7 / 344
5
|
INTRODUCTION
| WHAT TO SEE | WHEN TO GO
Gaining the
1992 Olympics
was an important initial boost. Along with
a construction programme that touched every corner of the city went
the indisputable knowledge that these had been Barcelona’s Games, and
not Spain’s – an important distinction to the Catalan people. Since then
the economic and physical transformation of Barcelona has been extraor-
dinary, with some remarkable new buildings and public spaces sharing
the limelight with renovated historic quarters, revamped museums and a
sparkling city beachfront.
If there’s a pattern emerging in how Barcelona presents itself to the outside
world, it’s the emphasis on a remarkable fusion of economic energy and
cultural expression. This is seen most perfectly in the glorious
modernista
Talking the talk
Catalan
(Català) is a Romance language, stemming directly from Latin,
and closely resembling Occitan. It’s spoken by over ten million people
in total, in Barcelona and Catalunya, part of Aragón, much of Valencia,
the Balearic islands, Andorra, and parts of the French Pyrenees – and
is thus much more widely spoken than Danish, Finnish and Norwegian.
Other Spaniards tend to belittle it by saying that to get a Catalan word
you just cut a Castilian one in half but, in fact, the grammar is more
complicated and it has eight vowel sounds compared to Castilian’s
five. During Franco’s time in power, Catalan was banned from the radio,
TV, daily press and schools, which is why many older people cannot
read or write it (even if they speak it all the time) – the region’s best-
selling Catalan-language newspaper sells far fewer copies than the
most popular Castilian-language daily paper. Virtually every Catalan
is bilingual, but most regard Catalan as their mother tongue and it’s
estimated that it is the dominant language in over half of Catalunya’s
households – a figure that’s likely to grow given the amazing revival of
the language in recent times.
Dancing the sardana