WHAT IS THIS?

This blog begins as an academic work for the subject named The Urban and the City World. We are two students of Humanities at Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) in Barcelona.

Through this blog, we encompass a promenade that browses back the steps of Ventura and his friends, as they have been doing since 1985. These characters come from the novel written by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, "El pianista".

In this book Manuel Vázquez Montalbán writes about three moments of the recent history of Spain, connected by the life of the pianist Albert Rossell. Montalbán shows three historical moments: firstly, when the new democracy is coming to Spain (about 1973); secondly, in the middle of Franco’s dictatorship; and thirdly, when the Spanish Civil War was just starting. In the first part, Ventura is the co-principal character. In this blog, Ventura will be the main character and his nocturnal promenade our subject of study, who will be described through the next posts in this blog.

We want to show a special promenade through Barcelona, which can be done if you come here to visit these places, to have a beer, eat patatas bravas, or drink a cocktail. We want to show the real city, the Barcelona for non-tourist people. The city of this promenade is the same city where two young students of Humanities usually go for a walk or when we want to have a beer.

But, is more than this. While we are walking, we can see how the city of Barcelona has been changing —the changes in the usage of premises and, as far as possible, the architecture of Barcelona—, during the last thirty years, according to the architecture, the people and the society.

Hopefully this Blog will throw some light into the knowledge of Barcelona and the narrative of Montalbán, for which we deeply feel for.