OFFICIAL FREE BCN GUIDE! FREE ISSUE_SEP 2014_N. 26 ISSUE_SEP 2014_N. FREE BcnGuide IN ENGLISH 5 WALKING ROUTES THAT PROVE THERE’S LIFE BEYOND THE CITY CENTRE UNEXPECTED BARCELONA DOWNLOAD FREE TIME OUT BARCELONA APP! THE BEST OF BARCELONA Contents ON YOUR September 2014 IPHONE! 08 Out of the centre! BCN has hidden jewels beyond the Barri Gòtic. MARIA DIAS 08 Feature 20 Food & Drink Five routes to discover an Balius, the new bar in unexpected side to the city Poblenou that’s revolutionising the aperitif 16 Around town La Mercè fills the city with 22 Shopping activities for all ages Neukölln brings design from the old East 18 Arts Germany to BCN. ‘Captive beauty’, amazing art in tiny doses 27 Listings TIME OUT BARCELONA TIME OUT BCN GUIDE ([email protected]), Via Laietana, 20 [email protected] Mercè Llubera 932955400 www.barcelonaturisme.com ([email protected]), Pere www.timeout.cat Editor Andreu Gomila Ribalta ([email protected]) Design Irisnegro Edited by 80 MES 4 Publicacions Publisher Eduard Voltas Producer Jan Fleischer & Turisme de Barcelona Finance Manager Judit Sans Designer Eduard Forroll Printed by Gràfica Impuls 45 Editor-in-chief Andreu Gomila Writers Josep Lambies, DL B.21656-2012 Art director Diego Ricard Martín, Marta Salicrú, ISSN 2014-7546 Piccininno Eugènia Sendra Supported by Features and web editor Translations Nick Chapman Maria José Gómez Advertising Ex. Nuria Gómez September 2014 Time Out BCN Guide 3 Get out your diaries! We Monthly present just a handful of the cultural highlights of planner the month ahead. Saturday 6 Thursday 11 Saturday 13 BASKETBALL NATIONAL DAY OF HIPNOTICK WORLD CATALONIA FESTIVAL CHAMPIONSHIP Balconies are filled 11 hours of hip-hop, The world’s best with flags, and the graffiti workshops, players visit the streets are full of breakdance and Palau Sant Jordi. activity. urban design. p. 38 p. 40 p. 40 Sunday 14 Thursday 18 THE BARBER OF FESTIVAL ÀSIA SEVILLE Now in its 13th year, Rossini’s most the festival brings famous opera takes Asian culture to over the Liceu for the streets of seven days. Barcelona. p. 40 p. 43 Friday 19 Saturday 20 FESTES DE LA COSMOCAIXA’S MERCÈ ANNIVERSARY For six days (and The museum nights), the city celebrates its 10th throws a huge anniversary with party. heaps of family fun. p. 43 p.44 Thursday 25 Sunday 28 ANNE-SOPHIE CURSA DE LA MUTTER MERCÈ One of the greatest The road race that violinists in the world draws more runners performs at the every year, this year Palau del Música. turns 35! p. 46 p. 47 4 Time Out BCN Guide September 2014 The Hotot Seat MARIA DIAS Alessio Arena The 30-year-old singer and writer has just released ‘Bestiario Familiare’. By Jordi Bianciotto Bestiario Familiare is full of grammatical structures that are very personal and family memories. close to Catalan. But it’s all been filtered – it could be Were you surprised by the official anyone’s family. The idea is that no status of Catalan in Barcelona? family can escape its own literature. I loved it; it made me feel very In my case, the lullabies my mother Neapolitan. In Italy, the language has sang me, the stories told to me by been demonised and associated my father, Gianni Lamagna, a singer with the Camorra. in the Nuova Compagnia di Canto How is it that there are traces of Popolare… My mother lived in flamenco in your singing? Barcelona, and from a young age I When I listen to flamenco I feel very spent time here. happy; I have huge respect for it. So you grew up knowing Barcelona. And it has something in common Yes, as a city it’s not so different with music from the south of Italy. from Naples, but there’s more My influences are drawn from there, opportunity here. Italy was sliced and from Italian and Latin American in two, and the south was excluded singer-songwriters. from Europe, and from progress, What if I told you that initially you when, before that, Naples had been sounded like a cross between Pablo a cultural capital on a par with Paris. Alborán and Rufus Wainwright? You speak Neapolitan, don’t you? That’s a compliment! I love Rufus. I It’s my first language. It’s recognised don’t listen to Alborán, I get annoyed by UNESCO because of its rich when he uses ‘heart’ and ‘love’ three literary history. The older forms of times in the same verse, but he has Neapolitan, the way our grandparents an incredible voice. Maybe he’s speak, have vocabulary and listened to the same things I have. 6 Time Out BCN Guide September 2014 September 2014 Time Out BCN Guide 7 UNUSUAL WALKS Forget trains, bikes or buses. We invite you to discover BCN with a