Visit to the Centre of the Image/ Last Full Day in Barcelona

Wednesday March 30 was mainly cloudy with a few short periods of rain.  The sun came out for a while at the end of the day.  High of 15C.  

We headed down Passeig de Gràcia to La Ramblas (one of the main streets in Barcelona).

A Good News coffee stand with high-end design magazines and good coffee at the beginning of our walk

The other side of the street view of La Pedrera- Casa Milà

We stopped at Chocolat Factory for some treats.

Outside of Chocolat Factory 

Lots of the amazing Easter houses--- a huge thing in Spain

Lots of bunnies and chocolate eggs too

\

Our first stop was La Virreina Centre de la Image (Image Centre located in the Virreina Palace, the home of the City of Barcelona's Department of Culture).  It had three exhibitions open to the public with free admission.  We were most interested in the exhibit about Marguerite Duras.

Outside of the Centre- The Virreina Palace was built in a baroque style between 1772 and 1777
and was purchased by the City in 1944.   In 1986, the Culture Institute settled there.
The Image Centre was founded in 2007.

Posters for the exhibits

Banner for Marguerite Duras exhibit

Reception on second floor- programs from past exhibits 

Marguerite Donnadieu known as Marguerite Duras (Gia Dinh 1914- Paris 1996) was one of the most influential European writers and filmmakers of the second half of the 20th century.  She was the author of 56 books, including novels, journalistic writings and plays.  She directed a number of films and wrote  a number of screenplays. 

There were nine rooms in the exhibit.  The first room explored how she portrayed life in French Indochina along the southern border of Vietnam between 1914 and 1933, based on her experience growing up as a member of the privileged white ruling class.  

She had a fascinating life, moving between Saigon and France in her youth.  In 1933, she moved to Paris graduating with a degree in public law in 1936. She also took classes in mathematics.  In 1939, the married the writer Robert Antelme.  During WWII, she became an active member of the French Communist Party and a member of the French Resistance as a part of a small group that also included François Mitterrand.  Her husband was departed to Buchenwald and barely survived the experience.  They divorced once he recovered.  Duras had an affair with the writer Dionys Mascolo who fathered her son Jean Mascolo.  

Other rooms deal with the period between 1942-1961, including her expulsion from the Communist Party for her "arrogance, loose morals and sleeping around."  She was also active in anti-Gaullist circles in the late 1950s.

In 1943, when publishing her first novel, she began to use the surname Duras, after the town her father came from.  Duras was an extremely prolific writer.  Her best known novel is L'Amant (1984) (The Lover) which is a fictionalised autobiographical work that describes her youthful affair with a Chinese-Vietnamese man.  It won the Prix Goncourt in 1984.

A number of her early works

 Novels based on the life of Robert Antelme

Duras with Robert Antelme ca. 1943

Her Communist Party membership card, 1948. 

Against the war in Algeria 

Duras was active in the May '68 student movement and the French feminist movement in the 1970s.

1971- On the shoot of Jaune le Soleil

In 1971, Duras signed the Manifesto of the 343, publicly announcing that she had an abortion.

Call for action for abortion rights

Picture of Duras directing films

Her screenplay for Hiroshima Mon Amour was nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards in 1959

A wall of the films she wrote or directed

During the final two decades of her life, Duras experienced various health problems.  In 1980, she began having a relationship with a young philosophy student 38 years her junior named Yann Andréa.  He helped her through her health difficulties.  Duras would later detail her relationship in her final book Yann Andréa Steiner.

Yann Andrèa would also write two books about their relationship, one of which was M.D. (1983 and the other Cet amour-là (That love, 1999)

List of her books

It was a very interesting retrospective of Duras' work.  There were a number of film extracts in the exhibit as well as interviews both by Duras and with her (including one by Jean Luc Goddard.  Many of the photographs and films in the exhibit were made available by her son Jean Mascolo, who oversees part of her archive.

We walked by the Barcelona Cathedral- constructed from the 13th -15th centuries.  In the late 19th century, the Neo-Gothic facade was constructed. 

Since we were near Mercat de Santa Caterina, we decided to take a peak.  The original building was constructed in 1848 to provide the neighbourhood's blue-collar community with food. It was remodelled in 2005 and has a wavy coloured roof.

View of the Mercat

Wonderful food stalls

Olives galore

Cheeses and meats

Fish

We then walked up to Passeig Sert (Passatge is the Spanish term, Passeig is Catalan).  Our destination was Nomad Coffee, but we first wanted to stop for a light, late lunch.

At the corner was a restaurant called Casalolea which looked interesting.

Inside the resto

We shared some pintxos - Gildas in the front and a red pepper stuffed with tuna

The cod pintxo

Nomad Coffee, a highly recommended coffee shop was located in the Passeig Sert.

Nomad coffee

Inside-- lots of coffees

Alano at the coffee bar with his cortado

Looking up the passage way

We then walked into the El Born area, stopping at Brunells, a wonderful bakery with many different types of Bunyols (a fired dough fritter found in a number of countries with a historical connection to Spanish Jews).  They are a traditional Catalan snack. We got a couple of the pistachio ones. 

Lots of different fillings for the bunyols

We stopped at Casa Gispert, a fantastic place with nuts, dried fruits, coffee, chocolate and other treats.  They have been roasting nuts in their wood fired oven for 170 years!

Casa Gispert in El Born neighbourhood

Special chocolate house (they all have chicks in the tableaux)

"170 years roasting nuts in this wood fired oven"

We then made our way back to Passeig de Gràcia and the apartment.

The spires

We like to stop and sit on the wonderful modernist benches on the Passeig and people and building watch.  
Finally some sun late in the day.

For our last dinner in Barcelona, we decided to go to La Pubilla located on the square where the Mercat de Llibertat is located.  It is only about a 10 minute walk from the apartment.  We had stopped there for a lunch on our 2015 Culinary Backstreets tour.  The restaurant changes its menu everyday based on what is available and fresh in the Mercat.  They like to mix flavours and the food is very innovative, though still based on Catalan cuisine.   It was a fantastic dinner.  We highly recommend.

Outside of restaurant (photo taken earlier this week)

Lovely restaurant - full by the time we left.  The tables were well spaced and the staff still wear masks

We shared three dishes and a dessert and had a lovely glass each of red wine.

Alano with amuse-bouche- strawberry, tomato puree with a bit of honey

Perol sausage carpaccio with prawns and pistachio nuts

Fava beans Catalan style with calamari, 

Cod with red onion, spinach, pine nuts, prunes and a base of pureed potatoes and
cauliflower with olive oil-- excellent flavours

We shared a lemon gin sorbet for dessert

We headed back to the apartment to pack.  We have really enjoyed our time in Barcelona.  This trip has really turned into an architecture and foodie adventure.  We have walked a lot and explored a number of different neighbourhoods.  Definitely, a city to visit many times.

We have an early morning train to Sète, France where we will visit my cousins.  The next blog may not be posted until April 1, internet permitting.