Cheap Barcelona (Book) (ROBERT HUGHES) Price

Related Products

Customer Reviews of Barcelona

An important historical perspective
I read Hughes' Barcelona before I went to Barcelona for the first time, and it made all the difference in the world. I arrived not as a stranger, but as a student of Catalan culture and history. The book gave me the background to have an informed perspective on what I was seeing. It may be long, but it has tons of information. My only complaint is that Hughes assumes the reader has a knowledge of history that I, for one, don't have. So there were things I didn't understand.

I liked that Hughes sometimes talked about the big things -- big events, important people, and he sometimes talked about the little things that make a place distinctive. His love of the place came through to me, and I fell in love with it too.

---

A slightly inflated history of Barcelona
First, let me say I thoroughly enjoyed Hughes' "The Fatal Shore" and the now classic "Shock of the New" and it was because of his track record for both regional and art history that I opened "Barcelona" with anticipation. I should have stopped at the introduction, wherein Hughes explains that he'd originally intended to write a much smaller work focusing on Barcelona's modernistas at the turn-of-the-century. Instead, at his publisher's urging (undoubtedly timed to capitalize on the 1992 Olympics) he broadened the scope to include Barcelona's story from prehistory to about 1925. The result is a wordy book which reminds me of the times I had to puff up a term paper with accurate, but nonessential facts in order to get to the required twenty pages. I would agree with another reviewer that this work is missing Hughes' usual spark and I can't help but think his heart wasn't in this one. Hughes states early on his love for Barcelona but unfortunately this compassion doesn't come across in the book. I would have been much happier if he would have extended Barcelona's history in the other direction. That is, beginning with the modernistas and proceeding to the Surrealists, the Civil War and through to Barcelona's post-Franco revival as a cultural center of Europe.

---

Brilliant or boring
When on his game Hughes' writing is insightful, witty, observant, educational. Here that would be the first 100 pages and the last 120, of the 574 pages which reveal that the Catlans are not Spanish, but Catalan; their art, architecture and politics come from their history of being with or against the rest of Spain, having their own language and culture, with economic/political battles against Madrid from early Roman history to today (Beckham was going to Barcelona F.C. before Real Madrid stole him away at the last second). I imagine he started with the idea of writing a book about the fantastic Art Nouveau architecture in one of the most architecturally interesting cities in the world, to discover that the Catalan spirit was such a force in shaping the uniqueness of the style that more needed to understood about who these people with their own language and culture that is sometimes banned by the national government. Unfortunately the author goes too deep in cataloging the complexities of the history of Barcelona, some of which is just not that interesting, the large middle of the book saps the reader's strength. The text comes alive again for the ending sections on the late 1800s when Barcelona was the bomb throwing anarchy capital of the world leading into the development of the Art Nouveau/Modernista movement, although slowing a bit before finishing with a really excellent examination and comment of Gaudi, the person and his work.
Mr Hughes needed a stronger editor for this book, it would be a brilliant 250 page book. Some severe editing to take out the boring but academic sections was really needed.
That said, it is worth reading. Scim the middle sections. When Hughes is on his game it is good reading