Word: catalanes
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...come less often than we like to think, but some have been utterly fundamental. One of these was the arrival of iron as a material of sculpture. This happened in the 20th century -- about 75 years ago -- at the hands of Pablo Picasso and his older friend, the Catalan sculptor Julio Gonzalez. It signaled the first basic change in not only the materials but also the nature of the art since the invention of bronze casting, which occurred so long ago that it belongs to the domain of myth, not history...
...just some architectural veneer, Barcelona's whimsy echoes in the Catalan spoken here as well. For instance, in this capital of Catalonia common words begin with X's, and it's somehow endearing that you can buy candy in a xocolateria on your way to a sparkling wine bar--a xampanyeria--called Xampau Xampany. Moreover, a government-printed language textbook eachews the dry repetitions of "amo amas amat" that filled my high-school Latin primer and replaces them with two unclothed cartoon Catalans locked in a torrid embrace...
...GREAT CATALAN CELLIST PABLO CASALS is rightly credited with elevating the cello to its royal status as a solo instrument, so it is only fitting that Pearl records pays him homage by beginning its six-CD set, The Recorded Cello: The History of the Cello on Record, with his evocative 1915 performance of Schumann's Traumerei. Among the 74 other masters represented here are Enrico Mainardi, whose version of Dvorak's Concerto in B minor is stately and deeply hued; and Gregor Piatigorsky, playing variations on Paganini with heart- skipping joy. All the tracks demonstrate the delicate timbres and subtle...
...most prominent country in the early going, however, had been one that did not march but made its presence felt at every turn: independent-minded Catalonia, which is determined to cast these as the Catalan, not the Spanish, Games. A longtime enemy of Castile, delighting in a language that Franco had banned, Barcelona was eager not just to show off its faster, higher, stronger ^ self -- reconstruction is almost as trendy as deconstruction here -- but to emphasize its distance from the Spain of myth, and of Madrid. FREEDOM FOR CATALONIA signs (in English) were draped from balconies and shoulders, and buttons...
Throughout, Hughes adroitly analyzes the architectural syntax of the city by way of its ideological underpinnings. What we discover is that, more often than not, the Catalan drive for self-definition has been projected and voiced through the urban landscape of Barcelona itself...