Barcelona An Art Lovers' Guide

From towering temples...

This is a sensory overload.

..to gorgeous galleries.

They are just exquisitely painted.

From traditional tunes...

LAUGHTER

..to contemporary creatives.

Have you ever had a book rejected?

Pfft... I don't care.

Every great city offers a dazzling mix

of world-class artistic treasures.

And hidden delights that reveal

its distinctive history and character.

I've really the territory of the hunchback of Oude Kerk.

Which would you choose to see on a flying visit?

I'm Alastair Sooke.

And I'm Janina Ramirez.

In this series,

we're selecting our personal must-see sights

using the magnificent art and

architecture of three great cities

to understand the forces that shaped them.

Keep one eye on your wealth,

but always keep an eye on your spiritual wellbeing.

We're two art lovers with very different tastes.

From the modern...

..to the medieval.

As your guides...

I've lost all sense of direction on this map.

..we'll be avoiding the crowds by

hunting for treats way off the beaten track.

SHE GASPS

And we'll also be finding new ways

of appreciating the most famous attractions.

That's my contribution to the Sagrada Familia.

Between us, we'll show how centuries of political intrigue,

privilege and the struggles of ordinary citizens

are all woven through the artworks and buildings

of these extraordinary cities.

On this city break, we're exploring the capital of Catalonia,

the region that struggled across the centuries

for full independence from Spain.

Barcelona's known as the city that inspired artists like Joan Miro

and Pablo Picasso.

And it's home to some of the most enchanting architecture on Earth.

While we're here, we want to find out how

the city's thwarted desire for autonomy,

and its unique blend of religion and radical working-class politics

have helped Barcelona

to punch so far above its weight in cultural terms.

The story of art and culture in this city,

I guess, you can't think about it,

it's enmeshed with the whole sense of Catalunian identity,

nationalist politics.

Yeah, politics. But also very charismatic artists and architects,

cultural figureheads

and we're going to start off with one of the best of those - Gaudi.

Antoni Gaudi designed some of the city's most famous buildings,

but we're choosing to see one of his projects that's discreetly tucked

away in the north-west of the city,

the Torre Bellesguard.

-Gracias.

-Gracias. OK, bye-bye.

Right, we're here.

-We are.

-I think you should go inside and I'll take outside, OK?

That sounds good.

Gaudi worked on this eccentric castle residence for nine years,

commemorating Catalunya's medieval glory days in his distinctive

Modernista style.

It's perched at a strategic spot on the Roman road into the city

and it's only recently opened to the public.

This area is steeped in history and it's associated with this important

historical figure, Martin the Humane.

He was the last Count of Barcelona,

he was also King of Aragon, Majorca, Sicily and Valencia.

And actually, the fabric of his building,

which dated to around the 1400s,

is built into this folly by Gaudi.

While Nina explores the history of the grounds, I'm meeting

Ferran Garces Blazquez, an expert on the house.

Hi. Very nice to meet you.

Shall we go and have a look?

Yes, of course. The house is waiting for you. It's full of surprises.

The interior is much more what you'd expect from Gaudi.

Stained glass, intricate wrought-iron work,

and a multitude of different types of tiles,

all transforming everyday features with delightful detail.

I'm going to show you an example

of a room so you can appreciate the importance of the plasterwork.

The plasterwork?

Yeah, the plasterwork - here.

OK. Right. Well, a very beautiful room.

Very Gaudi, but this is only because of the plaster, without the plaster,

the room would be just plain, straight and straight.

OK, so, this isn't what one might expect of Gaudi.

It's very vertical.

There's lots of straight lines.

In fact, it's a little bit like a fairy-tale medieval castle.

Although it looks like an elongated version of a Gothic castle,

a closer inspection reveals how

Gaudi broke up the linear effect by using

countless fragments of broken slate,

to add variation in colour and texture.

There are a lot of touches here to soften

all these hard, straight lines.

He's used these undulating mosaics, for example,

but the mosaics are also an opportunity

for him to explore the symbolism of this location.

Here you can see a sun setting on the reign of Martin the Humane.

The Torre Bellesguard drips with symbolism

relating to Catalan history.

Unfortunately, the labour-intensive detailing

nearly bankrupted Gaudi's clients.

So there is no plaster in here at all?

Why has it not been plastered?

Because the family ran out of money.

It's unfinished.

The current owners have left this room as it is,

to display Gaudi's work in progress.

So you can see all of this stuff

which has got this sort of ziggurat, right-angled feel,

would have been smoothed off and curved around.

That's right. And also this would be curved

with plaster and all the details.

And in here, the marks made with pencil by Gaudi himself.

He's actually annotated the bricks, has he?

-Why has he done that? What's he marking?

-It's a sign.

He's marking, "I want all the bricks to go in this direction.

"From here to here."

-As in for the arch, that's the start of the arch?

-Yes, the arches.

Look, these two windows are not two windows.

They're not? You're now talking riddles.

They are windows, but they are also not windows.

