Word: barcelona
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...through the long and often bloody history of class struggle, cataloguing the numerous rebellions and political in-fighting that awkwardly grace the city archives. As is usually the case with these clashes, they are between the haves and the have-nots. And as the for city's demographics attest, Barcelona has long been a haven for the have-nots...
...wasn't always this way. For a time. Barcelona was actually a kind of king-of-the-hill among city-states...
...Barcelona's glory really began in the ninth century, with Guifre el Pelos (literally, Wilfred the Hairy--his famed hairiness has since passed into legend) leading the way to independence against the invading Moors. As the first genuine national (read: Catalan) hero, he began a noble line of political--and hairy--agitators...
...book admiringly traces the evolution of these irrepressible democratic impulses, but they become less important when set beside the city's magnificently mixed-up architecture, an aggregate of different periods and styles. Architecture is the second of Barcelona's most enduring features after democracy, and fittingly enough, Hughes treats this subject at length (he is an art critic, after...
...acting as a symbol, a building can resonate with much greater force in the cultural consciousness; it is like an empty vessel that has been filled with a culturally-endowed meaning. During the occupation of Barcelona by the Bourbons in the eighteenth century, for example, the construction of the Ciutadella (the Citadel of Barcelona) became a hated symbol of Bourbon tyranny...