Barcelona

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Beginning in September 1991 journalist Schweid ( Catfish and the Delta ) spent a year in Barcelona, and his reporter's notebook provides a consistently interesting mosaic of the city. As the title suggests, one theme is Spain's historically tortured relationship with Jews, culminating in their expulsion in 1492; he explores their present-day isolation in such a Christian country and probes tensions between the Moroccan and Argentine factions of the community. Another theme is sex: Schweid tracks the demimonde of transvestites and transsexuals in a country where sex was for a long time strictly regulated, and explains how Franco-era tourism opened the gates to more permissive mores. Schweid devotes relatively little attention to the Olympic preparations, but his sketches of Barcelona's many facets and characters provide a fuller portrait of the city: the struggles of immigrant workers, the absurdities of rent control, the shifting policies toward drug use during the AIDS epidemic, the intricate etiquette of food shopping. The book's only disappointment is that he provides too little information about himself and his role in the tableau. (Jan.)

Mary Ellen Sullivan

What's life like in post-Franco Barcelona? Schweid spent a year--fall 1991 to fall 1992--absorbing the city, the culture, and the people as well as digging into the rich Barcelonan past. He interweaves his impressions and his research to paint a multitextured picture of quite a quirky place: liberal in a conservative country, sophisticated yet still indulging in four-hour midday siestas, serene in spite of its tumultuous past. Packed with information that meanders through Schweid's vignettes probably much as he wandered the city, the book brings Barcelona to life and spotlights its complex but still too little known history. Compared with all that goes before, the Olympics, which were held in Barcelona in 1992, are just a footnote. Schweid misses the boat in terms of capitalizing on Olympic fever, but the book's proper audience of travelers and history buffs may not feel cheated.