There is only one way to know what they are,

which is going outside and meet

who is waiting for us on the other side.

What do you see?

-I see a roof and I see...

-Yes.

There's a creature of some description there.

This is true. This is the big beast.

It's the dragon of Velazquez.

These windows are not windows,

because they are the nostrils of the dragon.

Sorry, why is there a dragon in the roof of this tower?

Gaudi fell in love with dragons.

The dragon and Saint George is one of the most popular

legends in Catalunya.

The spire of this building really is the pinnacle of its symbolism.

It's also an indication of the sorts of inspiration

that Gaudi took from nature.

He's created that cross shape up there

from looking at the cones of the cypress tree.

The top of the spire is wrapped with the Senyera, the flag of Catalunya,

which had to be covered up from the start of the Civil War

until the death of General Franco.

Under Spain's military dictatorship,

outward displays of Catalan national identity were prohibited.

Oh, I see.

OK, look at this.

That's spectacular.

Bellesguard in Catalan means nice view.

Now you understand why.

I do understand why.

So hang on, we have... that's the mountain, Montjuic,

which overlooks the city.

What else can we see, which are famous landmarks?

-The port, the Barceloneta.

-That's the port.

And the Sagrada Familia over there.

So the most iconic Gaudi building in the city,

we can actually see the spires and all the cranes surrounding,

because they're still building.

Fantastic.

In contrast to Gaudi's Sagrada Familia,

which pulls in an average of 12,000 visitors a day,

the Torre Bellesguard can only take 18 at a time.

This, in a sense, is a bit like the forgotten Gaudi.

And it's also the more intimate Gaudi, because it was so...

it's clearly...the politics of the place were so important for him,

this sense of harking back to the stuff you really know about, Nina,

the medieval past, the glory years of Catalunya, which means, I assume,

that you love this place.

Well, I'm going to surprise you and say, having not been inside,

the set-up here bothers me slightly.

-The set-up?

-Yes, it is medievalism,

it's not truly looking to the medieval past.

All of it, to me, is a little bit too Las Vegas.

OK. Erm, ouch!

That is maybe fair comment.

I mean, there was a detail on the roof that I wasn't enamoured with,

where you can see an entire dragon's face,

and that felt possibly slightly kitsch. Can we say that?

But what's interesting when you go inside the building is that sort of

gingerbread, slightly artificial medievalism effect

that he was going for disappears,

and you find a lot of what Gaudi is really well known for.

But we are going to see the Sagrada Familia later.

A secret side of it.

So perhaps we might find some common ground there

in finding Gaudi later on in the day.

There's so much to see here with so little time.

The only way to unpack it all is for us to share the load.

So, while Alastair concentrates on Barcelona's Modernista boom...

..I'll focus on its historical roots.

For centuries, the city was constrained by its ancient walls,

which were constructed in Roman times.

Barcelona was founded in the third century BC,

by a Carthaginian general known as Hamilcar Barca,

and from there it gets its Roman name, Barcino.

Everywhere in the city you can see remains of the Roman past.

Here is the old aqueduct that was carrying water into the city.

And it's the city's Gothic heart

that still gives you the best taste of old Barcelona.

If you can avoid the tourists.

It's so fantastic being in this part of the old city of Barcelona.

You can find these little alleyways where the buildings are

almost reaching over towards each other.

This is a very authentic experience of what Barcelona was like in its

heyday in the 14th century.

Unlike other modern cities that were pretty much demolished

from the 18th and 19th century,

and rebuilt with grand boulevards and big open spaces,

that was actually when Barcelona's fortunes were failing,

and that's why we end up with these

wonderfully preserved medieval buildings.

Its strategic position on the Mediterranean

made Barcelona powerful in medieval times.

But that first golden age ended in the late 15th century,

after the death of Martin the Humane

and the unification of the crowns of Aragon and Castille.

Then Madrid became the political power base for all of Spain.

Barcelona's status declined further as the colonisation of the Americas

dented the importance of trade around the Med.

By the 19th century, Barcelona was becoming Spain's industrial hub,

it was crammed full of textile factories,

and that meant that the medieval centre

was becoming badly overcrowded.

The only trouble was that Madrid was continuing to assert its dominance

over Barcelona, by refusing to allow the city to expand beyond its walls,

despite all of these outbreaks of cholera and yellow fever

and violent protests against

the unsafe working conditions and authoritarian rule.

But finally Madrid conceded that

Barcelona needed a new zone beyond the slums of the Gothic Quarter.

An engineer called Ildefons Cerda

came up with a radical plan to set up the new district,

to be known as the Eixample, or Extension.

His proposal promised to transform the city

with one of the most dramatic and utopian urban planning projects

Europe has ever seen.

Today, L'Eixample covers

nearly seven-and-a-half square kilometres of Barcelona.

Alastair, nice to meet you.

-Great to see you.

-How are you?

-Yeah, I'm very well.

I'm meeting local architect Joan Vitoria i Codina,

an expert on L'Eixample.

First impressions of this are that it's absolutely huge.

