Romance Quarterly

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Churches and Streetcars in Barcelona: Ways to

Modernity

Enric Bou

To cite this article: Enric Bou (1999) Churches and Streetcars in Barcelona: Ways to Modernity,
Romance Quarterly, 46:4, 204-215, DOI: 10.1080/08831159909600327

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/08831159909600327

Published online: 03 Apr 2010.

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 Churches and Streetcars
in Barcelona: Ways
to Modernitv
Enric Bou
a Pep Sobrer

W
hen Antoni Gaudi was criticized for his awkward reform of the
Presbytery in Palma de Mallorca’s cathedral he answered, ac-
cording to popular legend, in pure Gaudinian style: A streetcar
is also a work of art.’ Gaudi is best known for the powerful
Sagrada Familia temple, still under construction, which can be read as a life-size
illustration of some of the conflicts introduced by industrialization. Ironically,
Gaudi was killed by a streetcar in 1926 while on his way to the Sagrada Familia
construction site. Churches and streetcars were ever-present items in modern
cities throughout the industrialized world, but perhaps in Barcelona they epito-
mize the beauties and pitfalls of life in modernity. I would like to explore some of
the conflicts expressed by these two symbols as they are used by Catalan artists
and writers.
Turn-of-the-century Barcelona was a city booming with industrial activity.
Industrialization had introduced many changes in its daily life, bringing hordes
of immigrants from nearby and remote mountain towns. The city would soon be
known as one of the most conflict-beset in Europe, ruled by the clash between
groups of anarchists and a very religious, conservative bourgeoisie. In 1850 the
city walls had been torn down, opening up new space for expansion. CerdA’s Eix-
amplp gave the city much-needed space for new dwellings. It was in this new part
of the city that two different objects--churches and streetcars-became power-
ful symbols of the contradictions and necessities of the modern world.
Catholic churches are spaces that traditionally have been dedicated to devo-
tion, temples where people have gathered since Roman times. In the case of

204
 Barcelona, the old city is dotted with churches, and all have powerful connec-
tions to the city’s past: the Cathedral, Santa Maria del Mar, Esglisia del Pi,
Betlem, to name just a few. New temples spread dramatically in the new neigh-
borhoods created during the nineteenth century, mainly in the Eixample. One of
them, the Sagrada Familia, had a powerful meaning in the social fight between
unionized workers and capitalists that characterized the industrial world.
Besides being a new means of transportation, streetcars helped shape a new
society, providing not only a different way to communicate and go places, but also
a mobile space in which people could share time without doing anything, forced
into contact with each other. Furthermore, streetcars, with their massive presence
and electrical power, are quite dangerous, tend to monopolize the street, and
together with trains and automobiles, became symbols of modernity. They offered
an unequivocal connection between the old and the new, in that their earlier ver-
sions were a mixture of nature and mechanical engineering. Until the turn of the
century, when they became electric, streetcars were just a carriage put on a rail and
pulled by horses. With their massive presence, streetcars invaded urban space and
also established a correlation between the urban center and periphery (suburbs).*
In the imagination of inhabitants of turn-of-the-century Barcelona, churches
and streetcars were powerful symbols connected to two different worlds, their
juxtaposition a reminder of the clash between past and present, between forces
resisting change of the status-quo and those fighting for renewal and progress.
That clash took place at the social, religious, and political levels, with serious
repercussions in the arts and literature of the time.
Churches and streetcars can be related to the equation established by Jean
Starobinski in a celebrated article in which, through a reading of Baudelaire’s first
poem in the “Tableaux parisiens,” he defined a concept of modernity based on the
coexistence of two worlds, represented by chimneys alongside architectural spires.
He detected what is most characteristic of modernity, the coexistence of elements
of two very different worlds and times in one single space. That coexistence takes
place in the modern city, where people are constantly aware of the lack of nature
(whence the longing for parks and garden^)^ and the overwhelming presence of
industry. Starobinski also pointed out the special position of the poet-observer,
who sees things from far away and belongs neither to the universe of religion nor
to that of labor: “la perte du sujet dans la foule-ou, ?t l’inverse, le pouvoir absolu
revendiqui par la conscience individuelle” (26). In this sense the equation of
churches and streetcars has a powerful new meaning. They relate to very different
conceptions of the world, but they share an urban space, and the very contradic-
tion of their coexistence makes that space unique. Literary and artistic reaction to
this coexistence establishes a particular moment in cultural history.
Many of the best literary works and paintings about Barcelona in early twenti-
eth century and beyond reproduce with striking fidelity the many changes in the
process of modernization. The sharp contrast between a passion for the church or
the streetcar (or an assimilation of both) becomes a remarkable point of i n t e r e ~ t . ~
In Barcelona, anarchists were summarily executed for burning a church or throw-

