Barcelona

I've been in Barcelona for most of the past week, where it has been uncomfortably hot, even at night. It must be tough on climate-change deniers, insisting against all evidence that this is how the summer is meant to be, isn't it? Hot? But mind if I take off my shoes and socks? I concede that the wildfires are not entirely untypical: I remember sitting in a bar in Vigo around 1980 (admittedly on Spain's Atlantic coast), watching abandoned vineyards burning unchecked in the hills above, as smuts floated down onto the tablecloth and into my beer from the leaden, smoke-filled sky. But a daily temperature approaching 40 degrees centigrade is just too hot for me, and kicks off an irritability in my northern gene set. Look, guys, let's just sack this place, get back in the boats, and head home to the fjords and meadows ASAP, yeah?

This year so far has felt a little too like ticking off European cities in brief visits, but we'd promised to take the daughter somewhere for her birthday (twenty-four! How can this be possible?) and Barcelona was the top destination to emerge. Luckily, we had arranged an air-conditioned apartment on a shady street. In fact, most streets in Barcelona are shady, following that typically southern European tall and narrow urban grid configuration that blocks off sunlight and channels cooling breezes down balconied canyons, echoing at night with competing TV shows and heat-induced arguments. When it's still around 30 degrees late at night then something as simple as agreeing which restaurant to eat at can cause tempers to fray, never mind the descent into the noisy, sweaty hell of the metro system, standing-room only at all hours.

Not the Camp Nou 

 The bottles look fine, but the bacon has seen better days...

You'll know how excited I was to come across this ex-budgie

Unsurprisingly, I have no great insights to offer after such a brief time in a city I barely know, one that speaks a language, Catalan, that floats somewhere bafflingly between Spanish and French, and which has many different and interesting facets, quite a few of which, however, are obscured at this time of year by hordes of tourists, and the facilities and distractions deemed necessary for their (that is, our) accommodation and entertainment. One thing that is obvious, however, is that, as in so many of the great European cities, the inhabitants of Barcelona – always kept at a politicised simmer ready to boil over into action by the hot issue of Catalan independence – are finding that mass tourism is beginning to destroy the place they love, and they'd like to have it back, please. Setups like Airbnb are not popular, as they exacerbate the housing and neighbourhood gentrification crisis created by tourism, and the city council is quite rightly cracking down on the unlicensed letting of apartments.

Touristically, I confess that we did visit Sagrada Familia, but I couldn't quite see why it is such a must-see mass attraction. Sure, the view from the top of the towers is spectacular, but in its unfinished state it's still a bit of a building site, and the Gaudi style is really not to my taste. Frankly, the cathedral is chaotic, aesthetically, and not in a good way. Worse, there's really nothing much to see, other than the view from the top: it's a single large empty space contained within some rather unappealing modernist ecclesiastical architecture. Compared to, say, Chartres, Cologne, or pretty much any long-established cathedral it seems a bit of a non-event. Rate it meh.

 View from Sagrada Familia

View of the Stadio Olimpico from MNAC

More to my taste was the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC), covering the whole history of art in Catalonia, from prehistory to the modern day. Even the view from the top is better, and the gigantic, railway-station-sized Sala Oval is, apparently, the third largest publicly-accessible enclosed space in the world, so take that, Sagrada Familia. Modern art does seem to have a peculiarly Catalan slant –Picasso, Miró, Dalí, Tàpies and many other lesser known artists all being from the region – although what is referred to as "Catalan Modernism", strictly speaking, seems to have more in common with Art Deco and what in Britain is generally referred to as "Arts and Crafts". Like Gaudi's work, it's not really my cup of tea. But, needless to say, I found plenty of material for future photo-composites in there. Regrettably, I didn't get to visit the Museu de Ciencies Naturals de Barcelona.

You probably get the best sense of touristic Barcelona by visiting the beachfront area. It's a classic Mediterranean setup, and I expect many people spend their entire holiday basting themselves on the hot sand. The daughter and I went for a lengthy stroll along some of the choicer bits, and it all seemed well-organised and well-maintained: there were none of the fag-ends and hazardous rubbish you have to watch out for on British beaches, and there were plenty of beach showers, first aid stations, bars, and all the other requisites for the safe enjoyment of sun, sea, and sand, if that's your thing. Sex, too: we wandered through a stretch of nudist, gay-oriented beach, which was strange. Who knew so many men shaved "down there"?

 Beach bar

Sun, sea, and sand (yawn)

Photographically, I was happy to carry just a Fuji X-M1 with the 27mm "pancake" lens. Harsh sunlight is not ideal for the sort of pictures I like to take, and neither are the extremes of bright and shade you get in lively city centres at night. I did take a fair few, but only came away with a handful that stand in their own right. Obviously, what I was really after was raw material for composites, and I got a good, useful haul for such a brief visit. Watch this space.