If you compare the size of the Gothic Quarter,

there must be room for seven or eight of them

-in this big area of the Extension.

-Exactly, yeah.

But also look at how regular everything appears.

Instead of planning different neighbourhoods for the rich people,

other neighbourhoods for the poor people,

he imagined that everyone, rich and poor people,

would live together in the same kind of city.

Cerda's visionary plan

specified uniformly-sized blocks within an enormous grid.

Buildings should be no higher than four storeys,

to allow plenty of daylight,

and blocks should be built on just two or three sides,

leaving lots of open space for recreation.

But local property developers were hungry for profits and soon blocks

were being built taller, and the public spaces were filled in.

They weren't making enough money, that's what they thought.

They wanted to make more money,

that's why they built higher and all around.

Cerda's plan also came under fire

from some of the city's leading architects,

who were concerned that his socialist principles

would result in a monotonous city, devoid of any Catalan character.

By the end of the 19th century,

these same architects were employed by the city's wealthiest tycoons to

transform what's now L'Eixample's best-known address

into an architectural mecca.

Wonderful. Thanks a lot.

Three of the most delightful bespoke residences they designed are here,

on the Manzana de la Discordia, or Block Of Discord.

Vying for attention,

there's the Casa Lleo Morera, by Domenench i Montaner,

the Casa Amatller, by Puig i Cadafalch,

and Gaudi's otherworldly Casa Batllo.

You have, side by side, this real coup of civic architecture.

It's an extraordinary place.

These mansions were built around the turn of the 20th century

in this style known as Modernisme,

and they're all reasonably famous,

particularly this one by our friend Gaudi.

Modernisme was the distinctive Catalan version

of the Art Nouveau movement.

It emerged at the height of

Barcelona's industrial boom from the late 1880s

to shortly before the First World War.

The style was eclectic, decorative, full of plant and animal motifs.

Although the structures were often

asymmetrical and technologically advanced,

much of the detailing was historical.

And it really is something else.

A riot of colour.

All of these different tiles decorating it,

all of these flourishes harking back

to the great glories of the Catalan Middle Ages.

The whole point is that they wanted to use the past to create something

that felt completely extraordinary and new.

All three architects were ardent Catalan nationalists,

with Montaner and Puig i Cadafalch

pursuing outspoken political careers alongside their architecture.

But before I leave L'Eixample...

-Down here?

-Yeah, down here.

Into this darkened alleyway?

..Joan wants to show me a sight most tourists miss.

In recent years,

community projects have started to restore Cerda's original vision.

This is genuinely quite strange, though.

I mean, outside, a regular Barcelona street.

We come through this alleyway

and this is a hidden spot of the city that

you wouldn't know about unless you lived here.

Yeah, yeah, that's a good thing.

We've been creating public spaces inside the blocks.

Demolishing what was there before

and opening public spaces that somehow

show you the idea that Cerda had.

The spirit of this place, I guess,

-is in keeping with the plan of the Eixample.

-Exactly.

Back in the Barri Gotic,

the city does a great job of showcasing its medieval roots.

Bespoke shops still line the streets,

from espadrilles makers, who inspired Salvador Dali,

to candle-makers for the Sagrada Familia.

It's very much a romanticised image of old Barcelona.

I love this part of the city.

This is where all the arts and crafts really come to life

and you've got a little shop over there

that's selling handmade wooden pieces,

an original Miro for sale.

It was said that a blind man could walk through this section of

the Barri Gotic and know where he was,

because each section had a different craft that was taking place.

If there was the smell of leather or the sound of hammers,

he would be able to navigate his way through

this labyrinth of little streets.

I've come to this shop,

it's stuffed with Church artefacts, and I can't wait to get inside.

Wow, what age is this?

-16th century.

-16th century.

Illuminated vellum.

-How much is it?

-For the two, 500 euros.

-For two?

-For two.

Oh, my gosh.

That's a bargain. This is stunning.

This is religious?

From a church?

No, for the convent.

A convent? Gosh.

17th century. How much is this?

5,000 euros.

Not that much, really, for an original object like this.

I mean, you wouldn't get that in England.

The narrow streets of the Gothic Quarter have inspired many artists

and they're home to a wonderful museum dedicated

to the early works of Pablo Picasso, who grew up here.

It's a must-see for more than a million visitors each year.

But for me, Barcelona's most significant artist is Joan Miro,

who was born here in 1893.

To appreciate his work,

and see how it's wedded to the history of the area,

I'm above the city on Montjuic,

at the National Museum Of Catalan Art.

Miro created this ceramic mural in 1978.

By that time he was one of the grand old men of modern art.

He was already in his mid-80s.

And it looks like this mad menagerie full of toucans and puffins,

but it also is so recognisably Miro.

It contains all of these elements that

are quintessentially his signature style.

That use of very bold black outlines,

these strong intense bright colours.

And although almost four decades after it was made, it still feels

exceptionally modern.

What many people don't realise is that Miro himself

was heavily influenced by art of a much earlier age,

Romanesque frescoes and sculptures,

that he'd fallen in love with as a boy.

