Barcelona City Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Barcelona City. Here they are! All 38 of them:

Lisbon, to me, is the Lisbon of Pessoa. Just like London is Woolf’s, or rather, Mrs. Dalloway’s. Barcelona is Gaudí's and Rome is da Vinci’s. You see them in every crevice and hear their echoes in every cathedral. I’d like to be the child, or rather, the mother of a city but I neither have a home nor a resting place. My race is humankind. My religion is kindness. My work is love and, well, my city is the walls of your heart.
Kamand Kojouri
It must be this overarching commitment to what is really an abstraction, to one's children right or wrong, that can be even more fierce than the commitment to them as explicit, difficult people, and that can consequently keep you devoted to them when as individuals they disappoint. On my part it was this broad covenant with children-in-theory that I may have failed to make and to which I was unable to resort when Kevin finally tested my maternal ties to a perfect mathematical limit on Thursday. I didn't vote for parties, but for candidates. My opinions were as ecumenical as my larder, then still chock full of salsa verde from Mexico City, anchovies from Barcelona, lime leaves from Bangkok. I had no problem with abortion but abhorred capital punishment, which I suppose meant that I embraced the sanctity of life only in grown-ups. My environmental habits were capricious; I'd place a brick in our toilet tank, but after submitting to dozens of spit-in-the-air showers with derisory European water pressure, I would bask under a deluge of scalding water for half an hour. My closet wafter with Indian saris, Ghanaian wraparounds, and Vietnamese au dais. My vocabulary was peppered with imports -- gemutlich, scusa, hugge, mzungu. I so mixed and matched the planet that you sometimes worried I had no commitments to anything or anywhere, though you were wrong; my commitments were simply far-flung and obscenely specific. By the same token, I could not love a child; I would have to love this one. I was connected to the world by a multitude of threads, you by a few sturdy guide ropes. It was the same with patriotism: You loved the idea of the United States so much more powerfully than the country itself, and it was thanks to your embrace of the American aspiration that you could overlook the fact that your fellow Yankee parents were lining up overnight outside FAO Schwartz with thermoses of chowder to buy a limited release of Nintendo. In the particular dwells the tawdry. In the conceptual dwells the grand, the transcendent, the everlasting. Earthly countries and single malignant little boys can go to hell; the idea of countries and the idea of sons triumph for eternity. Although neither of us ever went to church, I came to conclude that you were a naturally religious person.
Lionel Shriver (We Need to Talk About Kevin)
travelers need only focus on four areas: the Old City, the harbor/Barceloneta, the Eixample, and Montjuïc.
Rick Steves (Rick Steves Barcelona)
I've always felt that cities have their own character, a personality shaped by their histories and the people that call them home. Barcelona is a city of whispers and secrets.
Chanel Cleeton (Our Last Days in Barcelona (The Perez Family, #5))
From now on the architects would take over as the high preists of this bourgeois city.
Colm Tóibín (Homage to Barcelona)
They're cleaning the graffiti! There were some that were really beautiful, no other city in the world had graffiti like Barcelona's. But just try to explain to those brutes what art is. The fuck. They ruin everything.
Mariana Enríquez (The Dangers of Smoking in Bed)
This is a place of mystery, Daniel, a sanctuary. Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens. This place was already ancient when my father brought me here for the first time, many years ago. Perhaps as old as the city itself. Nobody knows for certain how long it has existed, or who created it. I will tell you what my father told me, though. When a library disappears, or a bookshop closes down, when a book is consigned to oblivion, those of us who know this place, its guardians, make sure that it gets here. In this place, books no longer remembered by anyone, books that are lost in time, live forever, waiting for the day when they will reach a new reader's hands. In the shop we buy and sell them, but in truth books have no owner. Every book you here has been somebody's best friend. Now they only have us, Daniel. Do you think you'll be able to keep such a secret?' My gaze was lost in the immensity of the place and its sorcery of light. I nodded, and my father smiled.
Carlos Ruiz Zafón (The Shadow of the Wind (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #1))
Charlie Black: Fourierism was tried in the late nineteenth century… and it failed. Wasn’t Brook Farm Fourierist? It failed. Tom Townsend: That’s debatable. Charlie Black: Whether Brook Farm failed? Tom Townsend: That it ceased to exist, I’ll grant you, but whether or not it failed cannot be definitively said. Charlie Black: Well, for me, ceasing to exist is — is failure. I mean, that’s pretty definitive. Tom Townsend: Well, everyone ceases to exist. Doesn’t mean everyone’s a failure.
