Barcelona - Montserrat

Montserrat – Nov. 25

I miss spending the pre-dawn hours on the roof deck of a riverboat. So much to see and hear and smell. The world going by – approaching, here, and gone, as the sun rises. Very nice.

This morning, the predawn hours were spent in the lobby of the hotel, in a comfortable chair, mostly reading. American pop music played very softly over by the registration desk, where a lone attendant read his phone.

Breakfast, downstairs, was a nice buffet, not as elaborate as the ones in France, but pretty good. All the selections were labeled, and all the labels were in English. They know their clientele.

I'm circling back from much later for a second here because it may be of interest to know that Barcelona is the capital of Catalonia, which, according to Wikipedia, “is an autonomous community of Spain, designated as a 'nationality' in its Statute of Autonomy.” I will learn, in time, what this actually means, but it at least means that Catalonia is different from most states and provinces in most countries, because it considers itself, to some degree, an autonomous country. Catalonia has a long – hundreds of years – history of conflict with Spain, and has been in revolt, to some degree, probably since the Arabs were finally pushed out of Iberia in 1492 (yes, that 1492)(The Jews were also expelled from Spain in 1492). As recently as 2017, this happened:

The 2017 Catalan independence referendum was held on October 1, 2017, by the Catalan government, though it was declared illegal by the Spanish government and the constitutional court. During the vote, Spanish police used force to try and prevent the referendum from taking place, resulting in injuries on both sides. Despite the Spanish government's efforts to disrupt it, Catalan authorities claimed that 90% of the 2.26 million voters who participated supported independence. The results, turnout, and legitimacy of the vote were heavily disputed, with Madrid asserting that no legal referendum took place. (Thanks, Google AI)

This kind of stuff has been going on for a long time. Catalonia has its own language, Catalan, which is older than Spanish (and is the only official language of Andorra, in the Pyrenees, which borders Catalonia and – like Costa Rica – has no standing army (stop Gary, stop! But it's interesting!)) Most Catalonians are bilingual. All the street names in Barcelona are in Catalan, as are many/most of the big menu boards in cafes and restaurants (and much of the labeling in the grocery store). And thus ends the gospel of Catalonia.

Today is Montserrat. I really didn't know what that was until last night, when I looked it up briefly. It has popped up in a number of books I've read over the years, but never so central to the story that it was described in any detail. I knew of it; it was a familiar name; I thought I almost knew about it, but I didn't.

We (or at least I) had seen Montserrat from the van from the airport the day we arrived. We could see well inland, and the view was random small forested mountains scattered around – and then this big, jagged, jumbled formation higher, and farther away, than the rest. It really stands out, both because of its craggy wildness and because there are few if any trees on its slopes – everything is just too vertical. Very interesting to look at, even from twenty miles away.

Meet at the lobby at 8:30; walk a little over half a mile to the bus (no buses allowed to stop and load in our section of the city), and off into morning traffic. We actually retraced the route from the airport, but about halfway there we turned north.

We were driving into those random mountains – not really mountains as we think of them – smaller and rugged but not so rugged that trees couldn't cover them. There were some rock faces, some steep parts, and roads and buildings generally kept to the valleys. Once we got out of the city, the magical architecture of the city morphed into twenty- and twenty-first century modern, and consisted of light (and the occasional heavy) industry and apartments. The traffic coming into the city was stopped dead. Our guide said that around Barcelona the suburbs were mostly apartment buildings, and you could see them, all over, in clusters between the mountains. They were plain and un-ornamented, but they came in a variety of muted but generally pretty colors, each one different. We saw the high-speed rail train go by, slowing to approach the city – 2 ¾ hours to travel the almost 400 miles from Barcelona to Madrid. Apparently, people live in one city and work in the other.

I was not prepared for what Montserrat turned out to be. We saw it long before we got there, and as we approached, the land got more mountainous and the road entered and followed a small canyon. Soon those forbidding cliffs were towering over us; the view from the bus windows was riveting. The canyon widened out a little and we came to the little medieval town of Cap de Bou, which seemed to lie directly under the mountain. It is here that we turned left, and started our climb.

Mostly, I'll let the pictures tell the story, and provide narration where necessary (online journal with all pics should be ready sometime after Christmas). But the part with no pictures was the drive up.

It was about five miles of mountain driving from Cap de Bou, exactly like the cartoon roads with the cliff on one side and nothing on the other. Plus endless sharp curves, limiting the visibility to almost nothing. It brought up two famous family stories:

The Road to Arosa: A terrifying mountain road in the Swiss Alps that Abbey and I took during our singing tour of Europe in 1980. Parts of the bus were hanging out over the void all the time.
“Tourbus!” The cry throughout the car as I tried to navigate the narrow lanes, between hedgerows, on the wrong side of the road in England and Ireland; the kids would yell “Tourbus!” each time they saw on coming the opposite way. We were on the other end of this equation today, and the lanes weren't any wider.

I felt my moderate fear of heights in the distance, and got a tiny taste of what carsickness must be like. The views, of course, were unbelievable.

We got there safely – we had come up to 2,100 feet above sea level (someone on the tour had an app for that), most of it on that narrow road balanced on the edge.