This museum occupies a vast pavilion built for the 1929 World Fair,

when Barcelona seized the chance to present itself as a heavy hitter on

the international cultural scene.

Today, it contains an outstanding collection

of Romanesque art that used to be on show in the Gothic Quarter,

near Miro's childhood home.

Miro's father would often take him to visit and these images had a

profound effect on him.

People used to ask Miro how he felt

about Romanesque art and his response,

because it was quite a taciturn man,

was he gestured to his veins.

He was suggesting that this stuff was the lifeblood

of his own visual creation.

And coming to look at it you see instantly why

because, although this comes from a church that was consecrated in 1123,

many centuries before Miro was even born,

there are so many elements which feel similar

to the things that we find in his own work.

Strange beasts, hybrid creatures flying around.

The use of black outlines, abstract geometric shapes,

these reduced colour palettes.

It's really robust, vigorous art,

that although it feels, perhaps to our eyes now, quite primitive,

was precisely what Miro needed in order to express the intensity

and starkness of his own inner visions.

Miro loved the flatness of these Romanesque frescoes,

as well as their focus on angels, saints, nature and colour.

Torment, death, the taboo and the innocent are all evident.

These medieval works are simple, yet profound.

If you look at a fresco like this,

which is one of the masterpieces of the collection in this museum,

it has this palpable intensity of vision,

which was something that Miro could channel.

There are particular devices and motifs

that he could lift almost wholesale.

For example, the floating disembodied hand,

quite a surreal note.

Those eyes that seem to float on the sides of the animals

and on the angel's wings.

But they all amount to a non-representative visual language

that's about translating and expressing

something more fundamental,

a different reality, a spiritual reality.

A short walk from the MNAC lies the Fundacio Joan Miro.

It was opened back in 1975, when Miro was in his 80s.

Miro wanted to encourage a new generation of aspiring artists to

experiment with contemporary art.

Many of the works here were donated by the artist himself.

The truth is, when you come into this room, which contains lots of

Miro's pictures from the '20s and '30s,

you don't immediately think Romanesque frescoes.

But there are little elements, that dot, that star-like form,

in fact this pattern of dots here.

Even, do you remember that disembodied hand?

In this picture, The White Glove, you can see

a similar floating device.

All of which suggest that there are remnants of the Romanesque

haunting his imagination, even in that moment

when he was becoming obsessed with the orbit of Surrealism.

But it's not just his work using bold colour

that's reminiscent of Romanesque art.

His Barcelona series of lithographs,

published in 1944, in reaction to the Spanish Civil War

and the Second World War, is a record of terrible human suffering.

As a series, this feels like a profound unleashing

of something quite ferocious within Miro himself.

The barbarism that he's encountering in the world without

is matched by the violence of his own vision.

And he's created something here full of distorted, grotesque figures,

and those visions of hell in Romanesque art,

in which you see sinners

with their distorted bodies tormented by demons,

and then surrounded by these strange flitting hybrid creatures,

all of that...

I hadn't quite appreciated the closeness of it

before seeing what I've seen before.

So understanding that Romanesque art flooded through his veins,

completely transforms the way

you then look at the art that he created himself.

Over the years, the unique look of this city,

born out of the art and architecture of its two golden eras,

has been eagerly promoted

by local politicians and the people who live here,

because of their desire for an independent Catalunya.

In fact, they've been so successful at creating a visual shorthand for

Brand Barcelona, that many are complaining it's gone too far.

Since the 1992 Olympics,

visitor numbers have quadrupled to more than 8 million a year.

Even the Boqueria covered market is firmly on the tourist trail.

They've had to limit visitor numbers so the locals can shop here.

It's still quite a crush.

Nina, at last you're here.

God, it has been...

-You don't look happy.

-I'm not happy.

Have this. This will improve your mood.

Brilliant, thanks for getting this in.

-I need this.

-Not at all.

-Cheers.

Well, I've just fought my way through

a sea of tourists to get to you.

You're not the only one, coming down the Ramblas,

it's crazy out there.

I didn't meet a single Catalan.

-We're tourists.

-There are tourists who are coming for the culture,

for the art, for the architecture, for the history of Barcelona.

And then there are these

masses of tourists who are rolling off cruise ships.

Nina Ramirez, I never knew you were such a snob.

That's such a... Can we say that?

I mean, it's fine, it's all right for us because we like art.

But, you know, everyone has a right to come if they want

to experience the city, surely?

I'm not saying that other people shouldn't be coming here.

It's... I think it's the destructive aspect of tourism.

There is a mayor of Barcelona at the moment,

she's trying to limit the numbers of hotels that are being built.

There's clearly a balance between preserving an authentic sense of

what Barcelona is, its spirit, the identity of the city,

whilst also encouraging a big economy.

I mean, the rest of Spain's in recession,

you can't just totally limit tourism.

Nevertheless, I think there are some touristy things

that it is permissible to enjoy,

and one of them is drinking Cava in the Boqueria market.

