20 August 26
Girona
After a one-night stop in Barcelona, we moved up toward the Pyrenees to spend three nights in Girona. This is a city on a hill first lived in by Iberians then, like so many settlements in Catalunya, by a succession of Romans, Visigoths, Moors, and finally Christians, the Reconquista of Spain starting in the northwest and spreading south over the course of decades until the capitulation of the Caliphate in Granada in 1492. Much of the successive buildings are intact, and walking up the hill to the cathedral we saw a lot of offices with stone walls in the background, several centuries old, selling insurance or real estate or fans. (Or football shirts.)
Our trip coincided with the weekly meeting of the Girona Urban Sketchers in the cathedral at the top of the hill. The cathedral’s construction was halted for some time by the arrival of the Black Death, with the result that it ended up being the second widest nave in the world by the time it was finished (after St. Peter’s in Rome). It also never received its second spire. We spent a lovely few hours sketching in and around the cathedral and cloisters.
Girona has the reputation of being very expensive. It is now a major cycling hub, since many professional cyclists on the grand tour circuit like to train in the mountains; many of the better paid cyclists can afford to live here. A constant refrain throughout our trip was the bemoaning of housing prices that have been driven up by foreigners, many from northern Europe, who earn more than the locals and are having a deleterious effect on prices (and, of course, dilution of the Catalan culture, about which Gironans are especially proud). The Catalan government is very eager to promote Catalan language learning. Another modern office set in a house that was centuries old was a language school, with a request for volunteers to help teach their language.
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