European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - November 7, 1991, Darmstadt, Hesse                                A amps Peter Jaeger go.  Plaza real a Square just off the Busy Ramblas is a popular place to break during the daily promenade. Antoni Gaudi s Church of the la Sagrada Familia. Youngsters Romp through the City s Guell Park. A amps go Schuetze chasing the Gol Barcelona Hopes olympics will return it to Toby Stanley Meisler los Angeles times teen age vandals sometimes roam the suburbs of Barcelona Spain in the pre Dawn dark and quiet Hunting Down cars with Madrid License plates and then breaking their Side View mirrors. Most people of Barcelona Don t condone such antics. But in truth they Aren t opposed to the sentiments that the actions represent. Madrid was once dismissed by Barcelona As a dour cold and colourless place of bureaucrats and soldiers. Barc Elona s present population of 1.7 million is just about half of Madrid a but earlier in this Century Barcelona was larger and the world looked on it As the cultural and political capital of Spain. In recent years Barcelona has watched Madrid pass it by and the Barcelone ses Are not pleased about it. Nowadays however a Happy thought often shakes Barcelona out of this dejection the i 992 summer olympic s Are Rushing near. For Barcelona the olympics represent a special moment a Golden Chance to upstage the upstart. Most Barcelone ses believe that their wondrous Mediterranean port of sophisticated style and Beauty will soon assert itself again As a grand City of Europe and push the thriving Spanish capital of Madrid Back into the shadows where it belongs a at least for a summer. The Spanish novelist Eduardo Mendoza wrote a bestselling novel about Barcelona five years ago and titled it City of marvels. Hordes of visitors will have their Chance to find out what he meant when they show up in 1992. Like All truly great cities Barcelona is a Paradise for walkers a City of secret smiles and surprises. Many tourists who come to Barcelona know All about Antoni Gaudi the world acclaimed catalan architect and eagerly sign up for buses that take them to the still unfinished Church of la Sagrada Familia and the Guell Park and la Pedrera to gawk and gasp in wonder at the wild and colourful manifestations of an intense imagination. For most of the world Gaudi has always seemed a strange and isolated Genius who sprouted out of nowhere and created an architectural world of his own. But this notion misses the spirit of Barcelona. Gaudi was really one of a Bunch at the turn of the Century a Light of modernism a the Barcelona strand of the Art Nouveau movement that excited the cultural centers of Europe from the 1890s until world War i. Modernism does not exist in Madrid. The cultural currents of London Paris and Vienna reached the heart of Barcelona in those Days but left Madrid alone. Few cities anywhere have a pedestrian Walkway to compare with the Ramblas a 400-year-old Street built on the dry bed of an ancient River. Crowds Amble along the 10-Block Ramblas from the Plaza de Cataluna in the Center of the City to the Columbus Monument near the seafront All Day Long a but it is especially crowded during the evening. A walk is a continual adventure that gets at the City s heart. Vendors Hawk Flowers Birds rabbits and a myriad handicrafts. Con men try to entice you into Shell games. Clowns and mimes and flamenco dancers perform and pass the hat. Photographers with old fashioned Box cameras snap your portrait for a few Hundred pesetas. Great Gaudy Newsstands sell books magazines soccer posters postcards maps calendars shirts and key rings. In the dying Days of the Francisco Franco dictatorship these news vendors thumbing their noses at the establishment used to sell anarchist tracts As Well. Now they sell pornography instead. The twists and turns of the nearby gothic Quarter the oldest neighbourhood of Barcelona Are so narrow that a Walker finds flocks of laundry flapping overhead on rope mat hangs from one building across the Street to another. Some aging buildings on either Side of a Street lean on Iron bars spanning the Street Tor support. Old men gather on Friday nights in restaurants to talk of literature and politics As they have Tor centuries. Admirers of Pablo Picasso can still Dine at his old hangout Els quatre gats and stroll on seedy Avignon Street