Catalan Review

Abstract

This essay attempts to demonstrate the diversity of literary images that the city of Barcelona generates since the advent of modernity. The images are contradictory because, on the one hand, they showcase the well-ordered bourgeois city that attempts to dignify the old neighborhoods by turning them into museums (the “barri gòtic”), and, on the other hand, they uncover poverty, prostitution, and anarchist rebellion (the “barri xino”).