Barcelona by Robert Hughes

Barcelona Reviews

• 
  Roy Lotz

  You know, when gazing fork in hand upon a butifarra—the fresh pork sausage of Catalunya—with its attendant white beans, that you are looking at the Truth and, better yet, on the point of cutting into its blistered and slightly blackened skin, that you are about to taste the Truth of sausagehood, too.

  
  In just a couple weeks, I’ll be taking my first trip to Barcelona. I’m excited to go. Barcelona is often talked about here as a kind of anti-Madrid. While Madrid is central and conservative, Barcelona is regional and liberal; while Madrid is thoroughly Spanish, Barcelona is only dubiously so. I love Madrid, but nobody ever calls Madrid "the Great Enchantress." The rivalry between their two football teams is comparable in ferocity to that between the Yankees and the Red Sox (or so I’m told). “You’re going to love it,” a man from Barcelona told me the other day. “It’s not like Spain at all. It’s like another country.”
  
  To prepare, I read through this teeny book. It is everything you would expect from Hughes: stylish prose, a sardonic sense of humor, and a focus on art, especially architecture. Probably around half of this book consists of descriptions of notable buildings in the city; the other half is part history, part culture, and part autobiography. Barcelona is clearly a special city to Hughes—after all, this is the second book he's written about it. His love for the place is infectious, especially whenever he goes into raptures about the food: "there are more kinds of sausage, fresh and cured, than there are poets in New Jersey, and their rich, fatty, smoky flavors induce deeper reveries."
  
  Since I haven’t gone yet, I can’t say how helpful or accurate the book is. In any case, he has certainly succeeded in making me excited to visit this anti-Madrid of the east, and to gorge myself on architecture and sausage.
  
  ___________________________________
  
  UPDATE: Having just traveled to Barcelona, I am happy to report that this book is an excellent guide. I saw the works of Gaudí (extraordinary), I strolled down the Passeig de Gracia (lovely), I wandered through the gothic quarter (very hip), and most importantly I ate butifarra and white beans (scrumptious). It's a splendid city, and this is a splendid book.
• 
  G.G.

  It’s hard to imagine a better guide to a city than this. Hughes’s account spans nearly two thousand years, “from the emergence of Barcelona as a tiny Augustan colony in the first century A.D. to the death of [Antonio] Gaudí in 1926.” The book is divided into two large sections: Part I: The Old City, which tells the story of Barcelona from prehistory through Roman settlement, the arrival of Christianity, the Arab conquest, the reconquest, the union of the kingdoms of Aragon and Catalunya that enabled Barcelona to resist Madrid and made the city a great sea power of the Mediterranean—and so on, down to the nineteenth century. There is an interesting digression on Ramon Llull (c. 1235-1316), credited with creating Catalan as a literary language.
  
  Part II: The New City, begins in the middle of the nineteenth century and concludes with a fascinating chapter on Gaudí, “The Hermit in the Cave of Making,” a reference to the architect’s unfinished Sagrada Familia, “the obsession of his last years.”
  
  Throughout, Hughes makes clear the different historical trajectories followed by Castilian Spain and Catalunya; while not hesitating to criticize “the obtrusive sense of Catalan specialness.” As Hughes explains:

  Catalunya’s natural political affinities were with states north of the Pyrenees, the polities of Provence and Burgundy. Feudalism, with its corporate loyalties and its belief in negotiation…would transform itself in the Catalan political world straight into modern capitalism: what happened in Catalunya was not unlike the conversion of Japan from a feudal, samurai society into a manufacturing one. But Catalunya was the only part of Spain in which this happened.

  In the four chapters of Part II, Hughes describes in exhaustive detail how “the project of nineteenth-century Catalan culture—in poetry, prose, the evocation of history, and, before long, in architecture and the decorative arts—was…to find, and if need be invent, a stable sense of identity through which it could define itself against other parts of Europe (including, in Catalunya’s case, the rest of Spain itself).” As Hughes himself observes of the Catalan Renaixença, “neither sincerity nor patriotism, however desirable in life, are quite enough in art,” and I confess I found some sections of these chapters overly detailed and only skimmed them.
  
  By no means does Hughes ignore the economic basis of the city (“the ruling industry was textiles”) or the social conditions of people’s lives (“the more machines were used in the mills, the more demand there was for women to run them, since the machinery did not require as much physical strength, and women could be paid far less. But the vile calculus of human misery was unaltered.”) Hughes details how the fortunes of some of the wealthy families of Barcelona were made. Gaudí’s great patron, Eusebi Güell i Bacigalupi (1846-1918), was the scion of one of these families.
  
