From the Olympic Torch to the Universal Forum of Cultures
From the Olympic Torch to the Universal Forum of Cultures
The After-Image of Barcelona's Modernity
Between the beginning of the twentieth century and the Civil War, Barcelona was still a Catalan city bound to its hinterland by familial ties and by the steady flow of people, foodstuffs, and manufactured goods that sustained its growth through a porous relation with the territory. Today, Barcelona is no longer connected to Catalonia through the motorway and the weekend residence, rather than kinship, history, or language. Rituals of self-display are held occasionally as a way of expediting urban renewal, such as the Universal Expositions of 1888 and 1929, the Olympic games of 1936 and 1992, a Catholic “Eucharistic” Congress in 1952, and the Universal Forum of Cultures in 2004. All of these events had a long-term impact on the city's physical configuration and public image. Catalanism, a broad, transversal movement, grew in importance throughout the first half of the twentieth century. In the 1980s, modernity became the ideology of a providentialist state in which spectacle took over politics.
Keywords: Barcelona, public image, rituals, Catalonia, Olympic games, Catalanism, modernity, spectacle, politics, urban renewal
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