old town centre – of Premià de Mar is terraced by rows of what were once fishermen’s cottages, mainly dating from the 18th century, and known as les cases de cós. Their inhabitants divided their time between two occupations – fishing – and market gardening in their long narrow back gardens. The featured image shows a typical street, with awnings stretched across to shelter passers-by from the summer heat.

There aren’t many trees, so these days the town council has placed some in tubs along the pedestrianised streets.

With not many trees about, some residents cram their windows with cooling plants:

Although one careful resident has thoughtfully left a cat-sized gap at the bottom of his plant-friendly window.

Tree Square

Monday Window

A History of a Holiday in Fifteen Trees – Three

The railway line linking Barcelona to Mataró, 34 miles up the coast, was opened in 1847. The line divorced every town on its route, including Premià de Mar, from the seashore by hugging the coast. Nowadays a busy main road also runs alongside.

But the railway brought advantages too, by bringing raw materials (coal from England for the gasworks!) to agricultural and manufacturing industries, and by taking produce (fruit and vegetables, textiles) to their markets further afield.

Still, those early trains were regarded with deep suspicion, as evil and malevolent. Early travellers took no chances. They would make their wills before embarking on their journey. Market gardeners were convinced the smoke from the engines would harm the crops and they would become bankrupt. And steam engines require axle grease. Where could that fat come from? Weren’t there reports of babies and children going missing in Barcelona? Hmm?

Nowadays, this is the scene from the goods yard, now known as Descarroga beach – ‘decarrogar‘ is ‘to unload‘ in Catalan. The train line still exists, but silent electric rolling stock dependably transports commuters, but no freight, to and from Barcelona.

#TreeSquare

A History of a Holiday in Fifteen Trees – Two

El Llano de Los – or the Plain of the Bone. That’s today’s photo. It’s hard to believe, but back in 1900, here was Premiá de Mar’s newly-built shipyard, with carpenters busily engaged in crafting boats and ships, mainly for the fishing industry. Onlookers jeered. ‘Lazy lot, those boatmen. They’ve got a bone in their back that doesn’t let them work.’ With a great deal more justification, the carpenters hurled the insult back at the idlers watching them. So there we have it: the Plain of the Bone. Now all of us who enjoy a quiet moment here are idling away a few minutes during a pleasant stroll along the seashore, towards the port that these days is full of pleasure-craft – not a fishing boat in sight.

#TreeSquare

A History of a Holiday in Fifteen Trees – 1

And … we’re back from a more-or-less internet-free month in Spain. We’ve been with my daughter and partner, who five months ago became parents. This had been the first window of opportunity to get there, what with Covid travel restrictions.

We got to know and love Anaïs, as she mastered rolling over, sitting up, and enjoying English nursery rhymes to complement the Catalan ones her other yaya (granny) sings with her.

And we got to know and feel quite at home in the seaside town that Emily and Miquel moved to just before Anaïs was born. Only 12 miles from Barcelona, it’s assertively un-touristy – no hotels, AirB&B, catch-penny souvenir shops or menus in several languages.

So let’s start off with what the Spanish do best, and enjoy a drink in a bar shaded by the trees that line the streets.

#TreeSquare

Geometric Barcelona

I haven’t joined in the Lens-Artists Photo Challenge in a while: I wouldn’t like to fall out of the habit completely. What to offer? A miscellany? Maybe. Focus on one country – maybe Spain with its wonderful Moorish past? Maybe, but others have already offered wonderful images on this theme. Barcelona then, my daughter’s home? OK, why not? But this time, maybe not its must-see architecture, from Gothic to Gaudí. Let’s just walk the streets, travel the metro, visit maritime Barcelona, and see what we can see.

Click on any image to see full-size

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #141

A Window on Sants

About three years ago, we were in Sants, Barcelona. The flat where Emily and Miquel then lived was too small to accommodate us for too prolonged a stay, so an apartment in Sants it was – a part of the city we didn’t knw at all, but came to like a lot.

Once a village, by the nineteenth century it was industrialised – the textile industry – and home to Barcelona’s biggest textile factory. Now it’s home to Barcelona’s biggest station and travel interchange.

For us though, it was simply a busy working community, full of independent shops, a market, housing old and new. Let’s go and walk the streets for a while, and admire the often elegant windows. And as the feature photo shows, there’s washing. There’s always washing to hang out.

It’s an assertively independista part of the city: hence the Catalan flags and yellow ribbons. And they don’t welcome the destruction of their community by tourists that come and go. So we did our best to spend in neighbourhood shops bars and restaurants, and also hoped that, since we’re all-but Catalan in-laws now (and now, even Spanish grandparents), we might pass muster.

Monday Window – mañana

Monday Washing Line – mañana

Monday Window, Monday Washing

This time two years ago, we were in Barcelona. One of our ports of call was the first house Antoni Gaudí ever designed, Casa Vicens. Once a spacious site beyond the city limits, it’s now squashed into narrow city streets, some of its garden space sold off. But it’s definitely worth a visit, and you can have a virtual look round here.

What the official site won’t show you is the views from the windows, and one thing I enjoyed, as I always do, was the sight of the Monday washing drying on the balconies of nearby flats.

Monday Window

Monday Washing Lines

Upstanding craftsmen …

… work high up on the highest spires of La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. The squares show one of these craftsmen doing his work, almost at the very top. The featured photo gives some idea of how Gaudí’s as yet unfinished cathedral towers high above the city.

Square Up

Spanish Views from Spanish Windows

This is my last post about Spain for a while, and it includes images from previous visits too. Browsing through my collection, I see that windows feature – a lot.

Views through, of, and reflected from windows; views through spaces that serve as windows; and finally, views of things outside windows (washing lines!) that have me imagining the lives lived behind them . You’ll see all of these here – mainly, but not exclusively from Barcelona.

But let’s start in Granada, at the Alhambra. This young woman was impossible to get out of shot, as she had to take a selfie from every angle. In the end, I decided to put her centre stage.

A real view from a real window: our go-to tourist attraction in Barcelona: the Modernista Hospital de Sant Pau.

I’m a sucker for reflecting windows. This high-end grocery store in Barcelona offered those reflections in bright light, as well as showing the goods on offer inside (this one’s for you, Becky)