Catalonia dreaming
First point of contact for many visitors to Spain, Catalonia is an autonomous region with its own special language and other points of reference. Anthony Howard takes you on a canter around this intriguing north-eastern corner of Iberia... SUN, sea, sand, sangria and sex remain bywords in the British vision of Spain, and perhaps especially of the Costa Brava - that wild coastline south from the Pyrenees - where it all began in 1954 with the arrival of the first package holiday visitors. My own first memories of Spain go back to that time. For, as a child, I was marched round what seemed like every cathedral and château in France before motoring boldly onwards across the frontier to Rosas, which typified everything one expects of a Mediterranean fishing village.
In Rosas we became friendly with an eccentric English family who had made the 900-mile journey in a 1930s Rolls-Royce which drew rapt admiration from the locals. When my tearful little sister announced she had lost a precious new salamander ring, we spotted it from the end of the jetty, deep in the crystal-clear sea, and in I dived to retrieve it. What a lark. So this was Catalonia, which ever since has invariably given me a pleasurable frisson of adventure. Years later, I was en route from Paris to Dakar via Barcelona and Algiers, relishing the desert saga ahead. Late at night, as I bowled along the autopista, down a steep slope into a river valley, a steering vibration developed briefly. Just as I throttled back a touch, more out of curiosity than alarm, the right-hand front wheel fell off the Range Rover and bounded away into the night. So I parked it at the roadside - as one does. While our multi-millionaire leader went off with a torch to search in vain for his wheel, two of us fitted a spare, and we drove on to bask in a warm welcome from huge crowds lining the streets of Barcelona. While we now live in a world where many Britons view Spain as a home from home, relations have not always been so cordial. Though certainly, whether as friends or foes, dealings between the two have long been intriguing to say the least. They came a bit close for comfort when King Phillip II of Spain formed a Catholic alliance with Mary Tudor, Queen of England, by marrying her in 1554. However, under her half-sister and Protestant successor Elizabeth, rebuffs were to follow. Sir Francis Drake famously ‘singed the King of Spain's beard’ when he daringly sent fire ships among the Armada in Cadiz harbour in 1587. And, when the Armada did sail to subjugate England the following year, Drake's fleet and the weather conspired to scatter it in disarray.
However, while Britain grew as a world trading power during the next two centuries, Spain's influence declined. Various alliances with France against the traditional island foe finished in conclusive disaster with Nelson's destruction of the Franco-Spanish fleet at Trafalgar in 1805. Napoleon's forces subsequently occupied Spain, but were driven out by Wellington in 1812. Most of Spain's distant and profitable colonies took advantage of these diversions to snatch independence, and their wealth went with them. Thereafter, Spain sank into a downward spiral of social unrest and civil strife for more than a century. A revolution deposed the Bourbon monarchy in 1931. This was but a prelude to the military revolt that triggered a savage civil war in 1936, unleashing the antagonisms between the far right - Franco's Falangists in Spain, analogous to Hitler's Nazis in Germany and Mussolini's Fascists in Italy - and the left - a fractious alliance of Republicans, Communists, Trotskyites and Anarchists. Hitler and Mussolini backed Franco, taking the opportunity to try out manoeuvres and weaponry that were to cause even greater devastation during the subsequent World War II. An estimated half a million people died during the Spanish Civil War - in combat, executions, air raids and from malnutrition. Once Franco had finally won control, 100,000 Republican prisoners were executed, and 35,000 died in concentration camps. Idealists from many other countries were drawn into the conflict - as combatants, reporters or campaigners. Among them were Dorothy Parker, Ted Heath, Stephen Spender, Laurie Lee, WH Auden, Ernest Hemingway, Arthur Koestler, and George Orwell who so vividly described this protracted miserable affair at first hand in his Homage to Catalonia.
