Like the revolucion plaza, Placa del Sol, flanked by suns, also seemed to be surrounded by art and artists, though we counted several indie theatres here, so film, moreso than the art shops and studios we saw elsewhere. When we arrived in the Placa del Sol, these people were naked but covered in black tar and they were doing some kind of weird dance in the middle of the plaza, where people were having lunch. A guy was filming them dance.

The people in the square seemed to think this was fine and not very unusual, though one woman did stop to take a picture of them. The park floor was covered in suns and shapes we did not recognize — we thought perhaps some of them looked like games, like hopscotch — but the words explaining them were so well worn that we could not make them out. When I tried to talk to a guy about both the naked people and the suns, he said Si. \240No. C’est va. \240And went on his way. Someone had painted Tourists Go Home in red spray paint.

I didn’t at first see why we were visiting this plaza along with the rest, both of which commemorated various revolutions or events. But we stopped an electrician on our way out and asked him what kinds of folks lived here and if he liked it, and he told us that it was being gentrified or turned over (to stick to my theme) and he implied that he and his dad may one day be priced out.

This area differed from the others in the shops it offered — we smelled less incense and there were fewer raw juice bars with signs in English — but there was a guy with a jackhammer and a bunch of people working on renovating buildings that suggests people are interested in investing in it.

One thing I noticed that tied all of the Gracias neighborhood together was the concept of revolution, particularly if you think of the word revolution as meaning to turn over, to change. Revolucion square is a site dedicated to those who died in the May Events of 1937, their presence marked by a series of tiles or squares on the ground with the year of their death. But honestly I was more taken by the newer signs of revolution in this neighborhood — the flags.

People all over this district had the independence flag draped over their balconies, as well as the flags that say democracia! And Si! Some even had the feminist fist flag with signs that said they were anti-fascist and pro-feminist.

We noticed that the shops seemed to align with the politics in the area. Several of the shops in this part of the city were vegan, what we might call hipster, yoga-friendly, all natural deoderant places. Although I assumed that meant this was a yuppie part of town, the clientele that were walking around this part seemed relatively middle class. It is hard to decode class in a new city, though; the waiter we ended up talking to at a cafe said that this part of town was very expensive to live in and that he often commuted from Eixample. \240He said he can only work, not stay, in and around this plaza. What this suggests to me is that perhaps there is a not only a correlation between class and politics — as there always is — in this area but also that displaying these kinds of politics on your walls and on your balcony and via your shop is a kind of privilege in and of itself.

The placa de Vila apparently has had 4 different names. Placa de Orient, de la constitucio, de Rius i Taulet and then de la Vila de Gracia. Now the square seems to be a monument to the Conscripts Revolt of 1870 when local people rebelled and refused to enroll their children in the army.

After the other plaza dedicated to war, I started to think about the ways in which cities think about violence and remember it, and ask tourists and residents to remember it as well. The bell tower apparently rings for the dead, or did once, which suggests both an audible and a visual site of resistance to willful forgetting. Graffiti spray painted around the square depicted current revolts and resistance to war and violence, including a lovely bit of street art with someone breaking out of handcuffs and chains and being made free.

This makes me think of the US and its issue with public monuments. I wonder how the residents feel about the ways in which their cities remember these things of the past. They do not seem to be whitewashed or even made saccharine — in fact you can miss a lot of the markers, which are small on the wall or only visible if you are looking down at the ground. But they placed them in common areas where children play and people have lunch on a pretty day outside, walking over and over the memorials until the words are worn thin. I was struck I guess by the every-day-ness of the ways in which they mark violence and register their commitment to revolution. The Estrella flags hang next to potted plants and laundry. The revolution tiles mark the way from one vegan bakery to another.

I suppose if you weave resistance into your sidewalks and the corners of your apartment buildings, it becomes part of the fabric of the city as well.

When people think of Barcelona, they think of Las Ramblas and the street artists like this dragon here. It’s a busy thriving throng, made so by the theatre that is at the mouth of Las Ramblas by the sea.

In many ways then, Las Ramblas is wet. I don’t mean that in the sexual way, although they do have a kind of racy museum with Marilyn Monroe standing in the window. I mean that it is flush, full of people and money and interest (and alcohol), brought to Barcelona by the cruise ships we have been discussing.

