On Thursday, we began our day yet again on Passeig de Gracia. Jessica turned south to tour another Gaudi structure and I went north, back to Gracia. Gracia is a great neighborhood to explore because it feels so much more authentic than the other parts of the city. It’s a little less accessible by Metro and the bulk of the city’s business is conducted closer to the water, but throughout the morning, Gracia was bustling with people.
Every neighborhood in Barcelona has its own fresh food market. The Boqueria is king of all the markets, but as a result, is sort of the least user-friendly. For natives looking to buy groceries and get advice from the vendors about produce and how to best prepare it, one of the smaller neighborhood markets is far better. These markets are generally covered, featuring an array of stalls, and they stay open all morning, often closing at lunchtime for the day. Gracia features two great markets and I visited both: Mercat de la Llibertat and Mercat de l’Abaceria Central.
After wandering around Gracia for a while, I circled my way back to L’Eixample and stopped by one of my favorite places, La Central. La Central is a glorious bookstore, packed floor to ceiling with books, and contains a cafe with reliable wireless — a rarity in Spain. I spent a ton of time here while I was abroad, doing “homework” and browsing the Spanish, Catalan and miscellaneous other language books.
From there, I took a long and familiar Metro ride. When I was abroad, CASB formed a great partnership with the Catalan Ministry of Education and placed many of us in semester-long teaching roles at local public schools. I worked at La Mar Bella, a primary school in the once industrial neighborhood of Poble Nou. The neighborhood today is undergoing a bit of a revitalization. As one of the teachers once put it to me, the parents are workers, but the children will grow up to be professionals.
For eight hours a week, I served as an assistant teacher in the first, third, fifth and sixth grade English classes. The primary language of schooling is Catalan, though Spanish is phased in as children get older. English is taught starting at a young age, but there appears to be minimal retention. The two English teachers – both named Ángels – told all of the children that I spoke no Catalan or Spanish in an attempt to get them to practice their English with me. It worked for most of the semester… until I accidentally let on that I understood what they were saying.
Since my time at Mar Bella, I’ve kept in touch with Ángels and Ángels and was excited to go back and visit. When I arrived, they were in the middle of hanging Halloween decorations. Halloween is not a holiday that is celebrated in Spain, but the children celebrate it in their English classrooms as way of practicing language and learning foreign culture.
In the middle of the school day, the children all go home for lunch. Many teachers return home too, but there is also a lunch available for them at the cafeteria. In my elementary school, the only option the teachers had were the same defrosted chicken nuggets we were eating, and so most went to the local bagel store instead. Lunch at Mar Bella is a gourmet experience, because God forbid the midday meal be lacking. Trays of food are brought out and the teachers serve themselves to three courses, menu del dia style. For starter, we had the option of a seafood paella or spinach with pine nuts, raisins and cured meat. For entree, we had the choice of grilled fish or pork ribs with a side of french fries and salad. Since I last ate at Mar Bella, the school hired a new cook, who makes highly praised hand-rolled chicken croquettes to go with the main dish. For dessert we chose between yogurt, whole fruit or sliced fruit. And then because there were still 15 minutes before class restarted, we went across the street to have a coffee. Definitely beats Bagel Boss of Jericho.
While we sat outside, Ángels filled me in on what’s been happening at the school over the last two years. Spain’s dire economic situation has had a massive impact on the little primary school. The teaching staff has been cut in half, and as a result, the school day is an hour shorter for the children, but each teacher has an additional hour of instruction. On top of the extra work, their salaries have gone down. There is less and less funding for school programming, and the teachers fear it will only go down further. The gates of Mar Bella are covered in brightly colored papers, advocating for the importance of public school education and asking the government to stop making cuts. School budget cuts are among the issues that enrage Catalan nationalists, who argue that their hard-earned tax dollars are sent to Madrid and then used to subsidize education in southern Spain, while their own children suffer.
At 3 p.m., the children and teachers returned to class and I bid farewell to my little escola. I went to meet Jessica atop Montjuic, which is the largest park in Barcelona and is effectively a little mountain rising out of the center of the city. To reach the top, you can take a glitzy cable car or the funicular, which is part of the Metro system. Montjuic is home to countless beautiful gardens, several museums, an old castle-slash-fortress once used to protect the city and many of the stadiums, pools and buildings used during the Olympics.
I met Jessica at Fundacio Miro, a museum Joan Miro bequeathed to his hometown just before he died. Several of the galleries were closed, but my favorite part of the museum is the sculpture garden, which offers spectacular panorama views of the city.
From the museum we walked around Montjuic, taking photos at various intervals. We arrived at Plaça España just as the sun was setting. The square is lined with a series of fountains that at certain times over the weekend spurt in time with music and lights. The Fonts de Montjuic are said to have inspired the Epcot light show. It is indeed a marvelous display, but unfortunately did not take place any of the days we were there.
Around the corner from the fountains is a former textile manufacturing factory that was repossessed by Catalunya’s largest bank in the mid-1900s and transformed into a free art museum. CaixaForum has retained its old world charm, and the setting makes for a unique museum-going experience.
Following our very cultured trip around Montjuic and its environs, we headed to the Born for dinner. The central square surrounding Santa Maria del Mar and the other landmarks we visited the day before turns into a hopping nighttime destination. We ate at Casa Delfin, a tapas restaurant with a slight international twist.
Because of its nontraditional nature, the dishes at Casa Delfin were also a bit bigger than those at most tapas bars. In order to avoid total gluttony, we toned down our usual ordering parade and selected three items: cod pan-fried with chickpeas, avocado salad with shrimp and strawberries and a tortilla de escalivada, an omelet with roasted peppers, eggplant and onion.
We strolled along the beautifully lit Barceloneta boardwalk before retiring for the evening.
