Europe @ 2.4 km/h (48 page)

Guernica
is sometimes called the 20th century’s greatest painting. It is certainly one of the most familiar. And, in the Queen Sofia Arts Centre, the work Picasso refused to show in Spain while it was under Fascist rule has found a home. I remember thinking, on my first encounter with this modern classic in a high-school art class at age fifteen, There is more to this than I can possibly take in. On seeing the actual canvas, as distinct from a copy, my reaction remains essentially the same. Picasso was so haunted by the German strafing of Guernica — a Basque town held by the Republicans — that, besides this masterpiece, he produced a host of sketches showing portions of the work before and during its creation. Last night I was in the Puerta del Sol, the heart of Madrid. Tonight, in the same gallery as these Picassos, I see the Puerta del Sol through the eyes of photographer Juan Pando Barrero. A 1937 photo of his showing bombed shops and rubble there brings the horror home. I can almost smell the blood.

1419 km

By rail from Spain to Barcelona, that was the plan. On 11 March 2004 Madrid’s Atocha rail hub was Ground Zero, scene of the deadliest terrorist attack on Spanish soil since the civil war. Today its interior has been converted into an artificial ‘tropical’ jungle, in an inspired flight of architectural fancy.

You cannot just go to Atocha and proceed to the platform, I discover, even if you possess a ticket. First you have to submit to airport-style screening — which you can’t really blame the authorities for, given the carnage of that day. I produced my ticket and my passport for identification. The desk officer, who sported a peaked cap, looked tentative and then broke the news gently, ‘You will be taking a bus for the last part of the journey, from Tarragona to Barcelona, did you know that?’

‘No,’ I replied, feeling that the Spanish variant of Murphy’s Law was set to strike again but still compelled to ask, ‘Why?’

‘Well,’ he shifted uneasily, ‘the railway is broken.’ He seemed to be counting on my understanding.

‘The railway is broken?’ I asked, perplexed by the phrase.

‘Yes, the high-speed train crashed last year and the track is not yet fixed.’ The railway track, the washing machine, the hostel lift. Do I detect a pattern here?

1426-1428 km

To call Barcelona a Spanish city is to provoke the Furies. We are in the heart of Catalonia, where
Bon dia
opens many more doors than
¡Hola!
; and
Perdoni
excites a certain sympathy its cousin
Perdon
never could. Wherever it belongs, this is one of Europe’s most lovable, stimulating, accessible and characterful cities — and it quickly becomes a favourite of mine. (Its metro, unlike Madrid’s, gives me little cause to worry whether I will be able to get back to street level at the other end — and that alone is enough to win me over.)

On my first morning here I sit at an outdoor café diagonally across from the friendly hostel where I have been lucky enough to find a room. Flicking through the current issue of
Catalonia Today
, an English-language weekly, I come across an article that seems to say a lot about this country.

Two young Catalans, Jaume Roura and Enric Stern, have been fined €2700 each by Madrid’s High Court for burning an image of King Juan Carlos. The judge resisted prosecution calls for their imprisonment, saying he hoped the fine would teach them that they could think freely ‘but that they can’t attack the basic institutions of the state’ [a long-winded way of saying they may not speak freely]. Roura and Stern are quoted as saying they would do the same again, and denounced ‘the scorn of Spain and its legal system for the Catalan people’. They were not allowed to address the court in Catalan.
⁴²

Elsewhere in the paper, an article by columnist Matthew Tree lampoons government plans to teach schoolchildren civility. He points out that so far the only Spaniard to have received instruction on how to be well-mannered was Juan Carlos, who had delivered the Spanish equivalent of ‘Shaddapayaface’ to Chavez. Nice point, even if it does pander to Catalans’ anti-Spanish sentiment.
⁴³

Those who wish to be reconciled to their history are as admirable as they are rare. One such is Ignacio (Inigo in Catalan), a receptionist at my hostel who is far in advance of separatists and nationalists of all stripes. Asked whether he is Catalan or Spanish, he replies, ‘Both, and a European also.’

What Central Park is to New York, and Circular Quay to Sydney, the long, graceful slope of Las Ramblas is to Barcelona. On this pedestrian promenade an elderly couple waltz to a busker’s serenade; electric-orange punks strut their stuff; street performers turn your head (and some of them your stomach); trained monkeys act like humans, and humans return the compliment; while an endless procession of families pause to chat on the most leisurely of strolls to the sea.

On this cloudless day I halt on Las Ramblas to let hand-holding primary-school pupils pass on their way to the waterfront Mall d’España, greeting their teacher as I do so, ‘
Bon dia’.
Smiling, she responds in English, and, since Catalan is new to me, I ask whether
Per-do-ni
(each of whose syllables I take care to pronounce distinctly) is correct, and she answers, reflexively, ‘
Si
’. For a good while afterwards I think she has relapsed into Spanish, but languages, like the people who speak them, are influenced by their neighbours, and ‘
Si
’ is Catalan, as well as
español
, for ‘yes’.

