Back from Barcelona - May 10, 2024

 We're back from our 2-day trip to Barcelona and I wanted to do a quick post to explain how far behind I am at chronicling our trip. More posts are coming to share our adventures of last week, including Barcelona. Since I last posted, we've been to Carcassonne, Minerva, crossed the Pyrenees into Spain, and spent a fast 48 hours in Barcelona, traveling home via the Mediterranean coast. Whew. I'm going to bed as soon as I post this. We've also said good-by to Janis and Clark.

For this quick post, I want to share some of the graffiti that is ubiquitous in Barcelona (and for that matter, throughout France as well). There are certainly the run of the mill tags with names of groups in big block letters, but graffiti is also an art form here in Europe. There seems to be an ethic to where these artistic images are placed - almost always on doors - those sliding metal ones that cover the entrances to shops for example. In France, and I expect in Spain as well, there are beautifully decorated walls, some trompe-l'oiel, some tie-ins to local culture. So there is history to this graffiti movement. There are very few places where graffiti is scrubbed off or painted over. It's hard to know if it's just a "can't win" attitude or if the locals feel the art works really help brighten the dark alleys, dingy stucco, and old crumbling stonework. Anyway, they bring me joy and sometimes awe. Here are a few I collected in Barcelona to share with you.

These are from the old center of the city. 

These are what most of the streets look like in the old medieval center.

These are shutters that open down the center to reveal doors to shops. These might have been commissioned for the store?

Politics is often expressed in graffiti like everywhere.

On a door near the Picasso museum (whose entrance is in a narrow alley in the old town of Barcelona).

More soon....