Orwell's observations still have a familiar ring. Catalonia was the last of the Spanish regions to hold out against Franco's Nationalist onslaught, but by late 1938 the writing was on the wall for the Republican cause. Any hope of international intervention faded when the Munich Pact sealed Czechoslovakia's fate in late September, and Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returned to Britain from his parlay with Hitler, declaring: ‘Peace in our time.’ Thus the International Brigades which had fought for the Republican cause were withdrawn after staging a farewell parade in Barcelona on October 29. Two weeks later, the Republicans finally retreated across the Ebro river, south of the city. By Christmas, the Nationalists had begun their assault on Catalonia, and a month later they took Barcelona. France and Britain recognised the Franco regime on February 27, and all that remained was for the Nationalists to mop up Madrid, enabling Franco to declare the war ended on April 1. Ruler for life - until his death in 1975 - the Generalissimo imposed his right-wing dictatorship on Spain, first maintaining neutrality during World War II and then relative isolation during the post-war years. However, with sun-starved war-weary northern Europeans pushing at the door and entrepreneurial Catalans tugging at it, this state of affairs could not to endure for ever. Those adventurous early holidaymakers found unspoilt beaches and simple accommodation, which many still crave to this day.
Even now, Spain remains the number one foreign destination for British holidaymakers. However, now faced with abandonment by a number of tour operators, resorts on the Costas are trying to rehabilitate their ‘unsophisticated’ reputations as concrete jungles pandering to the lowest common denominator with fish `n chips, kiss-me-quick hats and bawdy bars. As they do so, they are no doubt reviewing their ‘key strengths’, among them food, wine, scenery and heritage. Catalonia's location and varied topography are central to all of these. It forms an inverted triangle with the French - Pyrenean - frontier to the north, Aragon to the west and the Mediterranean to the east. This long coastline begins with the rocky Costa Brava, 125-miles of bays and inlets, and then flattens out into the Costa Dorada, 160 miles of golden sands from north-east of Barcelona and to the south of the Ebro delta. The coastal areas enjoy a dry, sunny climate, but the hinterland behind the Catalan sierras endures harsh winters. To the south the sierras give way to a fertile triangular plain irrigated by the lower Ebro and cultivated intensively to yield olives, almonds, wheat and dairy produce. Catalonia is also one of the world's main producers of cork for wine bottles, using the bark of the Alsina Surera or cork oak tree. HISTORY: A STRONG INSTINCT FOR INDEPENDENCE CATALONIA has seen plenty of comings and goings down the centuries, for its strategic position has brought it both trade and invasion. The Greeks appeared in the 6th Century BC, and were followed by Carthaginians and Romans in the 3rd Century BC. As Rome declined, the Goths showed up in north-east Spain in 470 AD. Later, Moors from North Africa set about their conquest of Spain, eventually seizing Catalonia in 712 AD. The Emperor Charlemagne came to the rescue, driving the Moors away in 788 AD, and requisitioned the territory - the Spanish March - as a buffer for his empire. Indeed Catalonia was to become something of a political football in the coming centuries. In 1137 Count Ramón Berenguer of Barcelona married the Infanta Petronila of Aragon, forming the kingdom of Aragon-Catalonia which extended across the Pyrenees into present-day France. First signs of moves toward national unification of Spain, for which Catalonia had little stomach, emerged when Ferdinand of Aragon's wife Isabel was proclaimed Queen of Castile in 1479.
It continued to be caught up in belligerence and was the scene of civil war in 1823, and a centre for revolution during the Carlist wars of 1830-40 and 1872-76. And it kept its separatist credentials intact as it entered the 20th Century. So with the advent of Spain's second republic in 1932, Catalonia regained its autonomy, only to see it snatched away in 1939 after the Civil War it had helped make so difficult for the Nationalists. Catalonians had to wait another four decades before retrieving their precious autonomy. They elected their first - regional - parliament in 1980, and by the mid-1990s Catalan nationalists had become a force in both Catalonian and Spanish politics. LANGUAGE: ONCE A PUNISHABLE OFFENCE ENSHRINED as the official language of Catalonia when autonomy was granted in 1979, Catalan is predominant in the countryside, where some older people struggle to express themselves in Castilian Spanish. However, bilingualism is generally the norm, and this is one of the first things the visitor notices. Being spoken to in Catalan - especially after asking a question in Spanish - is one reason other Spaniards cite for antipathy towards Catalonians and viewing them as insular and snooty. Yet only a handful of nationalists play the language card deliberately, and what outsiders perceive as arrogance is generally a simple linguistic mix-up. Cosmopolitan Barcelona is the one place in Catalonia where more Spanish is spoken than Catalan. On the other hand, Catalan is not restricted to Catatonia, for it is spoken by a further 4 million people - in other Spanish areas (Valencia, the Balearic Islands, eastern Aragon and Andorra), the south-east of France and Sardinia.
