Barcelona - Part I

We left Gibraltar and had another relaxing day at sea before the ship pulled into port in Barcelona.

We had signed up for a shore excursion for this one so we all loaded up into a bus with about 40 other cruisers and headed off into Barcelona for the tour.

Once we reached the old city, we got out of the bus and began the tour proper.

The old city is very historic, with narrow streets and dates back to Roman times.  It is remarkably clean with nary a piece of litter to be found.

On the upside, the guide, who had a great sense of humor and excellent story-telling style had provided everyone with a radio audio set to be able to hear him.

On the downside the system seemed to have a very short range, and with 40+ people we would get pretty spread out walking through the narrow streets.

 

Of course we had some being very slow walkers between us and the guide leading us to be even more spread out, and the system lost reception due to the distance from him, so we didn't always hear what he was saying.

Our guide was very engaging and rather humorous, and made the tour nice and lively.

The guide narrated a history of Catalonia and how it got the flag it did. 

 There were also quite a few Catalonia is with Ukraine banners hanging from government buildings.

The story as to the origin of the Catalonian flag (Yellow background with four red stripes), as told by the guide is this:

The ruler of Catalonia was dying after a battle and his less than manly son apparently cried and asked him what banner they should use now.  The dying man with four bloody fingers dragged his hand along a yellow flag forming four stripes in blood and stated that was the flag of Catalonia now. Interesting story anyways.

Interestingly there were many Cuban-looking flags hanging from apartments.

The guide explained that Catalonians don't really consider themselves Spaniards. 

He stated that Cuba, being both a last possession of Spain and now communist, holds a special place in many Catalans hearts (He did not mention if Catalonian Commies are saying that Cuba isn't real Communism, but I;m sure they beleive they'll get it right if they're in charge....).

Apparently, Catalonians who favor independence from Spain fly a Cuban-style flag with Catalonian colors:

But, if they're flat-out Catalonian Communists, they just fly the Cuban flag.

So we saw lots of architecture walking around the old city and many fancy old buildings.

 

We then came to a building, currently the Museum Frederic Mares, built from part of the Royal Palace of the Counts of Barcelona that looked rather old, if pretty standard for the city.

On looking at the bricks a little closer, one could tell the Palace had been built using non-typical materials:

Yep, the palace was built using Jewish gravestones taken from the nearby Jewish cemetery, around the time the Jews had been expelled from Spain in 1492 and expelled from Catalonia as well - causing an economic crisis.   

The guide in a rather deadpan manner noted that Jews on tours tended to be a little unhappy on seeing this, and it was not very nice that it had been done.  

European rulers taking stuff from Jews tended to be a repeated theme throughout European history.