Barcelona through the European mirror: From red and black to claret and blue

Abstract

Over the past decade Barcelona has become one of the most glamorous cities in Europe. It already enjoyed some reputation amongst cultural elites as the home of the young Pablo Picasso and capital of Salvador Dali and Joan Miro’s Catalonia. This reputation was greatly enhanced in the 1980s as the city’s early twentieth-century modernista (Catalan Art Nouveau) architectural heritage came into fashion. Antoni Gaudi in particular came to be seen, for the first time, as an architect of international standing and his buildings were converted into major tourist attractions. The end of the 1980s saw the beginnings of a massive urban renewal programme which was to underpin the celebration of the 1992 Olympic Games and bring the city to wider attention. In a matter of five years Barcelona undertook probably the most ambitious urban and architectural development of any European city since the post-war reconstruction of western Europe. Part of the decaying industrial suburb of Poble Nou on the shoreline was razed to the ground and replaced by the Olympic Village, port leisure facilities and miles of new beaches. Across Barcelona, on the mountain of Montjuic, the Olympic Ring of stadiums was built, and this was all accompanied by the construction of a new system of ring roads.