BARCELONA

“The lamps along the Ramblas sketched an avenue of vapor that faded as the city to awake…The brightness of dawn filtered down from balconies and cornices in streaks of slanting light that dissolved before touching the ground.” — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

NONFICTION

Homage to Barcelona, Colm Toibin, 2001 — Histories and travel essays on Barcelona.

Catalan Cuisine; Europe’s Last Great Culinary Secret, Colman Andrews, 1999 — White beans, marinated salt cod, rabbit – a cookbook and so much more!

Barcelona, Robert Hughes, 1993 — The cultural history of the city, from its days as a Roman outpost to the present takes a comprehensive look at the architecture, art, religion and literature of the area.

Barcelona: The Great Enchantress, Robert Hughes, 2007. An ode to a favorite city by the famous art critic.

Antoni Gaudi, Ignasi de Sola Morales, 1992 — Spectacular color photographs and classic text join to make this examination of 16 of the architect’s works, from houses to cathedrals, richly accessible.

FICTION

The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafón, 2001 — Young Daniel Sempere is taken by his father to a place called the Cemetery of Lost Books where he is told to adopt a book to keep its memory alive.

Gaudi Afternoon: A Cassandra Reilly Mystery, Barbara Wilson, 1990 —Lesbian translator-turned-sleuth Reilly scours Barcelona seeking a missing person of “indeterminate gender” in a witty, feminist, fast-paced book.

Nada, Carmen Laforet, 2007 — The story of a young woman struggling to survive after the Civil War.

The Time of the Doves, Merce Rodoreda, 1986 — Gabriel Garcia Marquez called this book about one woman’s life during the Spanish Civil War and beyond: “The most beautiful novel published in Spain since the Civil War.” High praise!

TRAVEL GUIDES

Cool Restaurants Barcelona, Cuito Aurora. Browse beautiful places to eat and get a sample of their menus so you don’t have to take chances on how attractive the surroundings are for your meals.

Cool Shops Barcelona, 2005. Heavy on the pictures and light on the text but when it comes to cool shops, the focus should be on style not substance anyway. Think of it as a black book with images.

Lonely Planet Barcelona, 2006. A great all-around guide to the city with maps and solid historical and factual information.

StyleCity: Barcelona, 2007. This large format paperback series focuses on the city’s high style spots with sections on shopping, eating, staying and seeing.

Time Out Barcelona. The guidebook to the city by the staff of Time Out with great tips on sights, shops and restaurants.

Wallpaper City Guide: Barcelona, 2006. A hip pocket guide to the city by the editors of Wallpaper magazine.

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A Review with Excerpts

Spaniards are not accustomed to silence. “Catch a taxi anywhere in Spain,” Giles Tremlett notes in the introduction to his recently released nonfiction book, Ghosts of Spain, “and you may find yourself sharing it with a handful of tertulianos [people hired to participate in Spain’s widely popular televised debates] vociferating on the radio. Your taxi driver—if he is not one of those immaculate, austere, proud taxistas who are too dignified and serious to sink to this level—may join in. If you have had a bad day, or feel strongly about the issue at hand, you are free to let yourself rip.” As for propriety: “A generous use of swear words is something we anglosajones [Anglo Saxons] share with Spaniards.” Until recently, there was one topic, however, that was strictly off-limits, a sort of cultural taboo not broached by even the most sacrilegious of city cabbies: the Spanish Civil War and its bloody outcome—thirty years of dictatorship under General Francisco Franco.

The recent exhumation of mass graves throughout the country has placed Franco—previously Spain’s only cultural F word—back on the table for discussion. In Ghosts of Spain, Tremlett, Madrid correspondent for The Guardian, sets out to better understand Spain’s troubled past and how it has, inevitably, molded the present. It’s a journey that covers both historical and contemporary as well as autobiographical terrain (Tremlett, after all, has lived in the country for twenty years). Its starting point is la Transición, the period after Franco’s death, in 1975. During that era many former Francoists jumped on the democratic bandwagon to become Spain’s new government officials, in the process creating a “world record in jacket-changing.” Tremlett explains how the left’s main tactic then was reticence, engaging in a sort of collective memory loss of all past sins committed by their present leaders: “If silence about the past was the price to be paid for the successful self-dissolution of Francoism, the opposition was prepared to sign on to it. Franco’s henchmen, in other words, would not have to pay for their crimes.” Only now, thirty years after la Transición, are Spaniards finally beginning to speak out and put their history on trial. From this Francoist point of departure, Tremlett quickly segues into more modern territory, exploring topics such as health care, education, Spain’s well-documented football mania, the coastal tourist towns “in all their garish glory” and the colors and sounds of flamenco culture. He also takes his readers down the less-trodden, darker alleys of Spanish life, shedding light on the country’s roadside brothels (businesses that have grown increasingly successful and sophisticated over the years), the dirty-money connections between Madrid football team owners and real-estate bigwigs and the neglected gypsy ghettos surrounding Seville—enclaves rife with both crime and incredible musical talent. Along the way, road signs (literally) switch from Spanish to Catalan to Basque to Galician as he visits the country’s autonomous communities, each with its own ethos, running the gamut from the quiet contentedness of the Galicians to the extreme separatism of the Basque ETA. Unusual stopovers include a neo-Franco rally where Tremlett is in the rather uncomfortable situation of being the only one not chanting or saluting the former Caudillo; a coffin parade in Galicia; a handicapped-friendly roadside brothel; and a national flamenco contest for inmates. While his starting point is historical, it is Tremlett’s musings on Spain’s modern-day puzzles and personality quirks that direct and drive his journey and make Ghosts of Spain such a fascinating read. Here are three quirky snapshots of Tremlett’s trip across the country he now calls home.

