Barcelona City

The main part of a union of adjacent cities and municipalities named Área Metropolitana de Barcelona (AMB) with a population of 3,186,461 in area of 636 km² (density 5.010 hab/km²). It is located on the Mediterranean coast between the mouths of the rivers Llobregat and Besòs and is bounded to the west by the Serra de Collserola ridge (512 m/1,680 ft). Barcelona is recognised as a global city because of its importance in finance, commerce, media, entertainment, arts and international trade. Barcelona is a major economic centre with one of Europe's principal Mediterranean ports, and Barcelona International Airport is the second largest in Spain after the Madrid-Barajas Airport (handles about 30 million passengers per year).

Founded as a Roman city, Barcelona became the capital of the Counts of Barcelona. After merging with the Kingdom of Aragon, it became one of the most important cities of the Crown of Aragon. Besieged several times during its history, Barcelona is today an important cultural centre and a major tourist destination and has a rich cultural heritage. Particularly renowned are architectural works of Antoni Gaudí and Lluís Domènech i Montaner that have been designated UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The city is well known in recent times for the 1992 Summer Olympics. The headquarters of the Union for the Mediterranean are located in Barcelona. As the capital of Catalonia, Barcelona houses the seat of the Catalan government, known as the Generalitat de Catalunya; of particular note are the executive branch, the parliament, and the Supreme Court of Catalonia. The city is also the capital of the Barcelonès comarca (shire).

Contents


1. Names
2. Geography
3. History
4. Origins
5. Roman Barcino
6. Franquism
7. Modern Barcelona
8. Cityscape
9. Economy
10. Demographics
11. Goverment and administrative divisions
12. Districts
13. Culture
14. Transportation and Infrastructure
15. Source

Namesback

The name Barcelona comes from the ancient Iberian Phoenician Barkeno, attested in an ancient coin inscription in Iberian and in Latin as Barcino, Barcelo and Barceno.

During the Middle Ages, the city was variously known as Barchinona, Barçalona, Barchelona, and Barchenona.

Geographyback

Barcelona is located on the northeast coast of the Iberian Peninsula, facing the Mediterranean Sea, on a plateau approximately 5 km (3 mi) wide limited by the mountain range of Collserola, the Llobregat river to the south-west and the Besòs river to the north. This plateau has 170 km2 (66 sq mi), of which 101 km² (38.9 sq mi) are occupied by the city itself. It is 160 km (100 mi) south of the Pyrenees and the Catalonian border with France.

Collserola, part of the coastal mountain range, shelters the city to the north-west. Its highest point, the peak of Tibidabo, 512 m (1,680 ft) high, offers striking views over the city and is topped by the 288.4 m (946.2 ft) Torre de Collserola, a telecommunications tower that is visible from most of the city. Barcelona is peppered with small hills, most of them urbanized and that gave their name to the neighbourhoods built upon them, such as Carmel (267 m), Putxet (181 m) and Rovira (261 m).

The escarpment of Montjuïc (173 m), situated to the southeast, overlooks the harbour and is topped by Montjuïc castle, a fortress built in the 17–18th centuries to control the city as a replacement for the Ciutadella. Today, the fortress is a museum and Montjuïc is home to several sporting and cultural venues, as well as Barcelona's biggest park and gardens.

The city borders are the municipalities of Santa Coloma de Gramenet and Sant Adrià de Besòs to the north; L'Hospitalet de Llobregat and Esplugues de Llobregat to the south; the Mediterranean Sea to the east; and Montcada i Reixac and Sant Cugat del Vallès to the west.

Historyback

The history of Barcelona stretches back well over 2000 years to its origins as an Iberian village, named Barkeno. Its easily defensible location on the coastal plain between the Collserola ridge (512 m) and the Mediterranean sea, on the coastal route between central Europe and the rest of the Iberian peninsula, has ensured its continued importance, if not always preeminence, throughout the ages.

