Around Barcelona: El Raval, Plaça Catalunya, y La Rambla

It has been crazy busy around here over the past week with travel, midterms, and friends coming to visit. I had three friends from home (Carolyn, Katie, and Erin) come to stay over Halloween weekend (and for Katie's 21st, which just so happens to be Halloween!) and I had a great time showing them around the city. I also just had my last midterm today in my Lit class, so life will be returning to a (somewhat) calmer pace for the time being... a perfect opportunity to get caught up on my blogging!

Since I have been focusing mainly on documenting my excursions to other places, I thought it would be a good idea to start a series of "Around Barcelona" blogs to talk about the city so everyone at home can get a feel of what life is like here. As I have been learning in one of my classes, Barcelona is a very easy city to interpret and get around because there are very specific areas of the city that all have a different feel. Every so often I will visit a different neighborhood and talk about what makes it unique. This will also be a good way to make sure that I see every facet of the city, not just the one near my apartment or what I see on my way to and from class.

For my first blog around Barcelona, I visited El Raval, Plaça Catalunya, and La Rambla. I picked El Raval because we had been talking about the area a lot in my literature class and Plaça Catalunya and La Rambla are both on the way there - and I wanted to get them out of the way since I walk down/around them pretty often.

Only a few minutes walk from my apartment, I started at Plaça Catalunya.

The Plaça is considered by many to be the center of the city. Some of the buildings around the Plaça:

El Corte Inglés, the department store here.  It sells everything that you would see in the states, but is verrryyy overpriced.

Off of one of the corners of Plaça Catalunya is La Rambla, which historically is one of the best known streets of Barcelona. In my Lit class, we recently read a piece by Hans Christian Andersen about his experiences on La Rambla. When walking down La Rambla from Plaça Catalunya, the Gothic Quarter (Barrio Gótico) is on your left, and El Raval is on your right.

A newsstand with souvenirs

Plaça Reial, off of La Rambla. It has some good restaurants and a market on Sunday mornings. And yes, it looks like this in November!

You can buy pretty much anything on La Rambla...

There are lots of performers dressed in strange costumes on La Rambla - these two are some of the most popular. They love to mess around with the crowd and sneak up on people! Creepy...

Veering off of La Rambla to the right, and you find yourself in El Raval. If you clicked on the link of El Raval I posted above, you'll read that it's not known to be the safest or most beautiful place of the city. However, it is a part of the city that is rich with culture. According to Wikipedia: "El Raval is a neighborhood in the Ciutat Vella district of Barcelona, Spain. The neighborhood, especially the part closest to the port, is also informally known as Barri xinés, Barrio chino, or Barri chino, meaning 'Chinatown.' (*I should note here, 'Chintatown' just refers to the 'exotic' in general... not a population of Chinese people or a 'Chinatown' as we consider it in the U.S.)... El Raval has changed significantly in recent years and, due to its central location, has become a minor attraction of Barcelona. It is currently the home to a very diverse immigrant community (47.4% of its population was born abroad), ranging form Pakistanis and Indonesians, to a more recent Eastern European community, especially from Romania." I was especially intrigued to visit this part of the city after studying in my Lit class the duality between the older part of El Raval in contrast to the new buildings they have constructed to try to clean up or "modernize" the area.

Here are some pictures as I entered El Raval and made my way across some of the most recognizable landmarks:

Immediately off of La Rambla into El Raval

"La Central del Raval," the bookstore where I bought my books for school - fun fact, a novel by one of my professors was a "suggested read" here!

It is hard not to notice the huge presence of the MACBA (museum of contemporary art) in the middle of the narrow streets and old buildings....

... such as this one.

"La Rambla del Raval," built to resemble the popular street in Barcelona in an attempt to bring tourism to the area. We watched a film, En Construccíon, about the construction of this street and other modern buildings

Betsy with El gat del Raval

"Volem un barri digne" = "We want a decent neighborhood" in Catalan.

Sant Pau del Camp - once upon a time, this church stood outside of the city (hence it's name, which refers to the countryside), but now resides snugly in the center of the city.

A stark contrast between old and new in El Raval

After wandering around the landmarks of El Raval, we made our way back up through La Rambla and Plaça Catalunya to our apartment. I can't say that I felt completely comfortable walking through El Raval, but I think it was an experience worth having to get a sense for what parts of the city look like outside of our nice, clean, 19th-century modernist neighborhood. I didn't necessarily feel unsafe, but it  put me a little on edge to see so many policemen around keeping tabs on people in the parks and streets, and I found myself keeping a closer eye on my belongings than I do in other areas of the city. I don't think I will be returning at night or suggesting that my friends stay there anytime soon. Still, there were very cool parts of El Raval that were artsy and different than other areas of the city, and I appreciated being able to see in front of me what we had talked about so much in class in regards to the modernization/urbanization of Barcelona. I definitely think I have a more complete perspective on the city after my afternoon in El Raval.