Up among those craggy peaks, it was breathtaking. “Montserrat” means “serrated mountains” - the lore is that angels came down with an actual (heavenly) buck saw and serrated them with it. The logo of Montserrat is a beautiful maroon calligraphy “M” with a silly-looking golden bucksaw on the upper left. However – Google AI says this about the name: “Known to the Romans as Mons Serratus (“Saw-Toothed Mountain”) and to the Catalans as Montsagrat (“Sacred Mountain”)...” so, take your pick.

Where we had parked – and where the road went to – was the Basilica of Montserrat, and its story is as follows: In the ninth century (or the 12th century), some shepherds climbing around these almost inaccessible peaks found a cave, and in the cave was the Black Madonna – an almost-life-sized statue of the Virgin Mary holding Jesus on her lap and reaching forward with her right hand, which contained a model of the world (or the universe). Black Madonnas are apparently a thing, and this is one of them. They are black either because of the color of the original wood used, or because of smoke, or because the varnish that was used turned black. Anyway, as you can imagine, the shepherds built a chapel, and everything grew from that. Today, there's a grand basilica, with a window well above the altar, in the back wall, where you can see the Black Madonna (or Our Lady of Montserrat, which is an interesting name, because it leaves Jesus right out). You can also walk around the side of the church, up

Shrine near the cave

a few sets of stairs, and see Our Lady (and Jesus) up close and personal. The statue is behind glass, except for her right hand, with the orb (Earth? Universe?) which is outside the glass. People can, and do, rub the orb. We passed on that. There's a lady with a stern face keeping watch right there across from the statue. If you face the chapel, and turn around, you'll see the whole basilica spread out before you, through the aforementioned window – which, it turns out, is not a window but is, in fact, nothing at all.

Much has grown up around that statue. There is a Benedictine monastery* (according to our guide, founded a thousand years ago by monks from Monte Cassino in Italy – if that sounds familiar, it's because it figures prominently in the Italian campaign in WWII. Or maybe it was founded by a monk from Ripoli, nearby. Lots of doubt around this sort of thing). And, of course, the basilica. There is a seven hundred year old choir of about fifty boys, age nine through whenever their voice changes – the Escolania Montserrat - who live and go to school there, whenever they're not giving concerts all around the world. There's a museum with a Picasso, a Miro, a Monet, a Carravagio, and so forth. There are shops (we tasted four liqueurs; the egg nog (Gran licor Aromes del Montserrat) was best)**, a bookstore (all books in Spanish – the nerve!) and a cafeteria. Plus an office building used by the monks and their employees to manage all this. And it's all built one on top of another – the basilica, the monastery and the school atop the shops which are atop the funicular and train terminals.

The large compound, mostly of modern (since 1900) construction and designed pretty well to handle a lot of tourists, clings to the side of the mountain and benefits from that, aesthetically. Its coloring blends in with the stone, and it's straight lines and right angles contrast with it. The Basilica is pretty grand, but since I'm really anticipating our visit to Sagrada Familia tomorrow, it certainly pales by comparison. I love those “Madonna found in a cave” stories, and what comes out of them – millions of pilgrims, and churches all over the world which venerate Our Lady (don't ask; I don't know how that works). Montserrat's story is almost identical to Rocamadour's and, probably, dozens more.

By the way, it was freezing. Here we are on the first day of our Mediterranean vacation, and we're shivering in the warmest clothes we brought. It was in the high 40s-low 50s, and very windy all the time. We survived.

Cold and sunny

Back to the bus, down the mountain by another road (there are two roads up this mountain?) to a restaurant in (can't remember the name of the town). It's apparently a resort in the summer, and has a killer view of Montserrat (top of page). We had an aperitif glass of vegetable soup to start, then pasta filled with a paste that looked like foie gras but wasn't, then a big hunk of cod with potatoes which was very tasty, to our surprise (cod is not known to be succulent). And a dessert that involved lemon in a number of different ways, and was really great. Wine with the meal, of course.

After getting 24 travelers of a certain age through a single unisex bathroom, we were on our way home. Another half mile walk from the bus, and Abbey and I put our feet up. No real dinner, since the lunch was ample and served late (“Spanish lunch time,” our guide said, but I think it's more like “European lunch time”). We went out to get Abbey a small sandwich and a pastry in a shop next door, and returned to have a chat with the concierge, who told us that the hotel was built sort of around an existing house – the first built in this area – that is still owned by the family and cannot be touched. I didn't understand it all – where the house and the hotel were in relation to each other, etc., but: another interesting story. We went up to the roof – 8th floor – and saw Barcelona at night, including a tall cigar-shaped building that was completely lit up in garish Christmas colors.

Back to the room; tried to take a shower but the controls defeated both of us. They sent someone up to show us – it turns out you have to tilt this handle just so and it works. Goodnight!

** - The monastery was destroyed by – who else? - Napoleon's troops in 1811, during the Peninsular Wars. Of course. The Basilica, on the other hand, has survived since it was built in the 16th century.

* - We tried to bring a bottle of Gran Licor Aromes del Montserratback for Randall - even contacted the distiller - but it cannot be shipped to the US. Anyone who might know of a way to procure a bottle?

Montserrat