Barcelona is currently a city of 1,673,075 inhabitants (2006), the second largest in Spain, and the capital of the autonomous community of Catalonia. Its wider urban region is home to three-quarters of the population of Catalonia and one-eighth of that of Spain. 

Originsback

The origins of the city of Barcelona are unclear. The coastal plain near Barcelona conserves remains from the late Neolithic and early Chalcolithic periods. Later, in the third and second centuries BC, the area was settled by the Laietani, an Iberian people, at Barkeno on the Táber hill (in the present-day Ciutat Vella, or "Old City") and at Laie (or Laiesken), believed to have been located on Montjuïc.
Both settlements struck coinage which survives to this day. At around the same period, a small Greek colony, Kallipolis, was founded in the region, though its exact location is unclear.

The area was occupied in 218 BC, at the start of the Second Punic War, by Carthaginian troops under the leadership of Hamilcar Barca. Up until this point, the northern limit of the Punic territories had been the Ebro river, located over 150 km to the south. This military occupation is often cited as the foundation of the modern city of Barcelona.

Roman Barcinoback

Information about the period from 218 BC until the first century BC is scarce. The Roman Republic contested the Carthaginean control of the area, and eventually set out to conquer the whole of the Iberian peninsula in the Cantabrian Wars, a conquest which was declared complete by Caesar Augustus in 19 BC. The north-east of the peninsula was the first region to fall under Roman control, and served as a base for further conquests. While Barcelona was settled by the Romans during this period under the name of Barcino (see below), it was considerably less important than the major centres of Tarraco and Caesaraugusta, known today as Zaragoza. 

The name Barcino was formalised around the end of the reign of Caesar Augustus (AD 14. It was a shortened version of the name which had been official up until then, Colonia Faventia Julia Augusta Pia Barcino (also Colonia Julia Augusta Faventia Paterna Barcino and Colonia Faventia.

As a colonia, it was established to distribute land among retired soldiers. The Roman geographer Pomponius Mela refers to Barcino as one of a number of small settlements under the control of Tarraco. However its strategic position on a branch of the Via Augusta allowed its commercial and economic development, and it enjoyed immunity from imperial taxation.
At the time of Caesar Augustus, Barcino had the form of a castrum, with the usual perpedicular main streets of the Cardus Maximus and the Decumanus Maximus and a central forum located on the Táber hill (25 m), site of the iberic Barkeno. The perimeter walls were 1.5 km long, enclosing an area of 12 ha.

The first raids by the Germanic tribes started around 250, and the fortifications of the city were substantially improved in the later years of the third century under Claudius II. The new double wall was at least two meters high, up to eight meters in some parts, and was punctuated by seventy-eight towers measuring up to eighteen meters high. The new fortifications were the strongest in the Roman province of the Tarraconensis, and would increase the importance of Barcino compared to Tarraco.

Franquismback

The resistance of Barcelona to Franco's coup d'état was to have lasting effects after the defeat of the Republican government. The autonomous institutions of Catalonia were abolished and the use of the Catalan language in public life was suppressed and forbidden, although its use was not formally illegalised as often claimed. Barcelona remained the second largest city in Spain, at the heart of a region which was relatively industrialised and prosperous, despite the devastation of the civil war.

The result was a large-scale immigration from poorer regions of Spain (particularly Andalucia, Murcia and Galicia), which in turn led to rapid urbanisation. The district of Congrés was developed for the International Eucharistic Congress in 1952, while the districts of El Carmel, Nou Barris, El Verdum and Guinardó were developed later in the same decade. Barcelona's suburbs, such as L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Bellvitge, Santa Coloma de Gramenet, Sant Adrià de Besòs, and Badalona, also saw a dramatic population increase, often tenfold over a single decade.

The increase in the population led to the development of the metro network, the tarmacking of the city streets, the installation of traffic lights and the construction of the first rondas or ringroads. The provision of running water, electricity and street lighting also had to be vastly improved, if not always fast enough to keep pace with the rising population.

