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on the right, the
Església de Betlem
(daily 8am–6pm), built in 1681 in
Baroque style for the Jesuits, was completely gutted during the Civil War as
anarchists sacked the city’s churches at will – an activity of which Orwell quietly
approved. Consequently, the interior is plain in the extreme, though the main
facade on c/del Carme sports a fine sculpted portal and relief.
Opposite the church, the arcaded
Palau Moja
at no. 188 dates from the late
eighteenth century and still retains an exterior staircase and elegant great hall.
The ground floor of the building is now a cultural bookshop, while the palace’s
gallery, the
Sala Palau Moja
, is open for art and other exhibitions relating to all
things Catalan (Tues–Sat 11am–8pm, Sun 11am–3pm; usually free;
T
933 162
740) – the gallery entrance is around the corner in c/Portaferrissa.Take a look,
too, at the illustrated tiles above the
fountain
at the start of c/Portaferrissa,
which show the medieval gate (the Porta Ferriça) and market that were once
sited here. The streets to the west, towards Avinguda del Portal del Àngel, are
good for shopping, especially for clothes.
George Orwell in Barcelona
Barcelona is a town with a long history of street-fighting.
Homage to Catalonia
, 1938
When he first arrived in Barcelona in December 1936,
George Orwell
was much
taken with the egalitarian spirit he encountered, as loudspeakers on the Ramblas
bellowed revolutionary songs, café waiters refused tips, brothels were collectivized
and buildings draped in anarchist flags. After serving as a militiaman on the
Aragonese front, Orwell returned on leave to Barcelona in April 1937 to find that
everything had changed. Not only had the city lost its revolutionary zeal, but the
various leftist parties fighting for the Republican cause had descended into a
“miserable internecine scrap”. From the
Hotel Continental
(Ramblas 138), where
Orwell and his wife Eileen stayed, he observed the deteriorating situation with
mounting despair, and when street-fighting broke out in May, Orwell was directly
caught up in it. As a member of the Workers Party of Marxist Unification (POUM),
Orwell became a target when pro-Communist Assault Guards seized the city
telephone exchange near Plaça de Catalunya and began to try to break up the
workers’ militias. Orwell left the hotel for the
POUM headquarters
(Ramblas 128) just
down the street, sited in the building that’s now the
Rivoli Ramblas
hotel – a plaque
here by the “Banco Popular” sign honours murdered POUM leader Andrés Nin
(“victim of Stalinism”). With the trams on the Ramblas abandoned by their drivers as
the shooting started, and Assault Guards occupying the adjacent
Café Moka
(Ramblas 126), Orwell holed up with a rifle for three days in the rotunda of the
Teatro
Poliorama
(Ramblas 115) opposite, in order to defend the POUM HQ if necessary.
Breakfasting sparsely on goat’s cheese bought from the Boqueria market (its stalls
largely empty), concerned about Eileen and caught up in rumour and counter-rumour,
Orwell considered it one of the most unbearbable periods of his life.
When the fighting subsided, Orwell returned to the front, where he was shot
through the throat by a fascist sniper. Yet that was only the start of his troubles.
Recuperating in a sanatorium near Tibidabo, he learned that the POUM had been
declared illegal, its members rounded up and imprisoned. He avoided arrest by
sleeping out in gutted churches and derelict buildings and playing the part of a
tourist by day, looking “as bourgeois as possible”, while scrawling POUM graffiti in
defiance on the walls of fancy restaurants. Eventually, with passports and papers
arranged by the British consul, Orwell and Eileen escaped Barcelona by train – back
to the “deep, deep sleep of England” and the writing of his passionate war memoir,
Homage to Catalonia
.
THE RAMBLAS
|
Rambla Canaletes and Estudis