Spreading throughout the Iberian Peninsular and around the Mediterranean, it became one of the most widespread tongues in use in the 14th Century. However, the War of the Spanish Succession in the 18th Century instigated periods of repression. Renaissance began in the 19th Century when the Institute of Catalan Studies was established. Spelling rules were unified, and the first Catalan dictionary and grammar books were published. After the Spanish Civil War, Franco made use of Catalan a punishable offence, but in the 1960s small protest movements were whittling away at this harsh restriction. People began to fill out official forms in Catalan, hum Catalan tunes, and even ask policemen for directions in Catalan. Franco's death in 1975 and the coronation of King Juan Carlos set Spain onto the road to democracy and freed Catalonians to speak as they wished once more. FLAG: ONE OF EUROPE’S OLDEST THOUGH there is no documentary evidence until the 13th Century, Catalonia's distinctive flag is one of the oldest in Europe. Heraldic in origin, it is the result of copying the background bars of the coat of arms of the Counts of Barcelona to a cloth backing. To begin with, the bars or stripes - four red alternating with five yellow and all of the same width - were presented both vertically and horizontally. Though eventually the horizontal layout predominated. The flag was afforded official status by the Catalan Statute of Autonomy passed in 1979. CATALANS: ENERGY AND ENTERPRISE CATALANS are sharp-witted, industrious and frugal people with a robust national pride and a revolutionary spirit. In their energy and their enterprise they resemble the Basques at the far north-west of Spain. Yet their distinct dialect and costumes emphasise their origins and set them apart from Spain's other inhabitants. Among Catalonian names known worldwide are: Facundo Bacardi: Wine merchant Don Facundo emigrated to Cuba in 1830. In those days, rum was firewater made on the cheap, a drink for buccaneers - ‘Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum’ - but not for gentlemen. This challenged Don Facundo to try to ‘tame’ rum. He experimented with filtration through charcoal to remove impurities, and he mellowed the result by ageing it in oak barrels. He and his brother José began commercial production at a small distillery in Santiago de Cuba in 1862. Fruit bats colonising the roof of their building suggested the Bacardi bat logo. Jose Carreras (1946- ): Inspired to sing from an early age, he gave his first public performance - `La Donna e Mobile' on national radio - at the age of eight, and at 11 he was on stage at Barcelona's Gran Teatro del Liceo. His ‘real’ debut as a tenor came when the great soprano Montserrat Caballe asked that he sing with her in Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia. They collaborated in 15 further operas, so he was heard by all the right people, and went on to become a household name the world over. However, in 1987 he was diagnosed with acute leukaemia with a 10 per cent chance of survival. Yet he recovered, and has since worked with fellow luminaries such as Von Karajan, Domingo and Pavarotti. Pablo Casals (1876-1973): A virtuoso cello player and conductor, he made countless recordings of solo, chamber and orchestral music throughout his long career. Though he is still probably best remembered for his recording of Bach's Cello suites, made between 1936 and 1939. Xavier Cugat (1900-1990): Catalan-Cuban band leader, trained as a classical violinist, who put the Latin idiom into American popular music. He played with Havana's Teatro Nacional orchestra, moved to New York to work with a tango band, and then drew cartoons for the Los Angeles Times. Cugat formed his own band to perform in early sound movies, and took it to open New York's new Waldorf Astoria, where it became the resident group. Shuttling between New York and Los Angeles, making hotel, radio and movie appearances for the next 30 years, he followed trends closely. His recordings included the 1940 hit ‘Perfidia', and the conga, the mambo, the cha-cha-cha and the twist as each came into vogue. He said: ‘I would rather play Chiquita Banana and have my swimming pool than play Bach and starve.’ Salvador Dali (1904-1989): An important Surrealist painter of great talent and imagination, born at Figueras, where the Teatro Museo Gala Salvador Dali exhibits the largest collection of his work. Among his trademarks were brilliant draftsmanship, bizarre dreamlike images, painting skills influenced by Renaissance masters, Cubism and Dadaism, his moustache and attention seeking. His eccentric theatrical manner upset his critics and admirers. When he opined no-one at Madrid's Academia de San Fernando was competent to examine him, he was expelled before he could sit his finals. In Paris he came to know Pablo Picasso, the poet Federico García Lorca and film maker Luis Buñuel. Dali said: ‘The only difference between myself and a madman is that I am not mad.’ Joan Miró (1893-1983): Barcelona-born painter, sculptor and ceramicist, whose Surrealist works are among the most original of the 20th Century, began to develop his unique style when he moved to Paris. In 1926, he collaborated with German Surrealist Max Ernst on designs for Ballets Russes impresario Sergei Diaghilev. Miró helped Ernst pioneer grattage, trowelling pigment from his canvases, and wanted to ‘murder’ and ‘assassinate’ painting in favour of new means of expression. He stepped up his work in different media, for instance producing hundreds of ceramics, among them his Wall of the Moon and Wall of the Sun at the UNESCO building in Paris. He also wrote about his radical ideas for gas sculpture and four-dimensional painting. His works now sell for between US$250,000 and US$8 million, and many are exhibited in the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona. Juan Antonio Samaranch (1920- ): Franco's secretary for sports, he became president of the Spanish National Olympic Committee and a member of the International Olympics Committee, of which he was vice-president from 1974 to 1978. The new Spanish government assigned him as ambassador to the Soviet Union and Mongolia from 1977 to 1980. Elected to succeed IOC president Lord Killanin in 1980, he remained in office until 2001. During this reign, he negotiated major television and sponsorship deals to ensure the Olympic movement's financial health, increased membership and led the gradual acceptance of professionals. He re-structured the IOC and took the 1992 Summer Olympics to Barcelona, his home town. Controversially, he was subject to sustained criticism for being autocratic and intolerant of dissent, for a culture of secrecy, and even for turning a blind eye to corruption. WINE: LONG HERITAGE THE Phoenicians probably introduced the first vines to Catalonia, and certainly the Romans made a serious business of wine production, especially around Tarragona, Roman capital of occupied Spain. Catalan wine was exported to Rome until the fall of its empire in the 5th Century AD. Wine making dwindled, and indeed was suppressed by Koranic prohibition when the Moors invaded Spain. Revival began in the 10th Century, mostly at monasteries in the Pyrenean foothills, a safe distance from Muslim influence, and gradually extended towards what are now Catalonia's primary vine-growing areas nearer the coast. Increasing use of glass spurred development in the 16th, 17th and 18th Centuries, and the 'invention' of the cork brought about a revolution. Folklore suggests that Dom Perignon, the monk credited with creating Champagne, first learnt about the use of cork while at a monastery in Girona.
Growers chose to experiment with local white varietals such as Macabeu, Parellada and Xarello, and also with wine making methods from France's Champagne region. Hence Catalonia's bubbly, now known for its ‘Cava’ Denominación de Origen. Catalan ‘vi negre’ - literally black wines - have been transformed by combining imported varietals such as Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot with the traditional Garnatxa, Carinyena and UII de Llebre to produce excellent - even spectacular - reds. Ampurdán-Costa Brava, Alella, Costers del Segre, Penedès, Priorato, Tarragona and Terra Alta are areas with a Denominación de Origen, and all enjoy long histories. Priorato, dark reds with complex aromas and smooth to taste, and Penedès, well known for whites with a 10-13 per cent alcohol content, are much in demand. Tarragona's wines are enjoyed as aperitifs and accompaniments to fish. Be prepared to think beyond normal conventions of wine served in a glass, and try a leather wine skin or distance drinking from the spout of a porrón, the glass jug popular among Catalonians. FOOD: RICH DIVERSITY SOURCED from land and sea, Catalan cuisine is among the best in Spain, which is a tall order. Embracing liberal use of garlic and olive oil, it offers great variety, thanks to Catalonia's historic position at a crossroads between other countries such as France and Italy. There are four mainstream flavourings:
There is certainly rich diversity on the menu in Catalonia: rice dishes, meat such as pork, poultry and veal, and fish - all prepared with great imagination. A wide choice of sausages includes tasty butifarra, roasted or fried with mongetes (white beans), and salchichón accompanied by pan con tomate - Catalan-style bread with tomato, olive oil and salt rubbed into it and maybe a slice of ham or an omelette on top. If you enjoy your food, Barcelona is for you. If you really fancy pigging out, ask for la escudella, the Catalan version of cocido, a chickpea-based stew in which meat and vegetables are cooked together.