The massive immigration not only left a city which was extremely densely populated (1,557,863 inhabitants, 15,517 per km², in 1970), often housed in very poor quality accommodation, but also contributed to the decline in the specifically Catalan culture of Barcelona. While the use of Catalan in private was tolerated in the later years of the dictatorship, the immigrants to Barcelona spoke only Spanish. Catalan-language education was unavailable, even if there had been any social pressure to learn the local language (which was far from the case in urban areas).

Modern Barcelonaback

The death of Franco in 1975 brought on a period of democratisation throughout Spain. Pressure for change was particularly strong in Barcelona, which considered (with some justification) that it had been punished during nearly forty years of Franquism for its support of the Republican government. Massive, but peaceful, demonstrations on 1977-09-11 assembled over a million people in the streets of Barcelona to call for the restoration of Catalan autonomy. It was granted less than a month later. 
The development of Barcelona was promoted by two events in 1986: Spanish accession to the European Community, and particularly Barcelona's designation as host city of the 1992 Summer Olympics. The process of urban regeneration has been rapid, and accompanied by a greatly increased international reputation of the city as a tourist destination. The increased cost of housing has led to a slight decline (-16.6%) in the population over the last two decades of the twentieth century as many families move out into the suburbs. This decline has been reversed since 2001, as a new wave of immigration (particularly from Latin America and from Morocco) has gathered pace.

Cityscapeback

Parks

Barcelona contains 68 municipal parks, divided into 12 historic parks, 5 thematic (botanical) parks, 45 urban parks and 6 forest parks. They range from vest-pocket parks to large recreation areas. The urban parks alone cover 10% of the city (549.7 ha/1,358.3 acres). The total park surface grows about 10 ha (25 acres) per year, with a proportion of 18.1 square metres (195 sq ft) of park area per inhabitant.

Of Barcelona's parks, Montjuïc is the largest, with 203 ha located on the mountain of the same name. It is followed by Ciutadella Park (situated in the place of the old military citadel and which houses the Parliament building, the zoo and several museums; 31 ha/76.6 acres including the zoo), the Guinardó Park (19 ha/47.0 acres), Park Güell (designed by Antoni Gaudí; 17.2 ha/42.5 acres), Oreneta Castle Park (also 17.2 ha/42.5 acres), Diagonal Mar Park (13.3 ha/32.9 acres, inaugurated in 2002), Nou Barris Central Park (13.2 ha/32.6 acres), Can Dragó Sports Park and Poblenou Park (both 11.9 ha/29.4 acres) and the Labyrinth Park (9.10 ha/22.5 acres), named after the garden maze it contains. A part of the Collserolla Park is also within the city limits.

Beaches

Barcelona has seven beaches, totalling 4.5 km (2.8 mi) of coastline. Sant Sebastià and Barceloneta beaches, both 1,100 m (3,610 ft) in length, are the largest, oldest and the most frequented beaches in Barcelona. The Olympic port separates them from the other city beaches: Nova Icària, Bogatell, Mar Bella, Nova Mar Bella and Llevant. These beaches (ranging from 400 to 640 m/1,300 to 2,100 ft) were opened as a result of the city restructuring to host the 1992 Summer Olympics, when a great number of industrial buildings were demolished. At present, the beach sand is replenished from quarries given that storms regularly remove large quantities of material. The 2004 Universal Forum of Cultures left the city a large concrete bathing zone on the eastmost part of the city's coastline. 