Absolutely, cheers.

Let's get stuck into lunch.

Enjoy this bit and then we can go back to the art and the culture.

With time of the essence,

next I want to find out about a centuries-old folk tradition.

As I've heard, it's helped keep Catalan national identity alive.

I'm here outside the cathedral to see

a celebration of Catalonian culture, the Sardana.

It's the national dance.

It was suppressed under Franco,

it was illegal to do the Sardana,

but it's experiencing something of a revival now.

Now, some people hate it, Dali really didn't enjoy it at all,

but Picasso called it "the communion of souls".

And in fact, there's a mural by him over on that wall, which shows the

people of the region dancing the Sardana.

The Catalan dance will be accompanied

by a small group of musicians called a cobla.

One, two...

It's time to get a crash course from old hand, David.

One, two...

Whoa...! That's where I'm going to go!

BAND STARTS TO PLAY

It's important to understand the sense of pride

Catalan people feel when dancing the Sardana.

For centuries, it's been a way of keeping their culture alive

and has allowed people here to feel

camaraderie with their fellow Catalans.

-One...

-Oh, it's getting better.

They are jamming that just now!

Now, stop jumping. It continues.

-OK?

-Thank you.

Thank you. I'm sorry, I was terrible.

So what does dancing the Sardana mean to you?

It means friendship because I have met many people dancing Sardana.

It means competition because there are some competitions of Sardana.

It means culture, OK,

it's the traditional dance in Catalunya.

And, well, it's... it's passion for me.

Under the Franco dictatorship,

the performance of the Sardana was banned,

along with Catalan literature and the language itself.

So dancing a Sardana today is an expression

of the wider struggle towards Catalan statehood.

As the capital of Catalunya,

Barcelona has a long history of resistance to Spanish rule.

And by the late 19th century

the surge of working-class rebellion coupled

with Catalan nationalism would prove an explosive mix.

Anarchist bombings, unruly gatherings of radical protesters,

striking factory workers

were all met with brutal force and punishment.

And in 1909, the turmoil peaked

in a widespread revolt against military conscription.

It was complete chaos.

Churches and convents were burnt,

the city was placed under martial law,

and around 150 protesters as well as

eight soldiers and policemen were killed,

in what became known as the Semana Tragica, or Tragic Week.

In recent years,

the city's radical spirit has often been expressed in its street art.

Political messages punch through in murals like this one

condemning the death of a young man while in police custody.

Or this one,

protesting against a proposed property development

in a community green space.

Before I catch up with Nina again,

I've got time to see how street art is helping to revitalise a once

rundown part of town called El Raval.

I think this is a really good example of

the recent boom in street art that you find in Barcelona.

It's a really successful,

very joyful exuberant mural by a street artist called Sixe Paredes.

Now, the name of it, you can see the title over there,

it's called Tribute To Miro.

And that influence is immediately apparent, as you look at the mural,

in the use of very bright, some of them primary, colours.

Simple forms.

He calls it "primitive futurism".

Sixe decided that he wanted to go beyond

traditional graffiti and blend multicoloured abstract imagery,

ancient creatures and geometric shapes with his love of Barcelona.

He is currently painting a new mural

on the walls of a derelict warehouse,

which will become a pop-up gallery space

way off the tourist trail in the Sant Andreu neighbourhood.

Sixe.

-Hi.

-Hi. I see this is...

I've emerged from the mural itself, wow.

Hey, Alastair.

Hi. Good to meet you.

Nice to meet you.

I can see you're in the middle of finishing this off,

so I'll let you get on with it.

Can you tell me a little bit about what we're looking at?

I've just been to see your Tribute To Miro, the mural that you created.

Do you...? I guess you do,

but do you acknowledge his influence on your own work in quite a big way?

So I'm dying to ask if there's just a bit that I could add to the mural?

-OFF CAMERA: With the same colour.

-The same colour!

I wanted to do something a bit more dramatic. OK.

What you didn't see is I put name there,

as my tag, but it's invisible.

-You'll never know what it is.

-Oh, oh, problem, problem.

Oh, no! I've destroyed the mural, I'm so sorry.

No, it's no problem.

Most tourists stick to the well-worn trail of the beach,

Sagrada Familia and La Rambla.

But if you know where to look, there are still plenty of places to enjoy

the art of Barcelona away from the crowds.

I'm assuming, Nina, that you're not going to show me the cathedral,

that might be a little bit obvious.

-Yeah, no.

-Where are you taking me?

I've found something very exciting.

Just a little search online

has revealed a secret treasure because,

although we are in the heart of the Gothic Quarter,

we're going to a place that virtually no tourists go to

right in the heart of Barcelona.

The Frederic Mares Museum is housed in a medieval palace they used to

form part of the Royal Courts of Barcelona.

It was also once the seat of the Spanish Inquisition.

Mares spent his life and fortune obsessively trying to preserve the

texture of life in the city,

at a time of rapid change and expansion.

He also acquired a huge collection

of medieval art, sculpture and artefacts.

