The New York Times, February 6, 1893, p.2:
A VIEW OF BARCELONAOLD SPAIN'S BUSIEST AND MOST MODERN CITY.
ITS PEOPLE, ITS ARCHITECTURE, AND ITS INDUSTRIES-- SIGHTS ON THE CALLE FERNANDO AND THE RAMBLA-- ELECTRIC LIGHT, ENGLISH CLOTHES, AND HORSE CARS.
BARCELONA, Jan. 20.--Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain, and by long odds the first in commercial enterprise and industry. I shall remember it as, seemingly, quite the most in touch with the spirit of the age. Perhaps this is the reason why so few tourists care to linger in it, and yet, if they would look around them, they would find enough to interest and amuse them in the life that ebbs and flows through these American-looking streets.
The approach to the city by rail from the French frontier gives a tone to all succeeding impressions of this strange land of Spain. But it scarcely prepares for the curious mingling of new and old, of provincial and cosmopolitan, which confronts you at every step in this unique city whose monuments reach back to the father of Hannibal and whose dwelling houses are Parisian of to-day.
I had not slept, only nodded with sudden starts in my seat, on my way through the late night. At 5 o'clock the Winter day was breaking over the bare hills which screen the line of rail from the sea not far away. The rays of the sun, falling aslant through a sky of light, lustreless blue, brought out in pale distinctness the least detail of the landscape.
It is a sunny, yet a sombre land, full of rock shadows, but where the pleasant shade of trees is unknown. The sun may pour floods of light down upon it, but its arid stretches never shine out rich with liquid color. The infrequent farmhouses stand blocklike and gray against the hillside, and between the hills there are glimpses of hamlets, with gray-walled and red-tiled houses huddling about the square church tower which rises yellow and weatherbeaten in watch over all.
Even the faces of the men who dawdle around the stations by the way are heavy and stolid, with a more than rustic seriousness. The red sash, wound round their waists below the short dark jacket, which displays forms naturally strong and lithe, cannot disquise an indolent lack of grace in the wearer. Clumsier and more rustic still are the women in their long gowns and cotton print, common and unadorned, as they stand with heads bare and faces stoically devoid of interest.
This first impression I found no reason to change afterward. There is nowhere that unfailing sunniness of disposition which makes the Italian peasant sing blithely all the day at his work, and still on into the night when his work is over and done. Here, amid the gray monotone of the earth and the pale sameness of the sky, silence weighs down the burden of labor, and the shadows of sleepiness and inaction brood over all.
The first lesson to be learned by the traveler in this unworldly land is that heed shall be given him mañana, "tomorrow."
With the entrance to Barcelona, everything seems to change. Around the railway station there is the glint of steel rails, with the black iron of machinery along grimy stretches of roadbed, which betokens a great centre of transportation. Between it and the sea the monotonous white houses of Barceloneta, the working-men's suburb, crowd out along a hook of land into the harbor. On the other side the high, square, many-windowed buildings of a modern city begin.
Patches of bright color are flung recklessly everywhere. On the roof terraces of rich and poor alike the week's washing is hung out to dry in waving strips of red and blue, of yellow and green and white. Through the glass-inclosed balconies, which modify each story of these Parisian houses in a way befitting this southern clime, gayly-clad children are seen at play amid the shining green of lemon trees and the pale purple of flowering heliotropes.
The dull blue waters of the bay are dotted with white lateen sails, and over beyond, a military road, wide and brown, winds up the steep slope of a broad promontory where the fortress of Monjuich frowns over the city and port below.
The drive to the hotel in the centre of the town leads through avenues of plane trees, with broad rustling leaves of yellow green. Here and there is an open space around the straight shafts and plume-like tops of a group of palms, and there are occasional garden vistas of vines and flowers and orange trees hung with gold. It is hard for the south not to be beautiful.