Other

The area around the Plaça Catalunya makes up the city's historical centre and, alongside the upper half of Avinguda Diagonal, is the main commercial area of the city. Barcelona has several commercial complexes, like L'Illa in the higher part of the Diagonal avenue and Diagonal Mar in the lowest, La Maquinista, Glòries in the place of the same name and the Maremagnum by the port.
Barcelona has several skyscrapers, the tallest being the Hotel Arts and its twin the Torre Mapfre, both 154 m (505 ft) high, followed by the newest, Torre Agbar 144 m (472 ft). Barcelona is really well situated for the ski resorts of the Pyrenées, just 125 km. from the city. Anyway the skyline of the city is decorated in winter by the summit (1712 m. high) of the Montseny mountain, normally covered by snow.

Economyback

Barcelona has a long-standing mercantile tradition. Less well known is that the region was one of the earliest to begin industrialization in continental Europe, beginning with textile related works from the mid 1780s but really gathering momentum in the mid nineteenth century, when it became a major centre for the production of textiles and machinery. Since then, manufacturing has played a large role in its history. The traditional importance in textiles is reflected in Barcelona's repeated attempts to become a major fashion centre. In summer 2000, the city became a host for the prestigious Bread & Butter urban fashion fair until 2009 when it was announced that it would be celebrated again on Berlin. This was a hard blow for the city as the fair brought €100 m to the city in just three days. There have been many attempts to launch Barcelona as a fashion capital, notably Gaudi Home.

As in other modern cities, the manufacturing sector has long since been overtaken by the services sector, though it remains very important. The region's leading industries today are textiles, chemical, pharmaceutical, motor, electronic, printing, logistics, publishing, telecommunications and information technology services.

Barcelona has one of the highest costs of living in Spain, and occupying the 31st position in the world rank according to a report by Mercer Human Resource.

Demographicsback

According to Barcelona's City Council, Barcelona's population as of 1 June 2006 was 1,673,075 people, while the population of the urban area was 4,185,000. It is the central nucleus of the Barcelona metropolitan area, which relies on a population of 4,928,852.

The population density of Barcelona was 15,779 inhabitants per square kilometer (40,867/sq mi), with Eixample being the most populated district. 62% of the inhabitants were born in Catalonia, with a 23.5% coming from the rest of Spain. Of the 13.9% from other countries, a proportion which has more than tripled since 2001 when it was 3.9%, the majority come from (in order) Ecuador, Peru, Morocco, Colombia, Argentina, Pakistan and China. 

As the national language, Spanish is understood almost universally in Barcelona. 95% of the population understand Catalonia's native Catalan language, while 74.6% can speak it, 75% can read it, and 47.1% can write it, thanks to the linguistic immersion educational system. While most of the population state they are Roman Catholic (208 churches), there are also a number of other groups, including Evangelical (71 locations, mostly professed by Roma), Jehovah's Witnesses (21 Kingdom Halls) and Buddhists (13 locations), and a number of Muslims due to immigration.
In 1900, Barcelona had a population of 533,000 people, which grew steadily but slowly until 1950, when it started absorbing a high number of people from other less-industrialized parts of Spain. Barcelona's population peaked in 1979 with 1,906,998 people, and fell throughout the 1980s and 1990s as more people sought a higher quality of life in outlying cities in the Barcelona Metropolitan Area. After bottoming out in 2000 with 1,496,266 people, the city's population began to rise again as younger people started to return, causing a great increase in housing prices.

Goverment and administrative Divisionsback

Barcelona is governed by a city council formed by 41 city councilors, elected for a four-year term by universal suffrage. As one of the two biggest cities in Spain, Barcelona is subject to a special law articulated through the Carta Municipal (Municipal Law). A first version of this law was passed in 1960 and amended later, but the current version was approved in March 2006. According to this law, Barcelona's city council is organized in two levels: a political one, with elected city councilors, and one executive, which administrates the programs and executes the decisions taken on the political level. This law also gives the local government a special relationship with the central government and it also gives the mayor wider prerogatives by the means of municipal executive commissions. It expands the powers of the city council in areas like telecommunications, city traffic, road safety and public safety. It also gives a special economic regime to the city's treasury and it gives the council a veto in matters that will be decided by the central government, but that will need a favourable report from the council.