real spirit of adventure. Martí Sales suggests three walks t hat go b eyond t he cit y limits into au t hentic ally wild landscapes. Eugènia Sendra maps out two new urban routes that explore the delights of the city’s outlying districts. Photos: Maria Dias. 8 Time Out BCN Guide September 2014 BARCELONA’S LARDER The edges of big cities tend to be untidy, full of surprises and not at all used to visitors. This route leaves Barcelona towards the Llobregat river, to the south. Take the metro to Sant Ildefons. Directly opposite the exit you’ll find a market: an animated jumble of stalls that’s a great place for browsing or just people-watching – it’s large, cheap and lively. If you take the plunge into this leafy working-class neighbourhood and cross the whole of Cornellà, you’ll find one of the most attractive public swimming pools in Catalonia, the Parc Between Sant Boi and Santa Coloma Esportiu del Llobregat, designed by de Cervelló – on the same line as that architect Álvaro Siza. Its roof is a huge intrepid architectural experiment of arch with round windows that filter the the seventies, Walden 7 – there’s the light like in a hammam. A dip here is an Colònia Güell, a fascinating place affordable luxury. that offers much more than Gaudí’s But if instead of heading downhill, spectacular crypt. The modernista you go up, you’ll come to a small world influence is evident in the early of its own, bordered by four streets, twentieth century houses for the (Sevilla, Granada, Múrcia and textile workers, where imaginative Jaén): an area of run-down looking brickwork was used to achieve single-storey houses, next to an stunning results, as at Ca l’Ordal and industrial estate. It’s like stepping into Ca l’Espinal. If after all this you can another era, when front doors were hear the grumble of an empty stomach, always open and communities stuck stop for a bite at Can Serra, highly together, with sardines frying and recommended. Getting back to the city improvised mechanic’s workshops. It’s is easy: there’s an FGC stop nearby that one of those treasures you stumble on will take you back to Plaça d’Espanya by chance. On the other side of the in twenty minutes. tracks, Sant Joan Despí, with its dainty villas, is another story altogether. They’re a foretaste of the gardens that DISCOVER VALLBONA feed Barcelona’s stomachs, from Take the metro to Baró de Viver: you’ll which they’re separated by a couple step out slap bang in the middle of the of roundabouts and walls. tangle of overpasses of the Nus de la The Llobregat is the city’s larder: a Trinitat interchange. Then choose any sprawling area of plots in which every of the bridges that cross the Besòs river variety of fruit and vegetable is tended to the Santa Coloma side. Strolling by pensioners armed with hoes and through the riverside park is a single-minded determination. You’ll delight: birdlife, grassy lawns, babbling also find exotic palm tree nurseries and water. Heading up to the right there’s shepherds leading flocks of sheep, the Can Zam park, that extends along who are quite at home here. The well- the edges of Singuerlín, with its signposted Camí dels Horts makes enormous, brightly coloured blocks of for a very pleasant stroll, with the clear, flats that can be seen from the fast-flowing river, cyclists, swans and motorway. This is a quiet residential artichoke fields. Upriver – a long way neighbourhood, which looks over the upriver – you’ll come to the Molins de sea of solar panels that covers the Rei bridge; downriver, the one at Sant Santa Coloma cemetery and the Boí: take your pick. Marina hills. September 2014 Time Out BCN Guide 9 Little-known paths Follow the Font d’Alzina path that HILLSIDE HOUSING makes its way up to the ridge and, half When you leave the metro at Roquetes, an hour or so later, after a bar and the the whole district lies before you, spring itself, you’ll come to a junction sprawling up the mountainside. where one path leads to the remains Roquetes is a neighbourhood that was of the Iberian settlement at Puig created by the willpower of its Castellar, and another is unsignposted. residents: the clearest example is the If you take the latter, you’ll come to an sewer system, built as a collective effort industrial estate with chickens next to in 1964, with residents dedicating their the main road and the Besòs river. Sundays to it. To walk the district is to Heading upriver, you can cross the toil up precipitous streets with bridge at Montcada i Reixach and incredible views that lead inevitably, take a look around the town.