Barcelona, including its manufacturing suburbs, has a half million of inhabitants. There is a reason of race for its industrial and commercial prominence among the cities of Spain. The people are Catalans, of restless yet practical blood, with a strain, one would think, of the ancient traders of Carthage. Barcelona has always been the capital of Catalonia, and it was once the seat of the King of Aragon and Navarre. The Catalan is still chiefly spoken among the people, and newspapers and books are printed in it; but Spanish is everywhere understood, and is the official language.
The city is in a great plain, surrounded by hills that slope gently toward the sea, except for the one abrupt promontory of Monjuich to the south. A quarter of a century ago the old walls of the city were torn down and the space they had occupied was turned into broad avenues--a reason for half the boulevards of continental Europe. Once the city burst these narrow bounds, it spread out rapidly. Its map has now the look of a checker board, in regular squares, like the streets of new American cities, but with a curious congestion in the centre, where ancient Barcelona lies.
In all these modern squares, and through the chief streets of the old town, are the electric light and the American horse car. Outside the checker-board plan of the city are scattered suburbs, each of which is devoted to some particular branch of industry.
Barceloneta is for fishers, sailors, and workmen in the navy yard; and down here were built the Pinta and Niña, the imitation caravels ordered by the United States in honor of Christopher Columbus. Other suburbs are given over to metal working, tanning, fruit preserving, cotton mills, salt works, and railway works for nearly the whole of Spain. Most of the "monte" cards in use are made here, and the trade of the port is principally with South America and Mexico.
The great commercial street of the city is the Calle Fernando, which, under different names, runs from the handsome new park west through the old town. It is still narrow, like all the other streets of that part, but its course has been straightened, which cannot be said of the other many threads of this antique labyrinth.
The Rambla is the city's unique promenade and chiefest pride. It was a wide street running at right angles with the Calle Fernando, with a drive on each side and a great walk shaded by spreading plane trees in the middle. It passes, for nearly a mile, from the port up through the old town into the very heart of the new.
By the stone quays at its foot there idles in the sun a motley crowd, looking out at the black hulks and skeleton rigging of the ships moored in the harbor. On working days heavy carts from the warehouses go lumbering by. On holidays the common people take their airing here in good-natured throng, where the red trousers of the soldiers, whose low yellow barracks are near at hand, show conspicuous. Some street vendor mounts a chair and prepares a ready market for his cheap wards by astonishingly clever tricks with playing cards or other sleight of hand.
In a booth in the open space, week day and Sunday alike, a gaudily-kerchiefed woman gives out refreshing liquids of various heat and strength from amid a many-colored glitter of glassware and bottles. Most in demand, so far as I could see, is the cold and clear water. In spite of the foreign sailors in port, acquaintance is here begun with that wonderful sobriety which still characterizes the Spanish people.
From this point, along the ample promenade around the port, may be seen heavy but not ignoble piles of stone buildings, with the classical doorways and windows of a style already past. Along the Rambla everything is of the latest day. The past has scarcely left a trace, except for here and there a church standing solitary on its corner. To find historic memories anywhere, it would be necessary to plunge into the labyrinth of torturous narrow streets which lead off on either hand into the quarters of the old city. When the newer part is reached, the wide and well-paved streets, crossing each other at right angles, and the regularly built edifices, have an almost American aspect.
Life surges slowly up and down the Rambla. A striking feature is the mantle worn by the men. It is fastened at the neck and hangs down over the shoulders to the knee. Black on the outside, it is faced deep with plush or velvet of richest color--crimson, sky-blue, or bright green. These long strips of color wave to and fro as the dignified wearer walks along, or are wound round his breast as he swings the end of his cloak across his shoulders to protect mouth and throat from the wind.
Among the exquisites, however, London coats are beginning to supplant the picturesque native mantle. The women, also, are too often bonneted and draped in the fashions of Paris to add much to the interest of the scene. Only here and there does a fragment of black tulle [veil netting] thrown over the head recall the national matilla.
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