Picasso and Davy Crockett

Yesterday afternoon we made our way to the El Born sector of the city and wandered around prior to our appointment for entry into the Picasso Museum. The neighborhood was amazing, filled with confusing, twisted streets where the ancient buildings are so close together that we felt we could almost put our our arms and touch both walls from the middle of the thoroughfare. There were hundreds of tapas bars, shops, and strange little galleries, and even though I might have had the "sensation of being lost" don't tell Captain Doane) it didn't really matter because we had lots of time and were having a great time. We stumbled on a large pavilion that covered an excavation of ruins that predated the 1714 siege of the city and learned a little about the Catalan national story. But more on that later.

The Picasso museum is in a eighteenth century palace and is a beautiful place. The work on display shows his progress from his teenage years to almost the end of his life, although a lot of his most famous stuff is owned by other museums around the world. It became apparent to me that this remarkable artist had plenty of talent from the get go, and he could paint realistic portraits and people with the best of them. I guess after a while he felt he had nothing more to prove and started experimenting, which led to some pretty interesting work we are all familiar with. They say when he was a child he painted like an adult, and in his adult years he painted like a child.

Leaving the museum we had lunch in a tapas bar and walked to a nearby cathedral, but the empty lot adjacent to it was the most interesting. September 11 means alot to the Catalan people, but not because of our twin towers. It was on that day in 1714 that the

combined forces of the Spanish king and the French finally stormed the city. The badly outnumbered Catalan army almost fought to the last man, and the survivors were slaughtered. A copy of this painting is on the side of a building overlooking the empty lot, and below it a simple pointed arch dedicated to the heroes of this Catalan "Alamo."