Hasn’t everyone always known about this city and its vivid colors, its place in modern art, its wicked ways and medieval past?
Isn’t this the home of Antoni Gaudi’s wavy architecture, the town where Salvador Dali pulled many a surreal prank, where Pablo Picasso spent his formative years and Joan Miro perfected his abstract genius? Surely there always has been a general awareness that Barcelona is a glamorous, stylish metropolis with a rakish night life and romantic aura that held together through the long, somber periods of Spanish history.
Not according to city officials.
Slightly more than a decade ago, civic activists here felt shrouded, ignored, isolated. Back in 1986, when Barcelona won the right to host the 1992 Olympics, promoters were certain that the world in general neither knew nor cared about their city. They feared their tourism image was limited to those inevitable posters showing the airy spires of Gaudi’s unfinished La Sagrada Familia Catholic Church.
Barcelona could have contented itself with using the Olympics to spread the word about the city’s flash and style and other existing attributes without offering any residual substance.
It might have left a fleeting impression on the order of Los Angeles or Seoul or Atlanta. (And who’s not to say that a fleeting impression is better than the indelible scars left by the terrorism in 1972 Munich or the astounding fiscal disaster four years later in Montreal?)
Instead, Barcelona did its Olympics with a crafty agenda–not hidden, exactly, but more extensive and permanent than in those cities that vie for the summer Games merely to reap instant “world-class” cachet or to burnish the logos of corporate sponsors.
I remember watching some of the ’92 Olympics on TV, from a bar stool at the Murray Hotel in Livingston, Mont. As observed from that self-consciously Western town–its streets teeming with Range Rover cowpokes–the Games and their setting seemed highly exotic, deliciously foreign. I had to see that town.
My first opportunity came one year later, during a rail tour of Europe. Everything confirmed my initial impression back there in the Montana barroom. This had been an Olympic venue with flavor, music, artistry, grace–attributes that had been there long before the Olympic bid but finally getting global exposure. Those sensations so overwhelmed me in my three days on the scene in 1993, I nearly forgot about the athletic competitions of the year before.
Yes, the handy Bus Turistic did stop at the waterfront Olympic Village and the Olympic Stadium atop Montjuic, but there were so many other things, so many older things, to absorb that the new ones nearly escaped notice.
For instance, I could have spent the entire stay looking at the colorful, fantastic creations of Gaudi: Parc Guell, Sagrada Familia, the undulating apartment buildings on Passeig de Gracia. But I also needed more time to stroll La Rambla, the broad central boulevard lined with cafes, fountains, boutiques, florists, mimes and bottomless vitality.
And from La Rambla, the dark, medieval byways of the adjoining Barri Gotic section and its old cathedral, its Roman ruins, demanded still more hours. In the nearby Museu Picasso, crammed with Picasso’s earliest works, an afternoon flew by.
So the Olympics had drawn me to Barcelona, and I had sampled the city’s pleasures and its cultural jewels with hardly a glimpse (or so I thought) of the Olympic aftermath.
During another visit a few months ago, I learned that the Olympics’ impact had been very much in evidence during my inaugural trip in 1993. It affected my enjoyment of Old Barcelona, although I hadn’t realized it at the time.
First of all, the Games had piqued my interest and I went, playing right into the hands of Olympic planners bent on promoting their city. After I arrived, I had found it easy to move around, thanks to Olympics-inspired improvements in airport facilities and mass transit. Due to the general 1992 spiffing up, my modest hotel on Carme Street was comfortable and clean. Parks were neat. Buildings gleamed.
“The most important thing in Barcelona is that we didn’t stop doing things since the Olympics,” noted Raimon Martinez Fraile, director general of Barcelona tourism. The jackhammers and welding flashes outside his Tarragona Street office building (which contains a major new train/bus/airport-shuttle transportation center) underlined his point. Major construction continues all over the city, and I also observed some smaller, subtler changes since my last visit.
For example, in the Gaudi-designed apartment building known as La Pedrera, tourists now can take an elevator to the attic and stroll under dramatic arches in a museum devoted to the architect’s life and times. That slick facility hadn’t been there in 1993. And Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia glistened with four years’ worth of new additions. I remembered the 1993 construction site (ground-breaking was in 1882) as rather sleepy. Now the cranes did a lively pirouette and metalworkers struck a deafening anvil chorus.
During my most recent visit, I was surprised to see a sizable crowd of curiosity-seekers wandering around the Olympic site on Montjuic, a beautiful hilltop park setting sprinkled with the former sites of 1992 competition. Some visitors stopped at the box office of Palau Sant Jordi, where indoor Olympic events were held. Now the building sees frequent use as a concert hall and basketball arena. Children in school-day herds marched toward the Olympic-size swimming pools. And, most surprising of all, a large group gazed out at the empty playing field of the Olympic Stadium, a 1929 edifice expanded for the Games and still drawing throngs of the curious, as if the site had the archeological importance of Rome’s Colosseum.
A souvenir stand full of Olympic paraphernalia did a lively business, and the refreshment counters steamed at full soccer-match strength, even though nothing had been scheduled that day and all 65,000 seats were empty.
Most of us paused to gaze in disbelief at the stadium’s north end, where the receptacle that once held the Olympic torch jutted above our heads. It seemed remarkably small, hardly bigger than a medium-size home satellite dish. We silently applauded the archer who shot a flaming arrow into that minuscule target to let the Games begin.
On the south end, exhibits and videos also brought the 1992 Olympics back to life, emphasizing the stature of Montjuic as a historic site, not merely for a city but for the world.