Whit Stillman (Barcelona and Metropolitan: Tales of Two Cities (2 Screenplays))
This book is, in a way, a scrapbook of my writing life. From shopping the cathedral flea market in Barcelona with David Sedaris to having drinks at Cognac with Nora Ephron just months before she died. To the years of sporadic correspondence I had with Thom Jones and Ira Levin. I’ve stalked my share of mentors, asking for advice. Therefore, if you came back another day and asked me to teach you, I’d tell you that becoming an author involves more than talent and skill. I’ve known fantastic writers who never finished a project. And writers who launched incredible ideas, then never fully executed them. And I’ve seen writers who sold a single book and became so disillusioned by the process that they never wrote another. I’d paraphrase the writer Joy Williams, who says that writers must be smart enough to hatch a brilliant idea—but dull enough to research it, keyboard it, edit and re-edit it, market the manuscript, revise it, revise it, re-revise it, review the copy edit, proofread the typeset galleys, slog through the interviews and write the essays to promote it, and finally to show up in a dozen cities and autograph copies for thousands or tens of thousands of people… And then I’d tell you, “Now get off my porch.” But if you came back to me a third time, I’d say, “Kid…” I’d say, “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Chuck Palahniuk (Consider This: Moments in My Writing Life After Which Everything Was Different)
Don't laugh, it's people like her who make this lousy world a place worth visiting.' 'Whores?' 'No. We're all whores, sooner or later. I mean good-hearted people. And don't look at me like that. Weddings turn me to jelly.' We remained there embracing that special silence, gazing at the reflections on the water. After a while dawn tinged the sky with amber, and Barcelona woke up. We heard the distant bells from the basilica of Santa Maria del Mar, just emerging from the mist on the other side of the harbour. 'Do you think Carax is still there, somewhere in the city?' I asked. 'Ask me another question.' 'Do you have the rings?' Fermin smiled. 'Come on, let's go. They're waiting for us, Daniel. Life is waiting for us.
Carlos Ruiz Zafón (The Shadow of the Wind (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #1))
Barcelona has always been more a city of capital and labor than of nobility and commoners; its democratic roots are old and run very deep. Its medieval charter of citizens’ rights, the Usatges, grew from a nucleus which antedated the Magna Carta by more than a hundred years. Its government, the Consell de Cent (Council of One Hundred), had been the oldest protodemocratic political body in Spain.
Robert Hughes (Barcelona)
It was in Barcelona that Schoenberg composed much of Act II of Moses und Aron. He never required quietness to work—indeed, he preferred to hear people round about him—and it is odd to think that he wrote some of the deeply tragic final scene of Act II at a window overlooking the sunlit city, one ear cocked to the gossip of his wife and Mrs Gerhard chatting in the room behind him, always ready to take part if he felt inclined. The
Malcolm MacDonald (Schoenberg (Composers Across Cultures))
Barcelona is the type of city where you can leave your accommodation in the morning and explore all day. On a typical day, you may be taking the subway, waiting in lines at busy tourist attractions, wandering through museums and romantic neighbourhoods, and sitting down for food and drinks at one of the many tapas bars before heading out to an upscale restaurant. Your outfits will work best if they can take you from day to night.
Anastasia Pash (Travel With Style: Master the Art of Stylish and Functional Travel Capsules)
Lefebvre’s concept of heterotopia (radically different from that of Foucault) delineates liminal social spaces of possibility where “something different” is not only possible, but foundational for the defining of revolutionary trajectories. This “something different” does not necessarily arise out of a conscious plan, but more simply out of what people do, feel, sense, and come to articulate as they seek meaning in their daily lives. Such practices create heterotopic spaces all over the place. We do not have to wait upon the grand revolution to constitute such spaces. Lefebvre’s theory of a revolutionary movement is the other way round: the spontaneous coming together in a moment of “irruption,” when disparate heterotopic groups suddenly see, if only for a fleeting moment, the possibilities of collective action to create something radically different. That coming together is symbolized by Lefebvre in the quest for centrality. The traditional centrality of the city has been destroyed. But there is an impulse towards and longing for its restoration which arises again and again to produce far-reaching political effects, as we have recently seen in the central squares of Cairo, Madrid, Athens, Barcelona, and even Madison, Wisconsin and now Zuccotti Park in New York City. How else and where else can we come together to articulate our collective cries and demands?