  Hughes begins his chapter on Gaudí memorably:

  Gaudí’s architecture is the delayed baroque that Barcelona never had. It is mystical, penitential, and wildly elated by turns, structurally daring and full of metaphor, obsessed with its role as speculum mundi, ‘mirror of the world’.

  Nonetheless, his account is far from worshipful. On the interior of the Palau Güell (1886-88), he writes:

  Not only are its discomfort and pietism grating, but most of the wood paneling…though admirably joined and carved, is kitsch—a Catalan’s parody of Scots Baronial, which clashes hideously with the Hispano-Moresque elements elsewhere. Moreover it is clear that neither Gaudí nor Eusebi Güell cared a fig for the art of painting, so that the religious murals on the theme of charity are somewhere below ghastly and the family portraits, if anything, worse.

  Still, I cannot agree with his view of the Sagrada Familia, the “building that can be said to epitomize Barcelona” but which Hughes describes as seeming “to die as it advances.” Perhaps it’s simply that I grew up in Australia where most modern churches could be mistaken for airport departure lounges, but I found the Sagrada Familia beautiful, moving, and despite the vastness of the space, recognizably sacred.
  
  In sum, then, Hughes’s history of Barcelona is both exhaustively researched and evocatively written. Tapping through my Kindle to find the passages I’d highlighted, I was struck again and again by the conviction of Hughes’s writing, which is vivid, without ever crossing the line into self-indulgent lushness. His observations can be striking:

  Architecture makes things seem stabler than they are. There is a limit to one’s ability to intuit the political life of a city from its monuments, because monuments always speak a language of order, inheritance, and shelter.

  He makes wonderful use of metaphors to convey his points. The Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona’s opera house that was built to rival La Scala and opened in the spring of 1847, is described as “Barcelona’s quintessential symbol of high-bourgeois culture, the ornate knob on the cane of the capital…” The Casa Milà apartment block (1906-10) “is a sea cliff with caves in it for people.”
  
  Hughes’s history of Barcelona is not a guidebook: he gives street addresses for the houses he discusses, but there are no suggested itineraries. Nonetheless, I finished the book with a list of at least dozen places I want to visit—and linger in—next time I’m in the city that the Catalan poet Joan Maragall (1860-1911) called la gran encisera, “the great enchantress.”
• 
  Sharon Barrow Wilfong

  I was reading other interviews on Amazon and it seems the major complaint was that the book should have been more concise and covered less information about the history of Catalonia. One person was irate that there was no mention of the soccer team.
  
  As for me, I did not think it was too long, I liked the extensive track through history starting with the earliest records, the different kingdoms, rise and fall of kings, queens, aristocracy and such.
  
  By reading Hughes fluid writing, one discovers how the Catalunyans (ibed) or Catalonians view themselves, their fierce pride in their heritage and their language, different from Spanish.
  
  Hughes covers many bases, except, I guess, soccer. We learn of the city's politics, art, language, literature, poetry, and architecture. My hero, Gaudi is honored with the last two chapters, although other architects are also included.
  
  I had seen the Sagrada Familia in art books and it looked like a mud castle someone made on the beach. And then I visited the city and saw it in person. All I can say is that I was mesmerized. There was something spiritually uplifting just by looking at it. For those who don't know (and shame on you if you don't) the Sagrada Familia is Gaudi's masterpiece: a church, it is called a cathedral, although technically it is not a Cathedral because no Bishop presides there, and is still to be finished. The only thing marring this wonder structure are the cranes.
  
  Hughes scoffs at the later architects who have tried to finish Gaudi's work, but I like it, even if there is a noticeable delineation between Gaudi's work and his successors'. There is so much detail and meaningful symbolism.
  
  Hughes scoffs at a lot of things. While I enjoyed the information he provided and felt I learned a lot about Barcelona which increased my appreciation of it, I did not like Hughes' overall tone. He sounded just a little too superior. Turning a clever phrase trumped objective observation.
  
  But, aside from that, readers interested in this remarkable city would do well to read this book.
• 
  Barbara

  Barcelona is a great city and I have been several times including spending 2 months there in 2006 on sabbatical. Hughes loves the city and even learned the language, Catalan. Hughes' text centers on the building of the city and how it developed. It was a planned city in a similar vein as Washington DC. Of course the world knows the great architect Gaudi, but not the other great architects. Gaudi was considered something of a "crackpot" during his lifetime, and has no equal. He was both a radical and a conservative Catholic. But the story of Barcelona is more than just Gaudi. In this short volume Hughes communicates his passion for the city and its people.
• 
  Dvora Treisman

  This is a fine little book, a pared down version of Hughes’s bigger volume, Barcelona. For those who do not require a blow-by-blow account of Catalan history, this smaller book is just the thing.
  