FALL 1999, VOL. 46, NO. 4 205

ing a bomb into a religious parade. The bourgeoisie paid for church renovations
and inspired the building of one of Europe’s last cathedrals, the Sagrada Familia,
as a way to show their class cohesion against unruly enemies. Some would blame
all social disgraces on streetcars (and the like), and others would use them as the
epitome of modernity, thereby elevating them to an almost religious status.
Starting in 1860 the new Eixampleneighborhood was a perfect space in which
to build churches, develop a network of streetcars, and experience new sensa-
tions. Ildelfons Cerdi designed the new urban space. He was a member of Con-
gress for the Progresista Party and was much attracted by the problems of work-
ing classes, as demonstrated by his book Teoria General de la Urbanimcidn. Two
areas were immediately created in the new neighborhood, Left and Right of the
Eixample. O n the right side were exclusive residential buildings. O n the left were
hospitals, markets, a prison, a fire station, and so on-that is, all the services for
a growing metropolis.
The building of the Eixample was an extraordinary occasion, which required
an exercise of naming. Barcelona, the former capital of an ancient independent
region, did not enjoy any autonomy at the time, so naming became a device of
self-recognition, which romantic writer Victor Balaguer used to draw a sort of
historical map of Catalonia’s past. Thus horizontal streets were named for former
lands and political institutions related to the fifteenth-century Aragonese-Cata-
Ian empire: Cbrsega, Rossell6, Provenqa, Mallorca, Valkncia, Arag6, Consell de
Cent, Diputaci6, Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes. Vertical avenues were named
for political, military, or literary figures: Comte d‘Urgell, Villaroel, Casanova,
Muntaner, Aribau, Granados, Balmes, Pau Claris, Roger de Llhia. The two cen-
tral thoroughfares were the Rambla de Catalunya and the Passeig de Gricia, the
latter becoming a type of Champs Elyskes, an exquisite social showcase, as report-
ed by Gaziel in his memoirs, Tots elr camins duen a Roma. The naming of the Eix-
ample‘s streets is a perfect example of how the new goes in search of the old, of
how the past permeates modernity, as Barcelona’s modern center became a living
history book reminding its citizens of a powerful history. This effort could be
likened to that of Joan Salvat-Papasseit, a working-class, vanguard poet who, in
some of his poems (imitating Futurist “words in freedom”), designed the map of
an imaginary city, in which he expressed his anger at social ineq~alities.~
The Eixample became an arena for architectural experimentation. Gaudi,
together with other leading architects in turn-of-the-century Barcelona, such as
Domknech i Montaner and Puig i Cadafalch, shaped what is now one of the most
striking modernista sections of any city in Europe. Antoni Gaudi (1852-1926)
was very much involved in the invention of the new city. The Eixample is the area
in which he built most of his apartment buildings, and also the Sagrada Familia.
Churches became special buildings at a time of social unrest, as means of defend-
ing the higher classes’s territory and standard of living. The Sagrada Familia, a
modern-age cathedral, was funded by a private religious organization, the “Spir-
itual Association of Devotees of Saint Joseph,” a saint promoted throughout the
nineteenth century as a symbol for those defending “family values”-the sacred

206 ROMANCE QUARTERLY

family, manual labor. The church had been planned from its origins as a “cathe-
dral of the poor,” but later its name changed to “New Cathedral” (Sob-Morales
27), and it is a by-product of the reaction against industrialization.
The Sagrada Familia (1884-1926) is the building that best epitomizes Gaudi’s
impact on the city and the city’s obsessive juxtaposition of the old and the new.
From 1883 Gaudi was in charge of the construction, replacing the first architect,
and the project became a lifelong obsession for him. His contribution is an icon-
ic program, explaining through visual symbols the mysteries of the faith. The
cathedral was supposed to have three faqades (the birth, death, and resurrection
of Christ) and eighteen towers (twelve apostles, four evangelists, the Virgin Mary,
and Christ). Lateral chapels would symbolize baptism and penitence, the theo-
logical virtues, and the sorrows and joys of Saint Joseph.‘
In 1906 Maragall visited the Sagrada Familia and wrote a keen reading of the
new temple under construction, which he viewed as a compromise between
destruction (the challenge presented by social unrest) and construction (that
offered by religious redemption):

