Frommer's Barcelona
Chapter One
The Best of Barcelona
Not since the 14th century, when the Catalan capital was the most powerful city in
the Mediterranean, has Barcelona's future looked so promising. The catalysts for
change have been many. The first-political-was in 1975, when General Francisco
Franco, who had systematically and often brutally tried to eradicate the treasured
Catalan language and culture, died. The city in turn started to live and breathe again
independently. Today Barcelona is a proud, bilingual metropolis with street signs,
newspapers, and television programs in both Catalan and Spanish. In 2006, a progressive
statute granted an even greater degree of self-rule to the whole region.
The second-more cosmetic-catalyst came just before the 1992 Olympic Games,
when feverish renovation work changed the city's image from that of a drab, gray burg
to a new gleaming metropolis. The Barri Gòtic, many of whose central medieval
buildings had for countless decades been coated with grime, could at last be seen in
all its pristine glory, with newly sandblasted facades quietly glow ... read full excerpt from: Frommer's Barcelona ebook