  Hughes loves Barcelona and knows it well. That he often means “Catalunya” when he says “Barcelona” is not too important if you’re not reading this for academic reasons. Yet it surprised me to read some other errors and inaccuracies.
  
  The worst of them was his use of Castilian for several Catalan place names. Espluges de Llobregat is not the only example, but the only one that comes to mind. Not only does he know the history of the suppression of the Catalan language that was endured during Franco years, he writes about it in the book.
  
  Other little annoyances were his description of castells, the human castles. They are not built in rings. They are built on a central frame of four men who are then fortified by a great mass, called a pinya (pineapple), which might have a choreography, but looks simply like a mass to the observer. And the sardanes danced in front of the cathedral are not spontaneous in that they are held weekly for most of the year and although the occasional Catalan or tourist might be surprised by the performance, most people who dance or come to hear the music know to come.
  
  I lived in Barcelona for a couple of years and it is my favorite city too, so I notice these little things. Then again, I very much appreciate Hughes's well-informed description of and affection for this wonderful city.
  
• 
  Michael

  Hughes is a great writer and insightful critic who has penned the ultimate biography of a city that harks back to Roman times and has been completely reinvented itself since the death of Franco, who attempted to crush Catalan culture, language and soul.
  
  That said, his subject is little parochial unless you:
  
  1) Plan to visit Barcelona or know the city well
  2) Are a fan of art and architecture criticism
  
  In addition to those two subjects, Hughes' survey is exhaustive, covering literature, agriculture, the mores of fisherman, language, politics, and even Catalunya's coprophilia.
  
  On that last note, festivals often include a turd-like pinata and a Catalan toast might be something like, "Eat strong food, crap prodigiously and live a long life."
  
  The book also recounts a host of colorful historical and political figures, including the unifier Guiffre the Hairy, and the 19th-century who grew his sideburns out like Rapunzel's locks and of course the crazed visionary Gaudi, who was emblematic of right-wing, regressive Catholic thought.
  
  Nonetheless his fantastical buildings and Parc Guell have inspired generations of freethinkers. Gaudi has reached cult status in Japan, which provided much of the capital to restore Gaudi and other Modernista landmarks.
  
  I recently visited Barcelona and read the book both before and after. Barcelona has always been a city on the make. Hughes captures these asperation well, even brilliantly.
  
  Barcelona does not have a real harbor and overcame its shallow, sandy coast to become a major port. About 30 years ago the city fashioned about five miles of beaches from an old industrial waterfront. Today it's as crowded as a Coney Island heyday and women in gold lame string bikinis routinely and surrealistically wander up from the beach to the Ramblas and ancient Bari Gotic.
  
  Like Chicago, Barcelona is a city of architecture but it feels a little insubstantial: buildings with strange wrought-iron gaps and warbling facades seem more committed to decoration than innovation. And in the last 20 years (Olympics, etc), Barcelona has collected more celebrity "starchitect" buildings that just about anywhere.
  
  Anyway, a wonderful book that captures a dazzling, puzzling, incredibly vibrant city.
• 
  Rose

  I happened on this book by accident a few years back and relished it. An ode to the city and to love, and is maybe more accessible to readers who found the earlier and fatter 'Barcelona' fabulous but hard work. Next time you visit, leave TimeOut and LPlanet behind (way too ponderous and beaten track in any case) and instead take this lovely work with you. I'm re-reading it now and reflecting how much we miss Bob Hughes: his prose, his acerbic originality and intellect, simply knowing he was there to cleverly, brutally, take down the pompous and popularly shallow in the art world and the wider world and to acknowledge the brave, the beautiful, the funny and the things that properly matter. We miss that voice. Vale, come back!
• 
  Czarny Pies

