The featured photo is of definitely my favourite door in Premià de Mar. It’s part of an otherwise plain but elegant building whose history I haven’t been able to discover.
Here are a few more from the old town.
For Dan’s Thursday Doors.
Five o’clock. Time to collect Anaïs from nursery school. Off to the shops first, walking along a street planted with Seville orange trees. The bitter fruits don’t tempt anybody to steal one for a snack. But I’m tempted by windfalls. We collect all we can find so that later, we can scrub them clean and make marmalade.
Up the hill, on the way back, here’s a street still with a few papery autumn leaves …
… and a house with a orange tree: sweet oranges this time, and ready to eat.
We turn left, and walk towards the sunset.
Then - finally – home at last …
For Debbie’s Six Word Saturday.
Visit Catalonia while there’s some kind of festival going on, and you might be lucky enough to see Gegants. They’re huge and heavy figures which, during festivals, are carried by some poor – unseen – soul probably sweating and longing for the moment when he (and it’s invariably a ‘he’) can put his burden down and disappear for a drink. They usually represent various traditional characters, though in the early days, way back in the 15th century, they had the job of telling Bible stories.
While we were staying with daughter-and-family in Premià de Mar over Easter, Malcolm and I, out with granddaughter Anaïs, had a piece of luck. A small band of people were hauling the local gegants out of store, and generally checking them over . They invited us to look round the store if we wanted, and we did. I find some of these creatures a little on the creepy side: all the same, I was a bit disappointed that we couldn’t be around on the day that these lumbering giants stalked the streets of the town for one day only.
Come and have a look round the store room with us …
I’ve a feeling that this time, a love story was on the cards. The sort where the Hunk and the Kind and Virtuous Maid live happily ever after.
Do you agree?
For Natalie’s Exploring Public Art Challenge – again.
Last time I took you to a library, it was a rainy day. During our month away, we had just one day of rain – more like a couple of hours – when we were staying with Emily and family in Premià de Mar. She was at work. Miquel was at work. Anaïs was at nursery. Reader, we went to the library.
We found plenty to do. There was the display of children’s books about the sea. And another one of graphic fiction.
There was the stock of English books. Lots for learners – quite impressive. The English language fiction was less so, though it was better than our library’s collection of Spanish books (and we have none in Catalan, unsurprisingly).
With everyone at school, the children’s library was empty. But there was a dedicated room for the youngest borrowers, so they could make all the noise they wanted during story-time sessions. There was a lecture hall, a roof-top performance space. In fact we were impressed.
And as we left, we spotted this poster in Catalan. Go on. Have a go. If you’ve ever learnt any French, or Italian or Spanish for that matter, I think this piece will be accessible to you. And you won’t have trouble agreeing with its sentiments.
For Rebecca’s Love your Library, a monthly challenge for … of course, library-lovers.
It is a grey Monday outside. And Jude has invited us to celebrate grey and black in this month’s Life in Colour challenge. Let’s go on one of our mini-breaks and see what we can find. We’ll start in London:
Oh, but maybe London’s too obvious as a starting place. Let’s start from Gateshead instead, and join a group gazing out of the window from the Baltic Centre.
We’re off to Spain now. We’ll stop off in Seville. You may need a comfort break by now, so we’ll stop off at the public toilets in Plaza de España, and enjoy the reflections we can see in its glass walls.
Shadows from street lights as evening falls, but we get away in time to see the Alhambra in Granada illuminated at night – it’s the featured photo.
We’ll pop across the next day to see my daughter in Premià de Mar. It’s silhouettes and sunny shadows there.
This is only a mini-break. We’ll go home via Whitby and just have a stroll to the end of the pier. There are always cormorants there. And seagulls on the rooftops.
Time for home now. Goodnight!
Typical of me to miscount. This isn’t the last day of the month. But these are my last squares. Alongside my one and only square today are other shots, mainly in blue, for Jude’s monthly Life in Colour challenge. They’re all included as a final salute to our memorable month in Spain – until Monday, that is, when I’ll showcase the clothes lines that we spotted for Andrew’s Monday Washing Lines.
TreeSquare And thanks, as ever, for your Squares challenge Becky. A lovely month of choosing, squaring and sharing images of trees, ‘our most intimate connection with nature’ ( George Nakashima)
We’re going to end our trip to Premià de Mar where we began, in a bar. But this isn’t just any bar. This is Bar del Mig, in the main town square, and the venue of choice for many in the town for a morning coffee, a lunchtime meal or a convivial evening of tapas and a drink.
Bar del Mig? That’s a funny name isn’t it? Well, it refers to the fact that the Cami del Mig runs through all the coastal towns hereabouts, as it has since Roman times, south of the Via Augusta, as a -er- miggle way between that and the sea.
We might be leaving Premià , but there are lots of places, lots of trees to visit yet. We’ll call in at other local towns in the area before heading off back to the ferry from Santander via Aragon, the Basque country, and Cantabria. Gosh, if the thought’s making you thirsty, and we haven’t time to go back to the bar, best have a quick swig from a tree-shaded water fountain before we set off.
Today we have two trees that are pushing the boundaries. The first isn’t a tree at all: but this huge cactus near Emily and Miquel’s house clearly thinks it’s a tree.
And this little palm tree sapling, down near the beach at Premià de Mar surely won’t make it though to maturity, as it’s relying on the goodwill of a host tree that’s unlikely to want to have it around for long.
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.
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.
You must be logged in to post a comment.