David Harvey (Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution)
And I listed the cities he said he’d been—Madrid, Granada, San Sebastián, Barcelona, Paris even. Their order was confused but their names made a map of lights in my mind. A constellation leading not back but far. Each a whole world I’d never been, swallowed him up and spewed him back, crustaceans in his pocket and seaweed in his hair, on the shores of our prison town. I considered the cities he talked about not destinations but destructions. A chosen wreckage. Different only in that way from the one handed to us.
Gabrielle Lucille Fuentes (The Sleeping World)
What little I knew of the city was that three decades before, in the name of the Spanish Republic, it had resisted General Franco (1892-1975) and paid a heavy, bitter price for it; that George Orwell, one of my literary heroes, had written a book about it called Homage to Catalonia; that in that book he had got most things right, but had been spectacularly wrong in dissing the admittedly very peculiar Antoni Gaudí, claimed by the French surrealists, who had designed that enormous penitential church seemingly made of melted candle wax and chicken guts.
Robert Hughes (Barcelona: the Great Enchantress (Directions))
But nothing has ever expressed the general, gut-felt moral revulsion against city-bombing better than a virtually unknown article, from firsthand experience, by America’s most famous writer at the time, Ernest Hemingway, in July 1938. It’s still little known because he wrote it, by request, for the Soviet newspaper Pravda, which published it in Russian; his manuscript in English didn’t surface143 for forty-four years. It conveys in words the same surreal images that Picasso had rendered on canvas the year before. His lead sentence: “During the last fifteen months I saw murder done in Spain by the Fascist invaders. Murder is different from war.” Hemingway was describing what he had seen of fascist bombing of workers’ housing in Barcelona and shelling of civilian cinemagoers in Madrid. You see the murdered children with their twisted legs, their arms that bend in wrong directions, and their plaster powdered faces. You see the women, sometimes unmarked when they die from concussion, their faces grey, green matter running out of their mouths from bursted gall bladders. You see them sometimes looking like bloodied bundles of rags. You see them sometimes blown capriciously into fragments as an insane butcher might sever a carcass. And you hate the Italian and German murderers who do this as you hate no other people. … When they shell the cinema crowds, concentrating on the squares where the people will be coming out at six o’clock, it is murder. … You see a shell hit a queue of women standing in line to buy soap. There are only four women killed but a part of one woman’s torso is driven against a stone wall so that blood is driven into the stone with such force that sandblasting later fails to clean it. The other dead lie like scattered black bundles and the wounded are moaning or screaming.
Daniel Ellsberg (The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner)
looked at hospital admission data from 12 major cities such as Dublin, London, Barcelona, Athens, and Rome from at least a three-year period. They found that for every 1°C (about 2°F) temperature increase, hospitalizations from respiratory- and asthma-related illnesses rose by 4.5 percent.
Linda Marsa (Fevered: Why a Hotter Planet Will Hurt Our Health -- and how we can save ourselves)
Barcelona didn't try to live at the same pace as other global cities. It moved to the ticking of its own clock and everyone accepted it.
Sarah Dayan (Greater Than the Still)
According to the innovation charity Nesta in the UK, the five cities that are globally best placed in terms of having the most effective policy environment to foster innovation are: New York, London, Helsinki, Barcelona and Amsterdam.
Klaus Schwab (The Fourth Industrial Revolution)
Hassan had touched down in the US a couple hours earlier. Barcelona was gorgeous, and everything he had envisioned and more, but quite frankly he missed his city. It didn’t take long at all for
Jade Jones (Torn Between a Goon and a Gangsta 2)
Hola,” my daughter offered meekly. “¿Cuál es su nombre?” the woman asked. What is her name? “Stella.” “Hmm?” “Stella.” The woman still looked puzzled. Drew jumped in. “Estella.” She broke into a smile. “Ah, Estella.” “Sí.” I smiled, too. “Y tu hijo?” she asked, running her hand over our son’s blond head. He shook his head impatiently. “Cole,” I replied. “Col?” she asked, again looking puzzled. “Sí.” Everyone wanted to call Stella “Estella,” and sometimes she’d get mistaken for chela, the Mexican slang for beer. Cole, on the other hand, is a Spanish word, at least how it’s pronounced. It’s Catalan as well, which is the second language in Barcelona (or first, depending on who you ask). Cole is pronounced like the Spanish word col and means “cabbage.” We accidentally named our son after the slightly smelly vegetable they put in cocidos and ensaladas. Meet our children: Beer and Cabbage. Apparently it didn’t matter, as the abuelita quickly launched into a story about her three children and eight grandchildren (who all lived outside the city, sadly) and her hand injury that had only recently healed. I nodded and Drew offered, “Sí, sí, vale, vale,” the usual Spanish murmurs of agreement. The bus stopped and we said our good-byes as she departed. After the bus had started rolling again, I leaned over to Drew and whispered, “If we have another baby, we are naming her Alejandra—or Javier if it’s a boy—something so Spanish no one ever asks us twice.” He grinned. “Agreed.