At the foot of Las Ramblas stands Columbus Monument. The bronzed explorer stands on top of his prodigiously tall plinth, pointing eastwards across the Med. It’s a strange way to get to the New World, but maybe not if you’re looking for India. And in any case it’s better than having him point inland. Opposite his statue, a marquee advertises the Barcelona World Race, a rally for yachts — 18-metre Open 60s — that set off from here a couple of weeks ago aiming to circumnavigate the globe. The competitors are currently off the coast of West Africa and anyone is welcome to come in off the street and check their progress through daily webcam updates. Miguel, who takes queries from the public, informs me that the eighteen competitors include ten French entries, three Spaniards — and one Catalan (I note the separate classification). There is one Australian yachstman, Andrew Cape, and in the lead at the moment are the French yachts Paprec-Virvac and PRB. Of course no one knows it yet but, by following the race’s own website,
⁴⁴
I will see Paprec-Virvac maintain its lead all the way to the finish line here, on 11 February, by which time I will have rounded the world in 93 days.

1433-1434 km

About 50 km north-west of Barcelona, in the foothills of the Pyrenees, lies ‘the spiritual heart of Catalonia’, the 11th-century Benedictine Monestir (Monastery) de Montserrat. The monastery materialises through the left-side window of the train coming from Barcelona. At first sight, to my mind, it resembles the Potala Palace in Tibet.

The age of the cablecar linking us to the mountain (77 years) doesn’t worry me — so long as it has been receiving regular maintenance. But my mind starts swimming with thoughts of broken railways, non-drying washing machines and other visions of a kind best not entertained in a gondola rising through the air at an angle of 49 degrees.

Among the vertical sardines, my fellow passengers, three friendly looking English-speakers offer to help me out (literally), and when the gondola reaches its zenith they do. University students from Seattle — two Canadians and an American (Matt, Ben and Zak) — they tour the monastery with me for the rest of the afternoon.

Luckily, we have arrived at the 900-year-old monastery with minutes to spare before the daily 1 pm performance by ‘Europe’s oldest boys’ choir’ — which I take as a reference to the choir’s age rather than the choristers’. As on every other day, the performance ends after seven minutes, on the dot, but the purity of sound lingers long afterwards.

Unexpectedly, the monks turn out to have been shrewd collectors of modern art. Renoir, Monet, Degas and Pissarro are all represented. No moral slide rule appears to have been run over the works before acquisition, although one of them hints at a cautionary tale. The subject of Ramon Casas’
Madeleine. Absinthe
painted at Montmartre in 1892 stares vacantly out of the frame. On the table is her glass of absinthe, her right hand holds a cigar. It all goes to show that good girls have been going to the bad for a hell of a long time now.

1443-1463 km

A sign (of great liberty) is seen in the window of a Barcelona bodega, THIS BAR IS ALLOWED TO SMOKE.

Barcelona has long welcomed the inspired eccentric. Think inspired, think eccentric, think of Salvador Dalí, as well as Antonio Gaudí and Joan Miró, whose hometown was Barcelona. It may not have been Picasso’s but it was his launch pad, in two senses: the first place where he made his artistic mark in an eight-decade-long career; and the town from which he launched forth, several times, to explore then unknown reaches of the European art cosmos.

In 1963 the Museu Picasso was inaugurated in a backstreet mansion (Aguilar Palace); with the donation of 1700 works by the master himself in 1970, it spread into new wings in the adjoining Castellet Palace (it helps to have a palace next door if you’re thinking of expanding). The great service this museum performs is to focus on the unknown child artist who emerged from his chrysalis here. His first large oil painting — a stunning work, of the type that will always having the naturalists sighing, ‘Look what he could have done if he hadn’t drifted into abstract’ — was
First Communion
, second-prize winner at the Exhibition of Fine Arts and Artistic Industries in Barcelona in 1896, when Picasso was just fifteen.

Another realistic work that those who view it will not soon forget is
Science and Charity
— painted in Barcelona in 1897. In it a doctor checks a mother’s pulse as she lies abed, her eyes — and all her fears and hopes — focused on her young son.

It is the best known of Barcelona’s landmarks. You either love it or loathe it. Begun a century and a quarter ago, in 1882, it may never be finished. If it were, fewer people might come to visit.
Surely the
builders must know that
. Answering the obvious for what must be the thousandth time, a guide assures me that the project is on target for completion in 2040 — but I cannot say she speaks with conviction. The Atonement Temple of the Holy Family (universally shortened to
Sagrada Familia
) is dedicated to St Joseph — San José, Jesus’ earthly father (and in November 2010 Pope Benedict consecrated the incomplete structure, albeit as a ‘minor basilica’). Inextricably associated with the flamboyant architect Gaudi, it was actually the brainchild of an earlier generation. But it is Gaudi’s plans and fantasies his successors claim to be following.