These two halves of the museum are like time capsules that take

you into the Modernista and the medieval.

There is just the most incredible collection around us.

This is one of the highlights.

-So...

-So when does this date from?

This is 12th century and it's by a sculptor

who is known as the Master Of Cabestany.

It's so beautiful, the dynamism here in the sea.

Very deeply incised waves.

But can you see the fish there?

-Yes!

-There's a little fish poking out over the top.

It's got a lot of movement.

And the fish here, you can see there's its tail.

So that's quite a clever device.

The beauty and the artistry of it

makes it an incredible piece of medieval sculpture.

I'm so glad that Mares has saved this.

I want Alastair to get as inspired as I am by medieval art.

So I'm hoping 18 rooms of ecclesiastical sculpture and relics

will give him an insight into the beliefs

that shaped the city's first golden age.

And I'm going to step inside the material world

of Barcelona's second golden age,

in the late 19th and early 20th century,

in the other half of the museum.

With a prescient sense of nostalgia for a way of life that was vanishing

fast with industrialisation,

Mares collected thousands of everyday items.

Keys were very important.

The person who held the key really held control of the household.

You'd have keys for safes, so the money,

the wealth of a household would be kept safe with a key.

So a sign of real power.

And something that we've lost touch with.

But Mares seems to realise that

these everyday objects tell a story, they're important.

I think this is a fabulous collection.

This museum is open to the public at the moment but I've not passed one

other person. It's completely empty.

And I think that's a bit of a shame.

There are 13th century Romanesque doorways,

medieval capitals and cloisters, Gothic tabernacles,

a very moving child's coffin...

..and a multitude of statues of bishops and the holy family.

It is fascinating looking at these because

they all date from the 14th century.

And they're remarkably consistent,

even though different sculptors have made and carved all of these

Marys with the Christ Child,

they all have a particular look,

which points to the centrality of the church

in medieval Spanish culture.

And you can see many of these are embellished and decorated

with quite beautiful examples of painting

on top of the wooden carving.

And it's quite sobering to reflect that in England at the same time,

when it was a Catholic country,

the place would have been awash with imagery just like this.

All of which got destroyed, or 90% of which, during the Reformation.

Mares made a point of including feminine objects in his collection.

Just in this one cabinet you can see a collection of fans.

You've got some that are mother-of-pearl with gold thread,

and then some that are very humble paper fans.

Fans are important, of course,

because they were objects of display.

As a woman fanned their face,

whatever was depicted on the fan was sending out a message.

Sometimes they were used to send out political messages.

If you were at a diplomatic dinner,

you could show allegiance to a particular party

through what you showed on your fan.

The collection of religious statues and sculptures that Mares assembled

from churches and monasteries is just as compendious.

It's becoming quite apparent that

one of the strengths of the collection

is the sheer number of crucified Christs.

And all of them

are really, in that Spanish way, incredibly gruesome.

You know, if you think of later artists, someone like Dali,

he painted an incredibly weird floating famous crucified Christ,

but generally in his art that sense of pain and violence,

grisly gruesomeness,

the hinterland for that, if you like, the broader inspiration,

is exactly the kind of stuff that you find here.

There's no doubt

that Mares amassed an outstanding collection of medieval art,

but I'm left questioning his methods.

I believe that religious art in particular, medieval Christian art,

it's part of a setting.

You see a crucifix in a church.

But part of experiencing that is the incense, the atmosphere,

the wall paintings, the architecture, the environment.

And these have been pulled out of that environment.

But not by our man Mares.

Well, in a way, yes.

I mean, he began his collection early on,

and he would go to a church,

offer, you know, a couple of hundred pesetas,

and take everything they had so that they can repair, you know,

a hole in the roof.

And in a way, he was helping,

but you could also see it as that age-old problem of the curious

antiquarian taking things out of their environment,

for this sort of display purposes.

Bits of this look like walking through galleries

in the V&A in London,

and sometimes they've done it quite sympathetically.

So a Romanesque window is displayed up on the wall.

Admittedly, you don't have a view through it, or into the church,

but at least it gives you a sense of what the building might have been.

So I actually think the display here's quite effective.

We may not be able to agree on

whether Mares took advantage of churches

after the destruction of the Civil War years,

but there's no denying his collection deserves

a far greater audience.

As it so brilliantly captures the look and feel

of the backdrop to life here,

from one golden age to the next.

As Barcelona's second boom drew to a close

and its fortunes began to wane,

the city became a hotbed of radicalism once again.

By the 1930s,

it was a Republican stronghold

opposed to General Franco's fascists.

The streets of the city became a scene of terror

during the Civil War of 1936-39,

when Barcelona was the target of punishing air strikes.

Franco drew on the firepower of Mussolini's Italian fighter pilots

and jets from Germany.

These deadly bombardments would reinforce sympathy for

Barcelona's plight, amongst anti-fascists abroad.

The Spanish Civil War became a really fashionable cause

for young people on the left.