Snapshot #1—Doctor Worship [On Health Care]

“Spaniards are normally wonderful, imaginative abusers of bureaucracy or rules of any kind. Given the chance, they will charm, cheat or bulldoze their way through them. Stand them in front of a man, or a woman, in a white coat, however and they go meekly wherever they are led. The long complex words of medicine are magical to Spaniards. Their ability to discuss illness, in a combination of detailed medical jargon and vivid, no-holds-barred descriptions of symptoms—pustules, bowel movements and genital itches included—is prodigious. In newspapers and radio programs, footballers’ injuries are described in minute, loving detail. One player, I read in today’s sports daily As, has a fracture to the escafoides carpiano of his hand. Another has torn the cápsula posterior of his knee. Does your average soccer fan know what these remote corners of the body are?”

His wife’s Caesarean section brings Tremlett face to face with the corollary of such worship—doctors who think they’re gods: “Our final goodbye to the Doce de Octubre, in a treatment room a few weeks later, was a reminder of how some doctors peered down at patients from their personal Mount Olympuses. He removed the last few staples from the Caesarean wound—and arranged a golf match on his mobile phone as he did it.”

Snapshot #2—Brothels and Bibles [On Prostitution]

Upon visiting one of Spain’s numerous neon roadside brothels, one of the first catering to handicapped patrons, Tremlett reflects on Spain’s curious mixture of sex and religion.

“The contrast between a country which, when asked by pollsters, describes itself as 80 percent Roman Catholic and its generally laissez-faire attitude to all things sexual is one of Spain’s great paradoxes. That contrast reaches its zenith in the pages of ABC [an established conservative newspaper] and—lest you think that this is a last vestige of ‘old’ Spain—in its new, successful, even more conservative rival, La Razón. The Pope inspires the editorials, but it is prostitutes who service the small-ads pages. Prostitution, then, is a sort of open secret. It is there for all to see, but it is surrounded by either silence or indifference.”

Tremlett offers a historical insight as (partial) explanation for these conflicting attitude, tracing them back to Franco: “To be scandalized about sex is to be estrecho, ‘narrow’ or ‘prudish’—something associated with the repressive and hypocritical time under General Franco, when the Church really did set the rules. His death set Spain on a delayed sexual revolution that was grasped with fervor.”

Snapshot #3—Partying With the Dead [On Funerals]

As a concerned parent, Tremlett views the educational system’s emphasis on socialization, or formande el group (“forming the group”), with suspicion, criticizing the fact that reading and other solitary pursuits are sometimes labeled strange behaviors. As the friend of someone facing tragedy though, he notes how Spain’s highly social nature helps to mitigate the harsher moments of an individual’s life.

“One might expect this [funeral home] to be a solemn place. But, with vigils going on for up to twenty-six dead, all neatly arranged in adjoining cubicles, the tanatorio [a city’s official morgue] bustles like a railway terminus. First-timers might think they have stepped into a small airport terminal. Groups of people mill about. A TV monitor tells you which corpse is in which cubicle. There is, inevitably, a large bar-cum-restaurant doing brisk trade. I even have friends who, because of its extended opening hours, have used it for the last drink on an evening out. A new tanatorio, I notice, has just been opened in Madrid. It advertises on the radio with the slogan ‘the most modern tanatorio in Europe.’ Even in death, then, Spaniards’ innate ability to operate as a social mass helps turn tragedy into occasion.”

Anyone in love with or intrigued by Spain’s flamboyant personality should pick up a copy of Tremlett’s book. While his historical research can, at times, be a little too meticulous for, say, the airplane reader, it results in a text chock-full of the insightful and interesting commentary that informs the best travel writing—writing that simultaneously entertains and educates.

Ghosts of Spain: Travels Through A Country’s Hidden Past, Giles Tremlett. (Walker & Company). $26.95