The seat of the city council is on the Plaça Sant Jaume, opposite the seat of Generalitat de Catalunya. Since the coming of the Spanish democracy, Barcelona has been governed by the PSC, first with an absolute majority and later in coalition with ERC and ICV. Since the May 2007 elections, PSC is governing in minority only with IC, since ERC decided against a renewal of the previous coalition. The second most voted party in Barcelona is CiU, followed by PP, both currently in the opposition. 

Districtsback

Since 1987, the city has been divided into 10 administrative districts (districtes in Catalan, distritos in Spanish), each one with its own council led by a city councillor. The composition of each district council depends on the number of votes each political party had in that district, so a district can be led by a councillor from a different party than the executive council.

The districts are based mostly on historical divisions. Several of the city's districts are former towns annexed by the city of Barcelona in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that still maintain their own distinct character. The official names of these districts are in the Catalan language.

Cultureback

Barcelona's cultural roots go back 2000 years. To a greater extent than the rest of Catalonia, where Catalonia's native Catalan is more dominant, Barcelona is a bilingual city: Catalan and Spanish are both official languages and widely spoken. The Catalan spoken in Barcelona, Central Catalan, is the one closest to standard Catalan. Since the arrival of democracy, the Catalan culture (very much repressed during the dictatorship of Franco) has been promoted, both by recovering works from the past and by stimulating the creation of new works. Barcelona is designated as a world-class city by the Globalization and World Cities Study Group and Network.

Entertaiment and perfomring arts

Barcelona has many venues for live music and theatre, including the world-renowned Gran Teatre del Liceu opera theatre, the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, the Teatre Lliure and the Palau de la Música Catalana concert hall. Barcelona also is home to the Barcelona and Catalonia National Symphonic Orchestra (Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya, usually known as OBC), the largest symphonic orchestra in Catalonia. In 1999, the OBC inaugurated its new venue in the brand-new Auditorium (l'Auditori). It performs around 75 concerts per season and its current director is Eiji Oue.

Yearly two major pop music festivals take place in the city, the Sónar Festival and the Primavera Sound Festival. The city also has a thriving alternative music scene, with groups such as The Pinker Tones receiving international attention.

Museums

Barcelona has a great number of museums, which cover different areas and eras. The National Museum of Art of Catalonia possesses a well-known collection of Romanesque art while the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art focuses on post-1945 Catalan and Spanish art. The Fundació Joan Miró, Picasso Museum and Fundació Antoni Tàpies hold important collections of these world-renowned artists.

Several museums cover the fields of history and archeology, like the City History Museum, the Museum of the History of Catalonia, the Archeology Museum of Catalonia, the Barcelona Maritime Museum and the private-owned Egyptian Museum. The Erotic museum of Barcelona is among the most peculiar ones, while Cosmocaixa is a science museum that received the European Museum of the Year Award in 2006.

Several museums are offer free entry on the first Saturday or first Sunday of each month.

Architecture

The Barri Gòtic ("Gothic Quarter" in Catalan) is the centre of the old city of Barcelona. Many of the buildings date from medieval times, some from as far back as the Roman settlement of Barcelona. Catalan modernisme architecture (often known as Art Nouveau in the rest of Europe), developed between 1885 and 1950 and left an important legacy in Barcelona. A great number of these buildings are World Heritage Sites. Especially remarkable is the work of architect Antoni Gaudí, which can be seen throughout the city. His best known work is the immense but still unfinished church of the Sagrada Família, which has been under construction since 1882, and is still financed by private donations. As of 2007, completion is planned for 2026.

Barcelona is also home to Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona Pavilion. Designed in 1929 for the Internation Exposition for Germany. It is an iconic building designed by one of the most influential architects of the 20th century.

Barcelona won the 1999 RIBA Royal Gold Medal for its architecture, the first (and as of 2009, only) time that the winner has been a city, and not an individual architect. 