Lots of idealists were drawn to Spain to fight on the side of

the Republicans, and one of them was the English writer George Orwell,

who wrote about his experience in Spain in this brilliant account,

Homage To Catalonia.

He was walking down the Ramblas here and he heard several rifle shots

behind him, around three or four in the afternoon.

Orwell worked out eventually that this building over here,

which was the headquarters of the Marxist militia

that he was fighting for, was under threat.

And Orwell, who was essentially a grunt fighting for this militia,

was ordered to take up a position at the top of this building over here

to try and defend the headquarters.

I've arranged to meet Aurelia Quinto,

the daughter of Orwell's lieutenant,

who's committed to keeping the memory of the war alive.

-Hi, Aurelia. Alastair.

-Muy bien, encantada.

-Nice to meet you.

-Yeah, you too.

-Bueno, yo he traido una foto...

-Oh, you have a picture?

I can see him. He's towering over the people at the back there.

Skinny Englishman.

Ah, OK.

What did your father make of Orwell?

Orwell's accounts of the battles taking place on the streets below

are vividly detailed,

against a backdrop of disappointment at the monotony of war.

Orwell writes, "When you're taking part in events like these you are,

"I suppose, in a small way making history.

"And you ought by rights to feel like a historical character.

"But you never do because at such times the physical details always

"outweigh everything else.

"What I was chiefly thinking about was not the rights and wrongs of

"this miserable internecine scrap,

"but simply the discomfort and boredom of sitting day and night

"on that intolerable roof..."

This one here.

"..and the hunger which was growing worse and worse.

"For none of us had had a proper meal since Monday."

While war was being waged on the streets and in the skies above,

local people were left to fend for themselves.

Neighbourhood committees were formed to raise money and construct their

own air-raid shelters.

One of which can be visited by prior appointment in the Placa Diamant.

Wow. This isn't what I was expecting, gosh.

-Yes.

-It's very, very deep, isn't it?

How many metres down does it go?

This goes 12 metres down.

So are there lots of shelters in Barcelona?

There were lots in the '30s, they built 1,400 shelters.

But today you can just visit two of them.

So how many people would have come down into this bunker?

The entire square up here.

-Really?

-Almost 300 persons.

Gosh. It's a narrow space for all those people.

You must understand that down here there were people from different

political ideologies.

Because bombs doesn't distinguish.

So to maintain peace down here was extremely important.

That's why they had some rules.

It was completely forbidden down here

to speak about politics or religion.

Two of the major subjects that led this country into a civil war.

So imagine how it was to be in here.

-What do you speak about?

-In Britain we think about the sense of

camaraderie in war shelters, people going into the Tube in London,

singing songs and keeping each other's spirits up.

This is not about that, is it?

I think the spirit would be different because you are speaking

about England, that was a united country.

And what we had here was a split country.

With our tour nearly over, it's time to visit Barcelona's best-known

landmark, Gaudi's Sagrada Familia.

Work here was interrupted by the Civil War,

but it still continues today.

Drawing more than 4 million visitors a year,

it's hardly off the beaten track,

but we're going to get a precious look behind the scenes.

Gaudi designed it as an expression of Christian faith,

reinterpreting Barcelona's Gothic heritage in the most technologically

daring Modernista design.

It is amazing always when you come up this exit, the Metro,

and see that because that's the only bit that Gaudi actually finished in

-his lifetime.

-It's quite...extraordinary.

There's so much texture there,

there's so many references to nature,

and it's stuffed with religious figures and symbolism.

He hated rigid forms, didn't he?

You get that impression immediately when you see it.

Work began on the Sagrada Familia in 1882 but progress was slow,

as it depended on donations.

After 1910,

Gaudi became more and more pious

and abandoned almost all other projects,

often secluding himself in the church's workshop.

By the time of his death in 1926,

only one of the 18 towers had been completed.

Oh, my goodness.

What an assault on the senses.

I don't know where to look.

I've never seen anything like this.

I have to say this space is having quite a profound effect on me.

It's crowded, it's busy, but on top of that, this is a sensory overload.

There's so much to look at.

So much light.

The colours are changing here minute by minute.

Right, this is the stonemasons' workshop of the Sagrada Familia.

You can see here they all are,

and they're working on decoration for the exterior of the cathedral.

I mean, down here you've got,

you can see the whole cathedral's covered with words, language.

And this is the beginning of the word,

the Latin word I think for our Lord, "Dominus",

and then there are some other letters here, "tecum",

I think that may mean "with you".

And there's also all of this

beautiful naturalistic rock formation,

as though it's been gently eroded away by the wind and the sun

over many centuries, which is going to go on the side of the cathedral.

-Yes.

-Oh, here, yeah.

And I can't resist leaving my mark.

So, all I do, this seems fairly straightforward.

-Es facil?

-Well, it's not facil no, I wouldn't say it's that easy, but...

There's a chip that came off.

That's good. That's my contribution to the Sagrada Familia.

Craftsmen of all varieties are busy working around the clock to fulfil

Gaudi's artistic vision.