Christine Gilbert (Mother Tongue: My Family's Globe-Trotting Quest to Dream in Mandarin, Laugh in Arabic, and Sing in Spanish)
From Bolton to Barcelona, from Houston to le Havre, from Kansas to California, across the world communities have been starved of their necessary social infrastructure.43 And this problem is typically worse in cities than elsewhere.44 For
Noreena Hertz (The Lonely Century: A Call to Reconnect)
Gaudí’s primordial soup, Langdon thought, again startled by how perfectly the city of Barcelona dovetailed with Edmond’s curiosity about the beginnings of life.
Dan Brown (Origin (Robert Langdon, #5))
Between July 1936 and June 1937, the number of children in the city receiving free school education rose from 34,431 to 116,846, and for the first time free nurseries were opened.
Nick Lloyd (Forgotten Places: Barcelona and the Spanish Civil War)
Amalfitano had some rather idiosyncratic ideas about jet lag. They weren’t consistent, so it might be an exaggeration to call them ideas. They were feelings. Make-believe ideas. As if he were looking out the window and forcing himself to see an extraterrestrial landscape. He believed (or liked to think he believed) that when a person was in Barcelona, the people living and present in Buenos Aires and Mexico City didn’t exist. The time difference only masked their nonexistence. And so if you suddenly traveled to cities that, according to this theory, didn’t exist or hadn’t yet had time to put themselves together, the result was the phenomenon known as jet lag, which arose not from your exhaustion but from the exhaustion of the people who would still have been asleep if you hadn’t traveled. This was something he’d probably read in some science fiction novel or story and that he’d forgotten having read. • Anyway, these ideas or feelings or ramblings had their satisfactions. They turned the pain of others into memories of one’s own. They turned pain, which is natural, enduring, and eternally triumphant, into personal memory, which is human, brief, and eternally elusive. They turned a brutal story of injustice and abuse, an incoherent howl with no beginning or end, into a neatly structured story in which suicide was always held out as a possibility. They turned flight into freedom, even if freedom meant no more than the perpetuation of flight. They turned chaos into order, even if it was at the cost of what is commonly known as sanity.
Roberto Bolaño (2666)
Són els llogaters del tercer tercera. Una història més a la ciutat.
Marta Orriols (Dolça introducció al caos)
Those were the days when Barcelona newspapers were steeped in reports warning that people were being killed in the streets. Unions for hired gunmen were doing well. Life was still as worthless as ever, but death had never been so cheap.
Carlos Ruiz Zafón (The City of Mist: Stories (The Cemetery of Forgotten))
The Treasury of Spain informed me that the companies (the criminals) had 365 days to pay me my missing salary of 60,000 Euros, according to an official court decision made in Madrid. However, I was well aware that this would only escalate the danger for both Martina and me. I knew they would not fulfill their payment obligations. They would seek cheaper methods to evade payment and would also attempt to eliminate me without facing any consequences. I was unsure whom to turn to for help. Should I ask the King of Spain, or the leaders of Israel, Brussels, Hungary, Interpol, or the Policia Nacional? How could I protect Martina from these criminals? How could I dismantle Adam's mafia? These thoughts were weighing heavily on my mind as my anticipated final departure from Spain drew near. I received a letter, from Zaragoza. The letter informed me that I owed Zaragoza approximately 1800 euros for fines accrued by Adam. It also mentioned that it had been around 1.5 years since the incident on the highway, where I received fines while I was driving the gypsy caravan. Late fees were added without question. Make it 2000. Additionally, it warned that if I failed to make payment within 15 days of receiving the letter in my mailbox, the authorities would visit me with a court order to seize belongings of mine worth at least 1800 euros. Someone disclosed my „new” address to the Zaragoza Authorities. It is possible that the Correo/Post Office/Postal Service were unable to deliver their correspondence to my previous address on Carrer Cantabria due to my absence after the same expo where the fines were incurred on the highway and the unwanted flooding of the apartment. But now. Delivered. It is possible that the biased Catalan Court, which was known by my side at this point for its corruption and/or incompetence, shared my Barcelona address with the Correo/Postal Service to ensure that the fines reached me. The corrupt and/or incompetent Ciutat de la Justicia, the so called „City of Justice”, the Catalan judicial system did not solely reserve the sharing of my home address for the mafia/s. Everything was not a direct result of the criminals’ conspiracy. But.