If la escudella seems a touch challenging, try fideos a la cazuela, tasty noodles accompanied by spare ribs, sausages, ham, bacon and a sofrito sauce. Too hefty? Then consider a third typically-Catalan stew, habas a ta catalana, comprising butifarra with broad beans, seasoned with plenty of thyme, rosemary, mint, cinnamon and bay leaf. Fish specialities include zarzuela, which takes its name from the Spanish operetta and comprises cuttlefish, mussels and prawns, la opera, a more up-market variant with lobster, and arroz a la cazuela, Catalonia's answer to the enduring paella valenciana. I doubt I could manage a pud after one of those, but there are plenty on offer if you fancy one. How about crema catalana, mel i mato (honey and curds), or postre del musico (‘musician's dessert’) with pine-kernels and raisins? Though I don't want to start a fight, Girona boasts the best cooking in Catalonia, another tall order. Part Pyrenean and part Mediterranean, it covers a broad spectrum, abundant with turkey, goose, duck and poultry stuffed with memorable mixtures of pears, turnips, apples and olives, raisins, sausages and pine nuts. Game dishes include partridge, rabbit prepared with herbs, and hare with chestnuts. Then comes the cross-over between land and sea, for example mar y cel (sea and heaven), with sausages, rabbit, shrimp and fish, or the celebrated Costa Brava dish of chicken with lobster. If you fear confusing your taste buds, consider a wonderful fisherman's soup or lobster cooked with roasted almonds and garlic and served with ali-oli. Around Lérida, look out for hearty mountain cookery featuring game and trout. Also try la cassolada (potato and vegetable stew with bacon and ribs); Iamb with girella sausages, or lamb's feet with turnips. Rice dishes with rabbit, cod or pork are served with plenty of broth. The Tarragona area is noted for rice dishes, too, and also for specialities such as rabbit with garlic, tuna boiled with potatoes, marrow with snails, cod balls and fritters, and los calcots - tender onion shoots. BARCELONA: A RÔLE IN EUROPE THE Catalan capital's tourist industry delivers 12 per cent of its GDP, thanks to the 2002 Olympics. But the city is not resting on its laurels. It wants to become a business and transport hub for southern Europe with an expanded port that would be the Rotterdam of the Mediterranean’. There is a problem, however. Investment in roads, railways, airports and harbours is controlled by central government in Madrid. And, though Catalonia contributes 20 per cent of Spain's GDP, it receives only 10 per cent of public expenditure on infrastructure. Barcelona's intention is to become a centre of innovation, attractive to multinational research and development. Its teaching hospitals and pharmaceuticals businesses would provide the focus for a new biosciences sector. Its design schools would build on a strong textile tradition to create a world-class fashion industry. So the Poble Nou industrial area is being redeveloped as a new business district to accommodate a biomedical research centre, a technology park and research departments. Though not yet complete, the enterprise is expected to redefine Barcelona's rôle in Europe. Expansion of the Montjuic 2 trade fair complex by 240,000 m2 will transform it into Europe's second biggest exhibition site, behind only Milan which offers 340,000 m2. Features embrace an 1,800-seat conference hall and 7,000 parking spaces. The plan includes a partially underground promenade - or central ‘spine’ - linking all the pavilions, a new Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat station with services to the Gran Via, and metro lines 2 and 9, the latter connecting with the airport, via the Zona Franca and adjoining streets. CATALONIAN FACTS
Copyright © by Anthony Howard 4557 words For Spanish magazine |