Transportation and Infrastructureback

 Airport

Barcelona is served by Barcelona Airport in the town of El Prat de Llobregat, about 17 km (11 mi) from the centre of Barcelona. It is the second-largest airport in Spain, and the largest on the Mediterranean coast. It is a main hub for Vueling Airlines, and also a focus for Spanair, Air Europa and Iberia. The airport mainly serves domestic and European destinations, but some airlines offer destinations in Asia and the United States. The airport is connected to the city by highway, commuter train and scheduled bus service. The airport handled 32,800,570 passengers in 2007. A new terminal (T1) has been built, and entered service on 17 June 2009.

Seaport

The Port of Barcelona has a 2000-year history and a great contemporary commercial importance. It is Europe's ninth largest container port, with a trade volume of 2.3 million TEU's in 2006. The port is managed by the Port Authority of Barcelona. Its 7.86 km2 (3 sq mi) are divided into three zones: Port Vell (the Old Port), the commercial port and the logistics port (Barcelona Free Port). The port is undergoing an enlargement that will double its size thanks to diverting the mouth of the Llobregat river 2 km (1¼ mi) to the south.
The Port Vell area also houses the Maremagnum (a commercial mall), a multiplex cinema, the IMAX Port Vell and Europe's largest aquarium, containing 8,000 fish and 11 sharks contained in 22 basins filled with 6 million litres of sea water. The Maremagnum, due to being situated a designated tourist zone, is the only commercial mall in the city that can open on Sundays and public holidays.

Public transports

Barcelona is served by a comprehensive local public transport network that includes a metro, a bus network, two separate modern tram networks, a separate historic tram line, and several funiculars and aerial cable cars. The Barcelona Metro network comprises nine lines, identified by an "L" followed by the line number as well as by individual colours. Most of the network is operated by the Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona (TMB), but three lines are FGC commuter lines that run through the city. When finished, the L9 will be the second longest underground metro line in Europe with 42.6 km; only shorter than London's 76 km Central Line.

TMB also provides most of the services of the city's daytime bus network, as well as a tourist bus service. The tourist bus service gives the opportunity to visit the city on open-topped double-decker buses. The Barcelona Bus Turistic runs along three sightseeing routes, and passengers can get on and off as many times as they like. The night bus network, known as Nitbus, is operated by Tusgsal and Mohn. Transports Ciutat Comtal operates the Aerobus (to the airport) and the Tibibus (bus from Plaça Catalunya to Tibidabo amusement park) services. Other companies operate services that connect the city with towns in the metropolitan area.

Another company, TRAMMET, operates the city's two modern tram networks, known as Trambaix and Trambesòs. The historic tram line, the Tramvia Blau, connects the metro to the Funicular del Tibidabo. The Funicular de Tibidabo climbs the Tibidabo hill, as does the Funicular de Vallvidrera. The Funicular de Montjuïc climbs the Montjuïc hill. The city has two aerial cable cars: one to the Montjuïc castle and another that runs via Torre Jaume I and Torre Sant Sebastià over the port.
On 22 March 2007, Barcelona's City Council started the Bicing service, a bicycle service understood as a public transport. Once the user has their user card, they can take a bicycle from any of the 100 stations spread around the city and use it anywhere the urban area of the city, and then leave it at another station. The service has been a success, with 50,000 subscribed users in three months.

Roads and Highways

Barcelona is circled by three ring roads or bypasses, Ronda de Dalt (on the mountain side), Ronda del Litoral (along the coast) and Ronda del Mig (separated into two parts: Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes in the north and the Gran via Carles III), two partially covered fast highways with several exits that bypass the city.

The city's main arteries include Diagonal Avenue, which crosses the city diagonally, Meridiana Avenue which leads to Glòries and connects with Diagonal Avenue and Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes, which crosses the city from east to west, passing through the centre of the city.

Sourceback

Wikipedia Articel about Barcelona