Cities have streets that define their personality. Paseo de Gràcia is an elegant, daring, cosmopolitan boulevard that explains how the bourgeoisie that turned Catalonia into the factory of Spain, that was enthusiastic about modernism and that protected arts and culture, turned it into one of the central axes of the Eixample in an open-air museum. Few metropolises can boast of having a large avenue where architects of the stature of Antoni Gaudí, Lluís Domènech i Montaner or Josep Maria Puig i Cadafalch are represented with surprising buildings.
Passeig de Gràcia is one of my favorite streets to enjoy being a pedestrian. I like its rationalist, clean and straight layout. But also the contrast between the modernity of its establishments and the modernist elements such as the streetlights and trencadís benches. One of my favorite buildings is Casa Batlló, commissioned by the textile industrialist José Batlló to Gaudí, which the architect finished with an undulating shape in allusion to the myth of the Sant Jordi dragon. The businessman married my great-aunt Amalia and they lived happily there for thirty years.
It is curious how throughout its two-century history, Passeig de Gràcia has been changing as an urban landscape. In its beginnings it was a boulevard of splendid cafes, with busy terraces, which made it the first street in the city to have gas lighting. Its least brilliant years were the seventies, as banks and savings banks were established along the avenue, which caused it to lose part of its bustling charm. But the discovery of Barcelona as a tourist city returned the avenue to its status as a promenade, while the big fashion brands competed over its floors as a draw for visitors from the five continents.
Through the future of Passeig de Gràcia, a good part of the most recent history of Barcelona could be reconstructed. The width of its avenue has been chosen for a multitude of civic or political demonstrations. But some of its disappeared establishments are also part of the city's memory. I think of the Drugstore, an all-day store that was the drinking headquarters of progressivism. In the Publi cinemas, where at the end of the Franco regime arthouse films that escaped the rigor of censorship were shown.
In stores like Vinçon, which constituted a temple of design that allowed us to educate the taste of Barcelona interiors. Or the La Puñalada restaurant, which managed to become an interclass dining room where the best Catalan cuisine was enjoyed and which had its illustrious intellectual group.
But nostalgia is not what it was. Passeig de Gràcia is a boulevard that has managed to reinvent itself over time, without the authorities having to intervene to recover it. The people of Barcelona have always known that it was a walk to show themselves to the world with their best side. It has been defined as a bourgeois boulevard due to its origins, but today it is more than ever a melting pot with a strong personality, where the groundbreaking interior design of its shop windows contrasts with the historic buildings that house them.
And where people of all kinds and conditions circulate, while you hear all the languages on the planet spoken. Paseo de Gràcia is one of these avenues, like the Champs Elysées in Paris or Paseo de la Castellana in Madrid, that define a great city. It is, without a doubt, the best business card in Barcelona. And even the best selfie.