Y el templo se me aparecici, como siempre, como a cantos, como una gran ruina; o
como un gran palomar, que dijo una niha a su primera vista. . . . Pero a mi me pen-
etra mlis la sensaci6n de ruina; y me halaga, porque sabiendo que aquella ruina es un
nacirniento, me redime de la tristeza de todas las ruinas; y ya desde que conozco esta
construcci6n que parece una destruccih, todas las destrucciones pueden parecerme
construcciones. (198 1, 11727)’

He continues his visit and realizes that metaphorically there is more light
inside than outside, as he goes through a process in which he imagines that the
stone has turned into light. This attention to elements from nature when describ-
ing the building is remarkable because it is essentially what he did in one of his
most famous poems, “Oda Nova a Barcelona” (1709). The poem is divided into
two parts; in the first, the poet engages in a dialogue with the city and with a pre-
vious poem, “Oda a Barcelona” (1883), by Jacint Verdaguer. In the second part,
the revolutionary events of July 1909, the Tragic Week, interrupt the poem.
What was a placid dialogue written in alexandrine quatrains becomes an admo-
nition to the city of Barcelona written in free verse, in which the poet tries to elu-
cidate virtues and failings associated with the city, concluding:

Tal com ets, tal te vull, ciutat mala:

6s corn un ma1 donat, de tu s’exhala:
que ets vana i coquina i trai’dora i grollera,
que ens fa abaixl el rostre,
Barcelona! i amb tos pecats, nostra! nostra!
Barcelona nostra! la gran encisera!

Before that final stanza he had introduced an allusion to the Sagrada Familia:

A la part de Llevant, rnistic exemple,

corn una flor gegant floreix un temple

FALL 1999, VOL. 46, NO. 4 207

 meravellat d’haver nascut aqui,
entremig duna gent tan sorruda i dolenta,
que se’n riu i flastoma i es baralla i s’esventa
contra tot lo humh i lo divf.
Mes, enmig la mistria i la ribia i fumera,
el temple (tant se Val!) s’alp i prospera
esperant uns fidels que han de venir.
(Poesiu 789)

In the 1906 text, Maragall saw the temple as a dovecote, but now it becomes a
mystical flower, symbol of the city’s redemption, as he also stated in articles of the
same period (see Maragall Obra casteflana).
Churches were not only sacred spaces for the dominant religion and for pub-
lic gatherings to celebrate Mass but also a symbol hated by the working class. At
a time of acute social unrest, churches became targets for attacks by extremist
groups. Joan Ullman has explained that a latent force in any Catholic society is
the layperson’s natural resentment of the clergy’s privileged position. In Barcelona
and in Spain at large there was much animosity against the clergy because of their
dominant role in the education of the wealthy, their vast amount of property, and
vague suspicions about their obscure system of financing (27-47). According to
Ullman, approximately eighty religious buildings (including churches, schools,
residences, and convents) were burnt down during the Tragic Week of July 1909
(326). Joan Maragall recalled a moving experience he had while attending Mass
at a burned-out church. In this case, he establishes a parallel with the first Chris-
tians and uses the occasion to discuss his principle that hate should be fought
with love:

I estic ben cert que tots els que Crem alli, davant del Sacrifici celebrat en la pobra
mesa de fusta blanca, davant del G i s t rnaltractat, que era tot son ornament, entre la
pols i la runa i el vent i el sol que entraven, i sentint encara entorn nostre el rastre
de desrrucci6 i blasfemia que de tan poc havien passar per aquell mateix aire on ara
tornava a fer-se present el Sacrific, el sentiem corn rnai I’haguCssem sentit i ens pen-
etrava amb una virtut nova i actual, com sols poguessen haver-la experimentada els
primers crisrians perseguits i amagats en un rac6 de les catacumbes, delicant-se
majorment entre el perill i la negaci6, en la iniciaci6 del Misteri redemptor [. . .]
(1981, 1777)

