Barcelona

Barcelona, like Spain itself, has in recent years attracted the gaze and fascination of the world. Chosen as the host city for the 1992 Summer Olympic Games, the international spotlight will soon focus on this beautiful, two thousand year-old city, furthering Barcelona's hopes for a lasting place on the world stage. But success has never come easily to this Spanish metropolis. Not blessed with a natural port, and checked throughout history by a series of natural disasters and military defeats, Barcelona has struggled hard to become the industrial and commercial first city of Spain, and the biggest urban center on the Mediterranean seaboard. And Barcelona's relationship with the rest of Spain has always been strained by its status as the capital of the separatist Catalonian state. As this comprehensive and vividly written history makes clear, all of Barcelona's fluctuating fortunes are mapped out in its remarkably rich architectural and artistic heritage. While many associate the city with the distinctive, fin-de-siecle signature of the architect Gaudi, Fernandez-Armesto reveals Barcelona's many other faces. Tracing the legacies of the Roman occupation, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the modern age, he illuminates the inherent tension that makes Barcelona one of the most vibrant, beautiful, and misunderstood cities of Western Europe.