Title: Barcelona the Great Enchantress
Author: Robert Hughes
Rating:
3.5 stars out of 5Publisher: National Geographic Directions
Copyright: 2004
Pages: 169
Keywords: history, autobiography
Reading period: 15–24 July, 2009
Robert Hughes has been in love with Barcelona and its people for four decades.
This book—part selective history, part memoir—is adapted from a much larger, earlier book about Barcelona.
Hughes is a partisan of Catalan culture and food.
He brings us from its Roman origins as Barcino,
Catalunya's founding as an independent nation a thousand years ago
by the Visigoth Wilfred the Hairy,
up through the Olympics in 1992.
This is no comprehensive survey:
he spends more time on submarine inventor Monturiol
than on the Spanish Civil War.
Well-written and opinionated, if overly selective.