Travels in Spain: Barcelona’s Ramblas and Mercat de la Boqueria
November 13, 2015
“Today, for most people, the Ramblas is Barcelona.”
— Robert Hughes, Barcelona the Great Enchantress
“The humanity of the Rambla! It’s an inscrutably human street! So many stories come and go every day from these cafes, shops, and stairways! The air is saturated with their human feet.”
— Josep Pla, The Gray Notebook, translated by Peter Bush
“The Ramblas is and always will be one of the great, seedy, absorbing theaters of Spain, or for that matter of Europe.”
— Robert Hughes, Barcelona the Great Enchantress
My favorite part of strolling the Ramblas was our little detour into the grand food market, Mercat de la Boqueria, which reminded me of Seattle’s Pike Place Market and the one on Granville Island in Vancouver, B.C. An overwhelming panorama of vibrant colors, prepared dishes, and raw food.
“[The Boqueria] is the hub and heart of both Barcelona’s gastronomy and its everyday eating. Its site was originally occupied by the sixteenth-century convent of Sant Josep and the fourteenth-century one of Santa Maria. Hang me for a gluttonous atheist if you will, but compared to the increase of human happiness afforded by this great market, the loss of a couple of convents is nothing. . . .
For any serious lover of food — which most Catalans aggressively are — there is no other place in the world quite like the Boqueria, that vast covered space crammed with stalls that display just about everything short of human flesh that could conceivably be eaten, from skinned rabbits (their moist eyes still peering reproachfully at the hardhearted shopper) to soft brown hills of newly shot but unplucked partridges, neatly tied fagots of expensive but irresistible angullos or jamon Serrano. . . . If there were a grocery, butcher, and fishmonger attached to the Garden of Eden, in which one could sample what terrestrial food tasted like before the fall of man, it would be something like the Boqueria.”
— Robert Hughes, Barcelona the Great Enchantress
Filed in Food and Recipes, Travel
Tags: Barcelona, Las Ramblas, Mercat de la Boqueria, Spain, travels
November 13, 2015 at 7:44 am
Have you been to Italy? This food reminds me of Italy, everything was fresh and delicious
November 17, 2015 at 8:26 am
I have been to Italy once — the Cinque Terre and Venice. I would love to go back someday.
November 17, 2015 at 12:10 pm
I was just fine with everything except those bunny rabbits. Oh, goodness. But, there’s certainly enough there to please any palate or avoid any sensitivity. (I did go to the Rabbit Festival in Iowa, Louisiana, and enjoyed rabbit prepared a half-dozen ways. I’ll eat it. I just prefer not to have to see its cute little carcass first.)