Tomas Adam Nyapi (BARCELONA MARIJUANA MAFIA)
The students had been to Villaviciosa but what they wanted was to find the highway to Ures or Hermosillo. Each night they made love to her, in the car or on the warm desert sand, until one morning she came to meet them and they were gone. Three months later, when her great-grandmother asked her about the father of the child she was expecting, the young María Expósito had a strange vision: she saw herself small and strong, she saw herself fucking two men in the middle of a salt lake, she saw a tunnel full of potted plants and flowers. Against the wishes of the family, who wanted to baptize the boy Rafael, María Expósito called him Olegario, the patron saint of hunters and a Catalan monk in the twelfth century, bishop of Barcelona and archbishop of Tarragona, and she also decided that the first half of her son’s last name wouldn’t be Expósito, which was a name for orphans, as the students from Mexico City had explained to her one of the nights she spent with them, said the voice, but Cura, and that was how she entered it in the register at the parish of San Cipriano, twenty miles from Villaviciosa, Olegario Cura Expósito, despite the questioning to which she was subjected by the priest and his incredulity about the identity of the alleged father. Her great-grandmother said it was pure arrogance to put the name Cura before Expósito, which was the
Roberto Bolaño (2666)
Today Barcelona is at a rather complicated crossroads. The revolution that the architects have achieved there has been absorbed by the branding to which the same architects and administrators have given too much credit. If your city transforms itself into a logo, sooner or later it is better if you go and live somewhere else.
Franco La Cecla (Against Architecture (Green Arcade))
The Left has governed the great cities of the world before. Paris, Marseilles, Madrid, London under Red Ken, have all succumbed to the siren song of the Left at odd moments in the not too distant past. Barcelona was in fact once governed by committees of anarchists. Rome, Milan, and Naples have fallen under the Red Thumb. Stalinist proxies ruled Prague and Warsaw and Budapest and the traffic flow kept moving. The Communists took the garbage out in Moscow.
John Ross (El Monstruo: Dread and Redemption in Mexico City)
Barcelona Barcelona is a modern city with an outdoor lifestyle. Markets, churches, architecture, restaurants, beaches, boulevards are perfect for any explorer who loves to be independent. The city is Spain’s second largest (1.6 million in habitants). It was founded on ancient roots, Hannibal’s father settled here in the 3rd century BC and, from there, it was a Roman settlement before being taken over by the Goths, North Africans, French and finally Spanish – although it still has a streak of independence and a strong movement toward Catalan home rule. An airport bus, Aerobus, connects the airport with the city centre. The bus runs every 10—20 minutes and takes around 30 minutes. The Metro system (stations are marked M) connects most of the
Dee Maldon (The Solo Travel Guide: Just Do It)
city – from the beach to the Olympic hillside. For tourists who don’t want to grapple with public transport, there is the Barcelona Bus Turistic made up of three bus lines – blue, red and green routes that explore different parts of the city. You can get on and off at any point. Normally, I stay away from these double‐decker tourist explorers, but for a city as large as Barcelona, the system makes getting from beach to cathedrals to hillside parks very easy. There are also walking tours for those with very comfortable shoes. Barcelona offers so much to visitors that I couldn’t possibly tell you what to visit. But items not to miss are, in my opinion, the architecture of Antoni Gaudi which includes his unique cathedral, La Sagrada Familia which remains unfinished, his apartment building, La Pedrera which has no straight lines on its exterior, and his idealistic Parc Guell, a colourful complex on a high hillside. Within the city of Barcelona you could spend a day or more walking Los Ramblas, a wide pedestrian tree‐lined promenade that is a wonderful place to watch people, taste great food, wine and enjoy life. Nearby is the Placa de Catalunya, the main square with fountains, street artists and restaurants. The Gothic Quarter is walking distance with its network of squares that stretch back to Medieval and Roman times. This city offers so much – a medieval city, art museums, flamenco dancing, cable car to the top of Montjuïc, need I go on? Tours to local vineyards are available as are boat trips that will show you the local coastline. And let’s not forget that Barcelona is a city with beautiful beaches – all relaxed, lined with cafes and restaurants. The
