Over the centuries, the city has seen plagues, riots, famines, bombardments and gun battles on Las Ramblas—not to mention the everyday tragedy of less violent deaths. Monuments throughout the city tell some of the story, like the flame that burns beside Santa Maria del Mar to commemorate the collapse of the city’s year-long siege in 1714, which ended Catalan independence. Elsewhere, the clue is in the name: the street Baixada de Santa Eulàlia marks the place where, it is said, the young martyr Santa Eulàlia was rolled down a slope in a barrel filled with nails and broken glass as part of her punishment for enraging Emperor Diocletian in 303CE.
If you look in the right places, there are many corners of the city with a decidedly morbid glint to them. When better than Halloween to give the sparkly city-of-the-future a break and head into the gloom?
Cementiri del Sud-Oest
Since 1883, Barcelona residents have been interred on a quiet flank of Montjuïc, away from the day-trippers, museums and magic fountains. Some suggest that the mountain, itself, takes its name from an earlier Jewish cemetery on the hill. The modern cemetery is a huge site, with a density that more or less matches that of the city itself. It even has its own bus service, winding its way up the steep seaward side of the hill through the calm, sun-bleached avenues flanked with cypress trees. There are avenues of opulent, ornate crypts built for rich families, and walls and walls of simpler urn compartments bearing a clear and unsettling resemblance to the L’Hospitalet apartment blocks that can be seen from the hilltop.
Among the tens of thousands of people who found their final resting place here are the artist Joan Miró, and Generalitat presidents Lluis Companys and Francesc Macià.
The spectre of the Civil War looms over the cemetery—both physically (it’s located just beneath the Castell, where thousands of Catalans were executed) and otherwise. Many of the victims of Franco’s firing squads, including Lluis Companys, are buried here, some in unmarked graves. There is a memorial park, the Fossar de la Pedrera, commemorating the Catalan victims of the Civil War and members of the International Brigades who lost their lives.
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