The market is there to wet parched thirst.

And the vendors on the long tree lined street are there to “wet” the tourists’ desire to spend money on useles things.

But Poble Sec has not benefitted from that same relationship with the ocean. It’s almost as if Christopher Columbus has pointed the crowds in the wrong direction.

Look at the direction of his hands — he points Barcelona’s self-worth to the ocean, to the representation of wealth and merchants.

Poble Sec is also located almost right on the water, as you can see in this video.

But it does not benefit from this development. In that way, then, Poble Sec is dry. Whereas the theatre has been repurposed to make Las Ramblas a money making scheme, nothing has repurposed Poble Sec. In fact, I noticed that all of its parks had been moved to a very hard to reach hill — thereby removing the green space from public vision (and perhaps, sticking with my overall theme this week, public memory). Like Poble Sec itself, the park has been put out of sight and mind.

Dry empty park in Poble Sec

Dry empty fountain in Poble Sec

The hilll you have to climb to reach a green space. Look down the road — it is quite a hike, especially with a stroller, and no ramps for the stroller when you reach the tall steps.

Poble Sec is thus parched in a number of ways. Not only does it seem to have much money injected to its improvement or green spaces, but it seems to have been overlooked for the spaces across Parallel, the street that acts like the tracks back home.

Boarded up windows and doors are pretty standard in Poble Sec.

Back home, a place that lacks access to fresh fruits and vegetables because of poverty is called a food desert. Poble Sec is also a kind of desert, in that it lacks access to Las Ramblas’s bounty, or perhaps wants none of that particular feast. It’s pretty wild that a desert could be located so close to such a large body of water. I saw some parallels, then, between our own food deserts and Poble Sec — its relationship to the ocean has been severed by Las Ramblas, which acts as a kind of economic barrier that few tourists seem interested in crossing. Perhaps they welcome that; it is hard to say.

I have been thinking a lot about public memory on this trip, and while that usually involves talking about things like monuments and markers, districts and neighborhoods also are part of public memory. What do we make of a working-class neighborhood that has literally been excluded from my map? Why isn’t Barcelona interested in including Poble Sec as an extension of Las Ramblas, and how would those workers feel about it if they did?

This is the supermarket in Poblenou. It is the largest market I’ve seen since coming to Barcelona and, as usual, the food here has taught me a lot about the area

Downstairs, the market has stalls of vendors which look like the vendors in local markets in other neighborhoods we visited, many of which seem to be standard Barcelona fare — fish heads and fresh fruit and dried beans. But if you look a bit closer, you’ll see that Poblenou is working to incorporate the old and new. Upstairs, the market has superwalmart type goods — huge rows of packaged goods, junk food, ice creams, and other products I saw limited in central Barcelona.

Look at how much ham is in the jamon section.

But this deli display suggests they haven’t \240done away their food ways just yet.

This food superhighway says a lot about this neighborhood, which could be from St Pete, Florida in places — particularly via the high rises — and at times is distinctly Catalunya.

Hidden in pockets, we saw antidascist street art. I saw art like this—political art—in older Barcelona neighborhoods protesting similar issues.

Even the architecture is mixed old and new.

On one side of the street is typical Barcelona — ornate balconies in that sand colored construction and on the other side, this slick modern repurposed steel suggests you we are not in the Gothic Quarter any longer.

This sign summed up the amalgamation in this neighborhood — they embrace the concept of their former working class identity but embrace new possibilities for food and tourism, suggesting that food, once again, serves as a kind of roadway in which people can travel safely between cultures to create their own blended selves.

There’s even a little Mexican food here, distinctly not Catalan, but it boasts empanada filled with jamon, mixing the best of two wonderful worlds. Deep fried jamon. Mmmm.

The area appealed to one woman we met from Uruguay today, who said she immigrated into a community of other Uruguayans, which matched the blended nature of the neighborhood as I observed it. She said she lived happily there (though she could not identify what a superbloc is). The amalgamation of Indian, Mexican, Uruguayan but also mixed with globalization in general is particularly reflected in the food and architecture, which manages to retain a bit of old Barcelona — watched over by the historical tower at Poblenou’s gateway tower — and of the new it hopes to present to the public, whomever is interested in calling it home.