  "Barcelona" is a brilliant book that describes the works of the chief, painters, poets and architectures of the Modernista or Art Nouveau movement (1875-1910) that will delight anyone who has ever visited the surprising city of Barcelona. It must be acknowledged however, that "Barcelona" is in many respects a very badly written work.
  The problem is that Hughes expanded the scope of the project beyond Catalan Art Nouveau to include literature, urban design and music. Then he decided to explain the economic, political, and cultural context. Finally, in a disastrous digression, Hughes decided to tell the history of the city from its founding by the Romans in 15 BC. Thus the reader finds himself mired for the first 180 pages in an account of events and descriptions of works of art that have precious little to do with the books' prime focus. At this point the narrative has arrived at the Napoleonic era. For the remainder of the way the book shines as Hughes describes first the direct antecedents and then the actual era of the Art Nouveau movement of Barcelona.
  Hughes sees the phenomenon as being a child of a nationalistic bourgeoisie constituted of capitalists who acquired their wealth from the former Spanish colonies of the new world. They promoted the autonomy of Catalonia within Spain rather than independence regarding trade unions and anarchists as their prime enemies. They made great efforts to promote the use of the Catalan language and supported the arts generously.
  Hughes delivers a stellar analysis of Catalan architecture (Antoni Gaudí, Lluís Domènech i Montaner and Josep Puig i Cadafalch,etc. ) , painting (Santiago Rusiñol, Miquel Utrillo, Pere Romeu, etc.), and sculpture ( Josep Llimona, Eusebi Arnau, etc.). In addition, he does a fine review of the Catalan poetry and theatre of the era. Finally he explains the links between the Art Nouveau movement and the leading painters of the next era (i.e. Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso and Joan Miró.)
  Hughes book contains many surprising anecdotes. We learn that Ramón Casas was the first painter that Picasso became friends with before cannibalizing or plagiarizing his idiom. We learn that the surrealists Juan Miró and Salvador Dali both greatly admired Gaudí and that Picasso was greatly influenced by Gaudí 's trencadis (i.e. use of fragmented tiles.) He provides an excellent of the circle that included Rusiñol, Utrillo, of thee Four Cats beer hall (i.e. Els quatre Gats., the four cats being Rusiñol, Utrillo, Casas and Romeu).
  Ultimately Gaudí is the dominant figure of the book. Hughes provides detailed analyis of the Sagrada Famila, Casa Mila, Casa Vicens, Casa Batlo, Palau Gaudí and Güell Park. He also explains the close relationship between Gaudí and his patron Count Eusebi Güell. We learned that Gaudí avoided the free-thinking group of the Four Cats frequenting instead the catholic Artist Circle of Saint Luke which included also Josep Llimona, Loan Llimona and Alexander de Riquer).
  Robert Hughes' "Barcelona" is a very helter-skelter effort that arguably covers too much territory but its pleasures are great for anyone who has ever been to Barcelona.
  
• 
  Malcolm

  I have to confess to a gruding respect for Hughes, for his learnedness, his cantankerousness, and his sensitivity to the complexity of aesthetic environments. This is an extremely good outsider's story of Barcelona - a haunting, complex, contradictory city with its history of radical politics (potent anachist and communist histories here), its deepseated reactionary cultural nationalist (there was little 'progressive' about Gaudi), its distinctive architecture, its vibrant districts, and its uncertain status in the post-1992 post-olympics renewal. Although published the year of the Olympics (1992) Hughes has managed to both depict the pre-olympic city as well give a sense of what might be to come. Senstive and critical, a treat. But his outsiderness means that there is much of the city as lived in that seems to be missing so this book is usefully read alongside Montalban's Barcelonas if you can find it.
• 
  Mary

  Robert Hughes' research and writing are wonderful. It took me a long time to read this. What sparked my interest in Barcelona was La Familia Sagrada. Hughes' book covers an entire history of the city including economic, political, and artistic realms.
  
  Gaudi and his architecture are saved for the last chapter. Hughes does not hold back on his opinion that the continued work on the church since Gaudi's death and the loss of Gaudi's models and plans during the Spanish Civil War has resulted in kitsch.
  
  It is interesting to read about the strong nationalism of the Catalan people and their struggle in the face of pressure from Madrid. Being a renowned art critic, Hughes' descriptions of the art and architecture of Barcelona are priceless.
• 
  Paula Jorgensen

  I just wanted to know a bit more about this city -- and well, now I do. The book reminded me three important things:
  1) How much I learned from reading The Fatal Shore before I came to Australia,
  2) Why Australians hate their own Robert Hughes (you are too grand and confident a thinker for this flat island, Mate! )
  3) This level of information is the difference between a pop song on an ipod and a symphony orchestra
  
  
• 
  Alex

  This book could use an editor. Unfortunately it got one, and the result,
  Barcelona: the Great Enchantress, could use beefing up. I'm like Goldilocks with this thing. But seriously, dude bangs on for page after page about buttresses on some church or whatever, jeez.
• 
  David

  One of the places I would love to see, Hughes not only gives a great view and love of the city, he gives some tidbits for travelers to seek out.
• 
  Erik