Nature (a dovecote, a flower) and architecture (Sagrada Familia), destruction and

construction, sins and redemption: These are some of the terms Maragall uses to
express his feelings about life in the new city. And in doing so he invokes moder-
nity’s double face.
Streetcars express the triumph of the machine and the arrival of new modes of
transport, which allowed the development of an industrial society. These modes
of transport (the bus, the streetcar, and the underground) allowed the rise of sit-
uations that have been studied in detail by sociologists such as Georg Simmel and
cultural historians such as Walter Benjamin. T h e impact of the masses on the in-
dividual, the fact of being an unknown among your fellow citizens, is a kind of

208 ROMANCE QUARTERLY

experience that developed in modernity. For those who had lived most of their
lives in small towns, deciding (or being forced) to move to a big city was a life-
changing experience, and it meant living under the pressure of constant psycho-
logical stimuli. In connection with new urban situations, a series of literary and
artistic topoi arose: the solitude of the individual; the Baudelairean flineur who
evolved, in the Catalan context, into Josep Carner’s “badoc”; encounters with
unknown people (the gaze, the visual flirt); new spaces such as the railway, street-
cars, and social venues (cafis, theatres); the marginalization of artists and writers
(see Simmel, and Benjamin “Paris”).
Streetcars were objects very much present in the urban landscape. The shock
of the new, of social unrest, was resolved by Maragall through metaphors inspired
by nature. Some writers, however, used the example of streetcars to express the
uncertainty of modernity. In 1905, Maragall wrote an article entitled “L‘dtim
xiscle,” in which he expressed in striking terms how modernization was affecting
daily life. In this case the “last whistle” designates the one blown by the last
steam-drawn train on the Sarrii line. The poet hears the whistle as a farewell to
old ways of living, the ones associated with early industrialization. Maragall inter-
prets the arrival of electric traction as a goodbye to a more humane society: “Era
una joguina dels ciutadans de Barcelona que el veien passar amb una mitja rialla
enternida, sabent que aquell c a r d no duia cap rnalicia” (265). Santiago Rusifiol,
on the other hand, wrote a sarcastic evaluation of changes in modern Barcelona
using the streetcar as a way of measuring them. In ‘‘El progris i les criatures” he
evoked an unfortunate accident in which a streetcar killed a child. After seeing
enraged people burning it, his sarcastic comment is that parents should take bet-
ter care of their children: “Potser no Cs excis de motors i remolcs, el que hi ha,
sin6 excts de criatures. Potser en comptes de maleir els frens i les vies, el que hau-
riem de procurar Cs posarfieno a I’espkcie per vies malthusianes” (217). Josep M.
L6pez-Pic6 became a sort of high priest of the idealized City promised by Xtnius
and the noucentistes. His Barcelona is filled with chariots, instead of mechanical
modes of transport. In “Plaer de la ciutat,” for example, he opposes the noise of
trafic to the placidity of children playing:

Quan us abati el rnovirnent

i el trhfec del carrer, contradictori,
us atabali arnb rnonstrub desori
el vaiv6 de la gent:

arnb Clara joia inesperada

retrobareu el ritrne natural
en tornbar d’un carrer, dins el portal
on juga la rnainada. ( 1 15, emphasis added)

Other writers and artists were much more forcehlly enthusiastic about moder-
nity and its new objects. Torres Garcia and Rafael Barradas, both natives of
Uruguay, spent a few years in Barcelona in the early twentieth century and paint-
ed many urban landscapes filled with streetcars and other remarkable objects of

FALL 1999, VOL. 46, NO. 4 209

the industrial city: electric billboards, cafks, seas of faces, the experience of simul-
taneity. This was their personal reinterpretation of Cubism, which they called
“Vibracionismo.”’
According to Stephen Kern, streetcars played two important roles in the mod-
ern city: They helped to enlarge city size, as the suburbs and nearby towns were
linked to the center, and they contributed to the mixing of social classes (191-
93). Two writers, Joan Salvat-Papasseit and Josep Carner, incorporated some of
those themes into their literary work from very different aesthetic perspectives.
They both dealt with the possibility of being close to an unknown woman for a
significant period of time. In Salvat’s poetry the city landscape is depicted by
someone who is obviously in love with modernity. In a letter, he wrote that he
felt “intoxicated by the city”; in another one, when he was living in a sanitarium
outside of Madrid, “I am missing a piece of Catalonia’s sea, and our magnificent
harbor, and even our old daily streets.” Salvat-Papasseit, in the end, besides being
impressed by Italian Futurism and its love of engines, contemplated the land-
scape, and his is a landscape characteristic of the proletariat. That can be seen in
his books Poemes en ondes hertzianes (19 19) and Li’rradiador del port i les gavines
(1921).
In Salvat’s poem “54045,” the number of a “capicua” streetcar ticket, a num-
ber with superstitious undertones, the streetcar is linked to a pha,llic image: “La
dinamo turgent mou els priaps de foc / en CIRCUMVAL*LACIO.” At the same
time he reproduces perfectly the sensation of isolation inside the multitude:
ks que jo s6c igual per cadascli
en el passatge
Fa fistic que tothorn sap estranger
i is segur que aquest vell coneix el rneu norn