I could hear the pride in the voice of tourism director Martinez-Fraile, as he described the process leading up to the event and the fruits that it bore.
“I was the deputy mayor of Barcelona in 1986, when the city’s Olympic committee asked for the Games,” he said. “After we got them, we started planning immediately, and soon there were invested in the city of Barcelona more than 950,000-million pesetas (about $8 billion in 1992 U.S. dollars), in order to renovate the whole city.”
Half the funds came from the city treasury and half from private investors, Martinez-Fraile noted. Hotel capacity grew from 18,000 beds in 1990 to 28,000 by 1992. Airport capability increased from 9 million passengers a year to 18 million. Other tangibles included more lines on the subway system, an improved health-care plan and additions to the waterfront and the housing stock.
I toured the waterfront one afternoon with Maria Cinta Recasens i Salvat, a professional guide. The city’s apron on the Mediterranean Sea is now a 3-mile chain of beaches, marinas, shopping malls, restaurants and (slightly inland) middle-income apartments that served as the Olympic Village in 1992. The area, with its fine new museum of Catalunya history, its aquarium, IMAX theater, towering Arts Hotel and refreshing expanse of sand and boardwalk, easily could steal a day or two from the attractions in the older parts of town.
As we walked toward Frank Gehry’s enormous metallic fish sculpture in the Olympic Port, Recasens i Salvat said her business picked up considerably after the Olympics. I was surprised again to hear that Barcelona had not been an especially popular destination before that time.
“Barcelona became a much more famous city than it was before the Games,” she insisted. “Most people would go to the capital, Madrid, and think Barcelona was not interesting very much. Now, suddenly, people are coming and think it’s more interesting than Madrid or Sevilla.”
The residential sections of the former Olympic Village felt relatively cold and impersonal–yellow- and red-brick blocks huddled around inner courtyards on streets still bare of anything but modern steel sculpture. Post-Olympic critiques published in university monographs claimed that the city had thrown most of its resources into a solid infrastructure–water and sewer lines, communication systems–and allowed contractors to cut some corners in building the structures above ground.
But those in the business of attracting visitors point out that the neighborhood has been vastly improved nonetheless. “This was a very old district, plenty of factories, houses that were from 100 years. And all that was demolished,” said Recasens i Salvat. “Now it’s nice. It’s very modern. There’s a Planet Hollywood here, the Fashion Cafe, all those kind of famous restaurants.
“We did have a lot of beaches on the north side and the south side of town, but there was a traffic problem. On weekends, there were thousands and thousands of cars on the road. You could spend hours on the road. Now if you have a day off, you take the children to the beach on the underground, or you take the bus line. We are very happy with this.”
Maybe the imprimatur of a Planet Hollywood does help lift a town toward world-class vacation status, but Barcelona strikes me as a city that probably could get along without it. Perhaps the Olympic Games weren’t necessary, either, but they did turn the city into something of tourist magnet.
“There is no doubt about it that Barcelona has been put on the map because of the Olympic Games,” Martinez-Fraile told me. The statistics seem to bear him out. In 1990, 1,732,902 visitors showed up. During the Olympics, that figure increased by only 142,000. But since that time, the numbers have grown steadily, approaching 4 million in 1997.
As Martinez-Fraile pointed out, the work goes on. “Some other cities that had the Olympics, they stopped when they had facilities built. For us, that’s not true. A good example would be the old port of Barcelona, which is now new. People think the rebuilding was part of the effort for 1992, and that’s not true. The harbor renovation was begun at the end of 1995!”
The director of tourism seemed to glow even more when he mentioned the residual effect of having 40,000 unpaid volunteers helping to put the Olympics together. They didn’t stop working, either, and their legacy may be more important than all the concrete improvements the Olympics brought.
“There was created a mentality for being volunteers in the city of Barcelona,” Martinez-Fraile explained. He said the volunteer spirit continued during the war in Sarajevo, when Barcelona citizens manned relief missions to aid suffering civilians in the former Yugoslavia and operated a telephone line into the country, which otherwise would have been shut off from the outside world.
“Barcelona was a city divided into 10 districts until three years ago,” Martinez-Fraile said during our 1997 conversation. “As of 1994, we have 11 districts. The 11th district is Sarajevo.”
DETAILS ON BARCELONA
Getting there: Airlines flying from Chicago to Barcelona include British Airways, Delta, Iberia, TWA and United. No flights go directly from Chicago; expect at least one stop in New York City or Europe and a change of planes. Lowest winter fares averaged about $800 round trip with various restrictions.
Special winter deals may lower fares considerably. Check with a travel agent or the individual carriers. The summertime, high-season economy fares average about $1,100, but fare wars occasionally do break out, resulting in deep discounts. Book as far in advance as possible.
Getting around: The city has a population of 1,700,000, and 2.5 million more live in the suburbs, so congestion is always a possibility–particularly during rush hours. Fortunately, the subway system is easy to master, and nearly every stop presents visitors with an intriguing walking tour.
The Bus Turistic route begins at the top of La Rambla–Barcelona’s fascinating pedestrian mall–and covers most of the main sights in town. Get off at any of the 16 stops, explore and reboard a later bus at no extra charge. A one-day pass costs about $9; $12 for two days. It’s $7 a day for ages 4 through 12.
Information: For more information about Barcelona and other destinations in Spain, contact the Tourist Office of Spain, 845 N. Michigan Ave., Suite 915E, Chicago, Ill. 60611; 312-642-1992, fax 312-642-9817.