Dee Maldon (The Solo Travel Guide: Just Do It)
beachfront boardwalk stretches for miles – a great place for exercise and sun. Some of the beaches are stoney, so be careful. Also, for the more straight laced among us, be aware that topless areas and clothing optional beaches are often unmarked. Barcelona has a wonderful buzz that is infectious. This means that the lone traveller should never really feel alone. Downside: Barcelona is the pickpocket capital of Europe. Carry nothing of value in your pockets or handbag. A body pouch is a certain necessity in this city. To read: Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruis Zafon. Set at the end of World War II but a little Gothic in nature, this novel tells of a boy taken by his father to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books and given the opportunity to choose one title. As he moves into adulthood, he finds someone else, someone with dark designs, also seeks this book.
Dee Maldon (The Solo Travel Guide: Just Do It)
Ronaldo moved from Real Madrid to Juventus ahead of the 2018-19 season. As he moved away from Lariga and moved his nest to Serie A, Messi and Ronaldo's face-to-face confrontation was often overlooked. "Real Madrid, without Ronaldo, will be a less powerful team," Messi said. Juventus, on the other hand, will be a clear winner of the Champions League. Because Juventus already had a great squad, and added to Ronaldo, "Ronaldo told the team about his presence and influence. "I have lived here (Barcelona) since I was thirteen, and all my life has been made here, I belong to the best team in the world, and this is probably the best city in the world. Also, all my children were born in Catalonia. I do not need to leave anyway, "he said, adding that he wanted to stay in Barcelona. ♥100%정품보장 ♥총알배송 ♥투명한 가격 ♥편한 상담 ♥끝내주는 서비스 ♥고객님 정보 보호 ♥깔끔한 거래 ◀경영항목▶ 수면제,여성-최음제,,여성흥분제,남성발기부전치유제,비아그라,시알리스,88정,드래곤,99정,바오메이,정력제,남성성기확대제,카마-그라젤,비닉스,센돔,꽃물,남성-조-루제,네노마정 등많은제품 판매중입니다 센돔 판매,센돔 구입방법,센돔 구매방법,센돔 효과,센돔 처방,센돔 파는곳,센돔 지속시간,센돔 구입,센돔 구매,센돔 복용법 News | "[Video] Huntelault Multi-goal, the class is alive!" Born in Argentina in 1987, Messi played in a youth soccer team in his hometown Rosario and was spotted by FC Barcelona scouts. At the age of 13, Barcelona scouted him for the potential of Messi, and Messi then moved to Barcelona, ​​where he lived for about 18 years. For Messiah, Barcelona is more than just a member of your team. Finally, Messi revealed his commitment to achieve the UEFA Champions League title in the 2018-19 season. "We have to focus on the Champions League. He has been eliminated in the last three years. I believe it is time to win. We have a brilliant squad, so we can do this (win).
Messi's 'Ronaldo transfer, UCL, and his future'
Heath's politics had been forged in the decade before 1945, when war in Europe had brought the continent to the brink of destruction. As a student in the 1930s, he had travelled through Germany and witnessed a Nazi rally at Nuremberg. He had visited Spain during the Civil War, witnessing at close hand the bombing of Barcelona. During the Second World War he had fought in France and Belgium, before ending the conflict in the shattered city of Hanover. European unity, he believed, was not only an economic necessity but a moral imperative. ‘Only by working together’, he wrote later, could nations ‘uphold the true values of European civilization’.
Robert Saunders (Yes to Europe!: The 1975 Referendum and Seventies Britain)
La ciudad, hija mía, es un infierno. Y en toda España no hay una ciudad que se parezca más al infierno que Barcelona…
Carmen Laforet (Nada)