And by the final line the passenger fears for his own safety:

M’he palpat birbarament

si rn’han pres la cartera
A fe que no en portava arnic

He also draws with words, in a sort of caflipamme, a well-known monument in

one of Barcelona’s central squares, the Arc de Triomf. The first edition of Poemes
en ondes hertzianes (1919) was illustrated by Joaquin Torres Garcia, with an
abundance of streetcars and references to electric power. Needless to say, Salvat
and Torres GarcIa’s position is very favorable to modernity and one of its most
pervasive symbols, the streetcar. In other poems such as “Bitllet de quinze” or in
“Encara el tram,” he develops a literary motif, the encounter with a lady in the
streetcar. The poet wonders about the gaze of a young woman reading a book.
After paying attention to several parts of her body, he decides to step down and
carry with him the mystery of her eyes.
A similar situation, yet with a very different outcome, is portrayed by Josep
Carner in several of his poems, particularly in “La bella dama del t r a m ~ i a . ” ~

210 ROMANCE QUARTERLY

Carner has a moral and political agenda and is carefully pointing out what needs
to be changed in urban life. H e traces a real map of urban fruition when he writes
about changes in the city in “L‘anunci Ilumin6s” and how people spend summer
nights, or when he rejoices with Gaudi’s legends. In “La bella dama del tramvia”
he describes a mysterious young lady traveling in a streetcar (Auques i ventalls
44-45). T h e poet sees her from a stop, because she is surrounded by very differ-
ent people, “sota un gran feix de plomes.” H e imagines that she may be from Paris
or Guatemala but immediately adds: “s’allunya a I’infinit/ dins el brogit del trblei
i de la baluerna.” Then Carner asks a rhetorical question: Is her beauty eternal?
T h e final four stanzas provide a response. H e questions the truth of her beauty,
‘‘0resta, i 6s de G r k i a , i de segur diu ‘pues’, / sollant la parla catalana,” speaking
quite imperfect Catalan. O n close examination her beauty all but disappears. And
this introduces his conclusion, a piece of advice to poets and young people about
the danger of appearances. In this case, the vision of a beautiful lady riding a
streetcar incites questions and raises many doubts. They are transmitted to the fel-
low traveler or reader, and in this way the encounter at a streetcar becomes a
device for a meditation on the dangers of trusting appearances and beauty. What
in the beginning was a distinctive urban experience becomes the excuse for a
moral reflection. What is remarkable is the difference between the writers. Salvat-
Pappasseit devotes much attention to describing the action itself, the moment,
without discussing in detail what it means, as happens in Carner’s poems.
In J.V. Foix’s Gertrudis (1927) and KRTU (1932), two collections of poetic
prose that are written following Andre Breton and Philippe Souppault’s Les
champs magnktiques, streetcars are considered among the spaces and objects used
to fix an original vision of the world, in which human beings live o n the verge of
consciousness. In “Plaqa Catalunya-Pedralbes,” for example, the encounter and
pursuit of the main character by a streetcar inspector fulfills the purpose of show-
ing a nightmarish world, filled with monsters, ever-changing spaces, and surreal-
ist objects such as the umbrella and the shoe. This is his way of expressing the
uncertainty and absurdity of reality:

Acabava de Ilenpr el meu bitller quan I’inspector, bufat, em rehsi l’excusa: calia
abonar de nou el trajecte. Contra el costum fou ell rnateix qui ern lliurh rebut: un
manyoc de bitllets multicolors em floria de sobte entre mans rnentre I’inspector em
befava amb cadencia perquk distingis el meu. El seu esguard voraG em xuclava les rels
del cabell i em sentia per momenrs esdevenir calb. Hauria aixecat el bra$ amenaGador,
si la funebre sensaci6 de tenir-lo amputat sofa I’aixella no m’haguis aturat la voluntat
i enterbolit el seny el qual s’obstinava a engrandir una llintia groga que I’inspector
Ilu‘ia arran rnateix d‘un bot6 arnb imatgeria &ex-vot. [. . .] de la parada, vaig rnirar
enrere i em vaig adonar que en aquell paratge no hi havia instal’laci6 trarnvihria. El
tram, sense rodes, arnb la carrosseria esbotzada i el trblei malmks, tenia I’aspecte de
fer anyades a desdir que es podria sobre I’areny a I’embat del temps. (26-27)

Menacing streetcar inspectors are likened to gigantic human figures, which

appear in other texts. T h e disappearance of the rails stresses the nightmarish sta-
tus of reality as the poet imaginatively experiences it.

FALL 1999, VOL. 46, NO. 4 211

 Many critics have pointed out that life in the big city was a repulsive expe-
rience: “Fear, revulsion, and horror were the emotions which the big city crowd
aroused in those who first observed it,” wrote Walter Benjamin. And he added
some important comments about movement in the big city: “Moving through
this traffic involves the individual in a series of shocks and collisions. At dan-
gerous intersections, nervous impulses flow through him in rapid succession,
like the energy from a battery. Baudelaire speaks of a man who plunges into the
crowd as into a reservoir of electric energy. Circumscribing the experience of
the shock, he calls this man ‘a kaleidoscope equipped with consciousness’ (“On
Some Motifs”174-75). In the 1950s, this was still a forceful impression.
Colometa, the main character in Merct Rodoreda’s La PLzp del Diamante, has
literally this kind of feeling. In the novel, the Carrer Gran in Gricia is the street
that separates the poor from the rich and also divides two periods in
Colometa-Natdlia’s life. O n several occasions, Colometa has a life-threatening
encounter with streetcars, and they all happen on the Carrer Gran. In the most
desperate moment of the novel, when Colometa is about to kill her children
and commit suicide, a streetcar almost kills her. She sees blue lights, a refernce
to war and to dislocation:

Vaig respirar corn si el rn6n fos meu. I vaig anar-me’n. Havia de mirar de no caure,
de no fer-me atropellar, d’anar amb compte amb els trarnvies, sobretot arnb els que
baixaven, de conservar el cap damunt del coll i anar ben dret cap a casa: sense veure
els llurns blaus. Sobretot sense veure els llurns blaus. (192)’’

Her adverse reaction to the urban environment must intensify before it can dis-
sipate. All signs of modern life scare her:
Vivia tancada a casa. El carrer em feia por. Aixi que treia el nas a fora, m’esverava la
gent, els autombbils, els autobusos, les motos [. . .]. Tenia el cor petit. Nornb esta-
va be a casa. (217)

In one of the most moving episodes of the novel, after her daughter’s wedding,
Colometa leaves her new house at dawn and walks through the neighborhood
where she had spent her youth, her early years of deep pain and fight for survival.
Finally, she dares to go across the Carrer Gran, a street that repeatedly had been
too imposing for her. This time she masters the situation; she is finally in control
of her life and Rodoreda shows the character going across the street as if she were
crossing a river:
I quan vaig arribar a1 carrer Gran vaig carninar per I’acera de rajola a rajola, fins arrib-
ar a la pedra llarga del cantell i alli em vaig quedar corn una fusta per fora, amb tota
una puja de coses que del cor m’anaven a1 cap. (248)

The street crossing is presented in a way that reminds readers of Maragall’s

metaphors about the Sagrada Familia, and it shows the strong intertwining tak-
ing place between nature and the city. Then a streetcar comes and helps her over-
come her irrational fear of open spaces, and most important, of her past:

212 ROMANCE QUARTERLY

 Va passar un tramvia, devia ser el primer que havia sortit de les cotxeres, un tramvia,
corn sempre, corn tots, descolorit i vell-i aquell tramvia, potser m’havia vist correr
amb en Quimet a1 darrera, quan vam sortir com rates boges venint de la pla~adel
Diamant. I se’m va posar una nosa al coll, corn un cigr6 clavat a la campaneta. Em
va venir mareig i vaig tancar els ulls i el vent que va fer el tramvia em va ajudar a
arrencar endavant com si m’hi an& la vida. I a la primera passa que vaig fer encara
veia el tramvia deixat anar aixecant espurnes vermelles i blaves entre les rodes i els
ra’ils. Era corn si anis damunt del buit, arnb els ulls sense mirar, pensant a cada segon
que m’enfonsaria, i vaig travessar agafant fort el ganivet i sense veure els llums blaus
[. . .I I a I’altra banda em vaig girar i vaig mirar arnb els ulls i amb I’inima i em sem-
blava que no podia ser de cap de les maneres. Havia travessat. I em vaig posar a cam-
inar per la meva vida vella fins que vaig arribar davant de la paret de casa, sota de la
tribuna [. . .]. (248)

