Seasonal Lighting on El Corte Ingles

A new year has come, we ate, laughed and cried. It is time for other goals and also for the gym and an extreme diet. In coming days the Three Wise Men will return once again to bring toys for kids. El Corte Ingles is one of those traditional department stores with a seasonal lighting: this was the way it looked some days ago for Christmas and I suppose they will set a different decoration for Los Tres Reyes Magos celebrations if they haven't already. I seldom visit this shopping center but you have to admit that their lights are a sort of traditional symbol in Barcelona and celebrations wouldn't be the same without the famous chain store. They spend a fortune I suppose but the full moon is free of charge.

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Ramblas Cowboy Wishes You a Happy 2010!

On behalf of the Ramblas Cowboy, that famous human statue in the renown Barcelona street, we want to wish you all a Happy 2010. He is not my acquaintance, but I am sure he can back me up in this one cause judging by the warm smile he always wears he must be a great guy. I woke up today thinking on catching up his figure against Christmas lights. It came out different but in the end I am happy I walked down to Las Ramblas and enjoyed the good mood everyone was sharing by the end of 2009. All the best!

L'Auca del Senyor Esteve, Tile Work at Carrer Petritxol, Barcelona

This tile work depicts L'Auca del Senyor Esteve based upon a novel by Santiago Rusiñol i Prats (1861-1931) published in 1907 and set on stage in 1917.

27 drawings by Ramon Casas and 27 rodolins or verses by Gabriel Alomar illustrate the original story narrated by Rusiñol which is about a young heir called Ramonet, a modernist artist born in a traditional petite bourgeois family of La Ribera quarter in Barcelona.

The father, Mr. Esteve was the founder of a small shop called La Puntual in 1830 and his common sense, his pragmatism, his perseverance directly opposes the new ideas, the fresh artistic air of his son. A conflict between the artist that exists thanks to his father's money and strivings or in other words, the historic role of traditional Catalan bourgeoisie as the springboard for new artists of modernisme.

But what is an auca anyway? An auca is a story told by a set of images in one single sheet of paper in numbers evenly divided by 4, generally 24 or 48, and some short text under each illustration (xylography, lithography and later photoengraving techniques were used). It might recall comics in a way but much more rigid in structure. Images are conditioned by the metrics or the rhyme of the text always below and out of the illustration.

Auca is an old variant of oca, meaning goose, an animal quite frequent in this sort of artwork. Everything started with cards depicting animals and natural elements, like the Sun and the Moon that were used to play the game by the same name or for divination in many cases for money. Once this activity was forbidden the animation developed into art. The text also evolved into two-line rhymed rodolins in XIX.