My Homage to Catalonia

A little time has passed now for me to muse on my brief stay in Catalonia where George Orwell wrote his oh-so-moving account of his time fighting for the disjointed and ultimately fledging republican cause.

Unfortunately Cafe Moka in Las Ramblas did not exude any of the feeling I expected from that period. It has been revamped and completely modernised severing any evokation of the 1930s.

However, the positivity of the city is what has stayed with me since then. The Mediterranean feeling of warmth and optimism can be felt wherever you walk in the city from park to park and street to street whilst people chat from balcony to balcony. It is not the most cultured of European cities - its passions revolve more around its numerous sports clubs rather than the arts. The Picasso museum does not boast his most accomplished work and the architecture, though still fabulous, never really reaches the grandiose climes of Madrid's inner city.

To speak of Barcelona as symptomatic of Spain and spanish culture would be obviously to display huge cultural ignorance. The movement to gain Catalan independence is fully visible and almost all businesses have managed to insert "Catalunya" or "Catalan" somewhere into the title. However, the problems that afflict Spain as whole are also noticable - the overdependence on tourism, the lack of drinking water and the gradual desertification of its arable land. To speak of Spain as an economic powerhouse for the rest of Europe would be wholly misplaced. Though not poor, prospects of great future economic progress do not seem that tenable given the structures of the spanish economy.

Barcelona and Spain are both places of great exuberance and Latin temperament. The future though not overly positive does not dent the general mood of openness and cordiality of Catalonia and its people. If only the food was better, but thats another matter...