Hi.

Your family have been responsible for most of this stained glass?

Yes, for all of the stained glass in the windows.

I think my grandfather would be very satisfied with it.

Let's see one of the panels go in.

-A little bit of history.

-OK.

I'm turning to... Turning to liquid.

This is... This is really quite extraordinary.

This is a proper workshop where they're working on all of the plans

for the extension of the Sagrada Familia,

and I don't know quite what I was expecting to see,

but it wasn't all of these intricate cutaway models.

They're on every single side.

Some of them you can see the famous spires, but it looks like they're

working on tiny details or larger towers.

There are staircases.

And the first impression is just you realise the great scope of this

hugely epic, ambitious project that still isn't finished.

During the Spanish Civil War, the Republicans,

who viewed the religious establishment

and the pious Gaudi as enemies,

broke in and destroyed Gaudi's plans and models for the building.

So today, architects are turning to the latest 3D printing technology

to help get the job finished.

We have this 3D printer that helps us to define easy and faster these

-kind of models.

-Can I touch it?

-Yes, of course.

-So how many of these things are you producing, then,

a week, say?

-It looks like a lot.

-Yeah, a lot of them.

These machines can make this with more accurate elements

and it's easy and faster for us to do it now.

So you design it on computer,

and then it's basically kind of

-cooked in this machine and then...

-Yeah, exactly.

Once the 3D models of each new section are printed,

the resident architects and engineers have debates

over how true they are to Gaudi's vision.

It's not exactly conducive to speedy progress.

I know that the aim is to finish the cathedral by 2026.

100 years after Gaudi's death.

-Yes.

-Not that much of it has been built.

We are working very hard.

Gaudi rarely left his beloved Catalunya,

and made a point of only ever speaking Catalan, even, famously,

when once interrogated by a Spanish policeman.

If and when the Sagrada Familia is finished,

it will be a fitting tribute to Gaudi and the Catalan capital.

-Oh, my goodness.

-This is rather special, isn't it, genuinely?

This is a proper construction site. Listen to those bells!

They've gone a bit Gaudi, haven't they?

Originally they were very regular and then suddenly...

It's all gone very florid, hasn't it?

I can't believe we're up here. Please.

Also getting in the way.

We're holding up the construction of the cathedral.

It's a proper construction site.

It might be another ten years if we keep standing here in the way.

Shall we call the lift?

Quite rickety.

Like most great cathedrals,

this church has taken many decades to construct.

Today, there are more than 200 craftsmen and contractors

endeavouring to get it finished on time,

at the cost of over £20 million a year.

Look at the fruits! Look at these!

And there's still a long way to go.

This is an incredible view.

-This is pretty good.

-This is amazing.

I think we've found the most spectacular view of the city.

I came today quite... slightly sceptical, actually,

because I sort of thought to myself that the way that they'd gone about

creating it feels almost like a slight folly.

You have this great genius,

and because all of his models were destroyed

we really don't know

how he wanted the cathedral to look in many aspects.

But seeing the way they're going about it,

it's incredibly complex and they're really devoted to this project,

and they believe in actually the fundamental aspect of a cathedral,

which is it's a religious place of worship.

And that seems to be what's motivating

creating this extraordinary building.

Yeah, they're writing their own history in stone.

They're creating an image that is iconic and recognisable worldwide,

for Catalonians pulling together.

It looks like nothing else anywhere.

Whilst Catalunya may not be independent,

it's helped to keep its identity alive

through a vibrant cultural scene.

Throughout the summer, there are saints' day fiestas,

block parties and parades.

-Salud!

-And up in the hills, the famous Grec theatre festival,

which continues the city's tradition of taking inspiration from around

the world, but always giving it a uniquely local flavour.

Which makes this the perfect place to finish our tour.

Bona nit, benvinguda a una nova edicio

de la Festa Major de nostra carrer!

Tonight's concert features show tunes, Catalan style.

SINGS IN OWN LANGUAGE

I just love this idea that you have the layered local nationalism,

and a real sense of an international city,

that can hold its own against other great world capitals of culture.

I mean, this isn't a capital,

but it feels like it's always had pretensions to be one.

If you ask people a city in Spain,

possibly it's Madrid that gets overlooked

in favour of Barcelona now.

Its reputation is so great.

And actually Barcelona has almost defined itself

in contrast to Madrid.

Yet as Madrid is monarchical and traditional,

Barcelona is international.

It looks over the borders.

And there's this tremendous pride in that Catalan identity.

Elsewhere in the world that would be something really quite distasteful,

almost, disagreeable, but somehow here

they've managed to sell it to the world

as something really attractive.

It's something that you want a part of.

I think when you hear about groups,

regions being suppressed, pushed out,

the idea that it can bubble away and be kept alive through song,

through theatre, through dance, that has come shooting to the surface.

There's this wonderful line by a famous poet

about Barcelona being a great enchantress.

And I think we have very much fallen under her spell.

I think a cheers is in order.

-Cheers. We have seen so much.

-Yeah!