  Interesting history of Barcelona from Roman times up til just before the 1992 Olympics. The most interesting parts of the book are the end where he talks about the Barcelona Art Nouveau and Guadi and the milieu from which they emerged. (Basically there was both a left- and right-wing modernism allied with socialism/anarchism and Catalan nationalism/Catholicsm, respectively, with Gaudi coming from an ultraconservative Catholicism.) I wish it had more illustrations. There were many intriguing works of art that I'll have to look up online. (Also amusing: the Catalan roots of Australian Impressionism.)
• 
  Caroline

  Look, this book is outrageously good. I picked it up in Barcelona for local color and it was just so interesting that I kept reading state-side. Unfortunate that he ends on Gaudi, as I thought that was not his strongest note, but I understand the need to organize it that way. I would love to see this updated after the Olympics and the formation of the EU.
  
  If you are travelling to Barcelona and are a reader -- this is the one. Start before you leave.
• 
  Wendy Feltham

  This very complete history of Barcelona is frequently fun to read because of Hughes's irreverent Australian attitude, and sometimes a bit tedious due to all the details about obscure people's lives. Overall Hughes tells a fascinating story of beautiful Barcelona, with lots of information about the life of Gaudí and other architects. I skimmed through several sections about clerics and others that weren't of much interest to me. I wish this book could be updated to include current events.
• 
  Michael

  Despite his admission that this is a "non-scholarly" reading of the city's history, I found it to be exhaustively researched and very comprehensive. This is a terrific starting point for those interested in how Barcelona has evolved into the mysterious and layered city that it is today...or at least in 2000, the last time I was there...
• 
  Frank

  I bought this after seeing the Woody Allen film Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona. Robert Hughes' writing is always clear, crisp and personal; this book is no exception. It may be a little dense for an overview of the city, but it's a great basis for understanding the historic underpinnings of Catalunya.
• 
  Tuck

  fantastic bio of a thrilling city. Hughes is a sympathetic, knowledgeable, fun, and good writer and at almost 600 pages you get enough, i do believe. Author Hughes wrote a re-worked version of this in 2004 for a series called "national geographic directions" which is much more manageable for the armchair historian/art/architecture eggheads at 170 pages.
• 
  Thomas Fortenberry

  This is one of my favorite travel books ever. Can't exactly pinpoint why, but this is a wonderful read and one of the most detailed portraits of a city I have ever read. A great mix of now and history -- the art and culture and architecture and people all come alive in these pages.
• 
  José

  I give this one a 5 because I love the subject of this book. However, be ready to be bombarded with more architectural detail that the average layperson can handle in one sitting. I read this book before, during, and after my visit to this city and enjoyed it thoroughly.
• 
  Gen

  I was told by a guide in Barcelona who took us to the Dali Museum and who is also a writer/photographer/art historian that this book and the longer version from 1993 is probably the best biographical information about Gaudi available ( and for some reason, there is not much available).
• 
  yórgos

  ο καλύτερος οδηγός πόλης ίσως επειδή δεν είναι οδηγός πόλης.
• 
  Daria

  A fascinating, well-written book that explains Barcelona from the very early Roman years to Gaudí's impossible projects. Must-read for anyone who is interested in Barcelona and/or Catalonia.
• 
  Flo

  J'ai adoré lire ce livre, un portrait de Barcelone écrit avec la fluidité d'un roman et la rigueur du journaliste. Je me suis laissée porter, chapitre après chapitre, dans les diverses facettes de la capitale catalane, de sa vie politique aux traditions les plus originales, en passant par la musique, la littérature et les mouvements sociaux. Passionnant, vraiment !
  
  Notes pour celles et ceux qui veulent le lire :
  - le livre n'est pas facile à trouver neuf en français (je l'ai lu en castillan)
  - le récit ne parle pas de la guerre civile ni de la dictature ensuite. Même s'il y a des références au franquisme et aux années 1980, Robert Hugues s'arrête grosso modo aux années 1930.
• 
  Fien

  3,5 stars
  
  Some parts were very interesting while other were rather boring. I did learn a lot of things about this city and I am so happy that I read it during my stay here in Barcelona.
• 
  Niniane

  It gets boring after the first 20%.
  
  The first 20% is about the author's third marriage, where the wedding was held in the old Barcelona City Hall. The author cheated on his second wife for six years with the third wife, who was 26 when he was 51.
  
  The author is a professional art critic, and his tone is a smug critical one. He comes across as self-important, and it made me take with a huge grain of salt his strong opinions about art and Barcelona.