T h e streetcar is not only seen as an object that has witnessed her past. At the same
time, its fantastic appearance (“aixecant espurnes vermelles i blaves entre les rodes
i els rah“) allows Colometa to overcome her fear of the future, her morbid attrac-
tion to the past. That is, being able to go across the street without any fear means
that she is in control of her own life since streetcars are no longer menacing objects.
The distinction between churches and streetcars makes us aware that both coex-
ist in an industrialized metropolis and have very different meanings. As Marc
Augi’s distinction between places and nonplaces suggests, a certain place can be
considered a space if it be can defined as relational, historical, and concerned with
identity. It does not take long to decide which of the two is a place--obviously,
the church-and which one is a nonplace, the streetcar. O n e is a powerful sym-
bol that stresses the relationship with the past of a certain society, its millenary reli-
gious traditions; the other represents an open door to the future. O n e of the char-
acteristics of the modern city is a different sense of spaces as an outcome of the
combination of spaces with history and spaces that are completely new. Slowly,
streetcars, which used to be nonplaces, have become as relational, historical, and
concerned with identity as any other, thanks to the efforts ofwriters and painters.
Churches and streetcars coexist in modernity, and they are excellent examples of
links to the past, open gates to the future. Many of these writers and painters,
when in need of a characteristic trait in the urban landscape of Barcelona, always
include a streetcar, which happens to run near a church. This coexistence becomes
a sort of fixture of modernity, of its achievements and shortcomings.

Brown University

NOTES

1. Josep Carner, Les bonhomies i altresproses (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1981) 69.
2. As in most big cities throughout the industrialized world, streetcars had been a part
of Barcelona’s landscape since the early 1880s. At first they were called “La Catalana” or
also “Ripperts” (or “tramvies Iliures”), because they did not circulate on rails but were
pulled by horses. They were used until the 1920s when they were bought by the compa-

FALL 1999, VOL. 46, NO. 4 213

ny “Los Tranvias de Barcelona SA.” See Sempronio, Aquella 21-27. From 1899 onward
there were streetcars with electrical engines. “Les Tramways de Barcelone” was a society,
which had been founded in 1905, and was directed by Mariano de Foronda y Gondlez
Bravo, Marquis de Foronda, who later became director of the 1929 Barcelona World Fair.
3. Joan Puig i Ferreter wrote moving passages about his remembrance of nature and his
hometown. While living in Barcelona, he would go to Ciutadella park and enjoy nature
there. See Joan Puig i Ferreter, Camins dt Franfa (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1982).
4. Many of Ramon Casas’s paintings focus on these events.
5. See “Pliinol,” Poemes en ondes hertzianes (1919), in Joan Salvar-Papasseit, “Poesies
completes,” ed. Joaquim Molas (Barcelona: Ariel, 1978) 16-17.
6. See Josep Maria Carandell, El Temple de la Sagrada Familia (Barcelona: Triangle
Postals, 1997).
7. Also available in English translation. See “Joan Maragall,” Homage to Barcefona: The
City and its Art, 1888-1936(London: British Council, 1985) 265-67. I am most indebt-
ed to Lluis Quintana‘s vast knowledge on Maragall for his comments on this section.
8. See Torres Garcia (Madrid: MNCARS, 1991), Barradas. Exposicib Antoldgica.
1890-1929 (L‘Hospitalet del Llobregat, Madrid, Zaragoza: Generalitat de Catalunya -
Gobierno de Arag6n - Comunidad de Madrid, 1992).
7. Most poems in Carner’s Auques i uentalh (1914), his articles in Lesplanetes def uer-
dum (1918), and Les Bonhomies (1925) are comments on urban life experiences.
10. There is also an English translation entitled The Time of Doves, trans. by David
Rosenthal (Saint Paul: Graywolf Press, 1986).

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