Jaguars & Electric Eels

Jaguars & Electric Eels (Penguin Great Journeys, 2007)
by Alexander von Humboldt
France, 1807

I wasn't even aware of Penguin's multi-volume Great Journey series until recently, but stumbling upon a cache of these pamphlet-sized nuggets half-priced at Brattle Book Shop in Boston about a month or so ago now has to rank as one of my book-buying year's happiest surprises. The Humboldt title, dealing with his travels in Venezuela "in tropical heat" in 1800, is a superior introduction to the collection as a whole: an abridged version of 100 of the choicest pages culled from the German naturalist's 30-volume Relation historique du voyage aux régions équinoxiales du nouveau continent that has whet my appetite for even more from the author. For a guy who's sometimes derided for having overlooked the people he encountered during his 1799-1804 travels in favor of long descriptions of the lush landscapes instead, Humboldt was a more than adequate travel companion for me here; the excerpts are full of trenchant observations about race relations in the Americas, for example, and the explorer's much more down to earth than you might expect given his full name and title and the inherent awkwardness of a situation in which an abolitionist man of science was occasionally forced to rely on slave labor to accomplish his geographical and scientific pursuits. The celebrated landscape descriptions are often fascinating as well, and passages like the one below show how nimbly Humboldt's ever inquisitive mind could move from the physical world to the world of larger truths despite his enthusiasm for the teeming New World wildlife. In other words, terribly entertaining stuff--even for someone like me who prefers to do most of his "exploring" with a coffee cup in hand! (http://www.penguin.com/)

Baron Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt on the banks of the Orinoco, Venezuela

(oil painting by Fredrich Georg Weitsch, 1806)

"I confess that these often repeated scenes greatly appeal to me. The pleasure comes not solely from the curiosity a naturalist feels for the objects of his studies, but also to a feeling common to all men brought up in the customs of civilization. You find yourself in a new world, in a wild, untamed nature. Sometimes it is a jaguar, the beautiful American panther, on the banks; sometimes it is the hocco (Crax alector) with its black feathers and tufted head, slowly strolling along the sauso hedge. All kinds of animals appear, one after the other. 'Es como en el paraíso' ('It is like paradise') our old Indian pilot said. Everything here reminds you of that state of the ancient world revealed in venerable traditions about the innocence and happiness of all people; but when carefully observing the relationships between the animals you see how they avoid and fear each other. The golden age has ended. In this paradise of American jungles, as everywhere else, a long, sad experience has taught all living beings that gentleness is rarely linked to might." (Alexander von Humboldt, Jaguars & Electric Eels, 65-66)

Buenos Aires Trip Report #2

Palermo, Buenos Aires

(Click here for the earlier part of this trip report)

Tu, March 17: My wife and in-laws had some shopping to do in the barrio Once section of Buenos Aires, but they kindly dropped me off at Plaza Serrano in Palermo so I could do some wandering around on my own in one of my favorite parts of the city (I was sad to miss Once since I only know it from Daniel Burman's 2004 film El abrazo partido [Lost Embrace], which takes place there, but these are the kind of decisions one must make on a short trip). Although Palermo's one of the bigger neighborhoods in town, the area I was strolling in is usually referred to as Palermo Soho or Palermo Viejo. I'm not sure where the exact boundaries are, but this part of the neighborhood reminds me a little of Greenwich Village in New York with fewer in-your-face hipsters and a more musical accent. The tree-lined streets above are typical of the barrio's tranquility during the day, but at night the place becomes a madhouse with pub crawlers, tourists, and some of the most photogenic people in town taking in the bar and café culture. A couple of years ago, the big joke was that some of Palermo was being even further subdivided into yet another new district, Palermo Iraq, on account of all the American tourists who had invaded it! I enjoyed walking down the fiction-friendly J.L. Borges street toward leafy Plaza Italia, getting lost on some other street on my way back (without a map of any sort, I didn't realize that Plaza Serrano's official name is Plazoleta Julio Cortázar), and having a beer and a coffee outdoors at Malasartes near the appointed rendezvous time with the rest of my family: a wonderful corner to people-watch from as this particular stretch of real estate has more beautiful women passing by per square foot than anywhere I've been outside of Barcelona and Paris. Not that I noticed, being married and all! I'd dipped into a couple of bookstores and record stores before that without buying anything--the calm before the storm--and somewhere along the way I stopped at an ice cream shop because I just had to have a cono at this one particular place because of its advertising: they had a cardboard cutout of Gardel wrapped around a street sign with a doctored image of the tango titan holding an helado in his hand. How cool is that? Back at home in Burzaco later that evening, A cooked up a delicious dinner of rabas (calamare) and breaded filets of merluza and pejerrey (two types of fish) that we'd bought from the pescador (fisherman, or in this case, the traveling fishmonger) when he was making his morning rounds in the neighborhood with his carrito full of fish on ice. My in-laws also receive frequent visits from the sifonero (a guy who delivers carbonated water bottles that come with their own siphon--the water amazingly never goes flat) and a biweekly visit from la pollera (a woman who delivers free-range chickens door to door). Is it just me or doesn't this seem like a way more "civilized" form of life than having to shop at Whole Foods or your local chain supermarket of choice?

The Holy Grail of Recent Argentinean Fiction

Wed, March 18: My wife hates the hustle and bustle of big cities everywhere--too much sensory overload--so we agreed that I'd go into Buenos Aires on my own today because I love sensory overload! Adroguébus operates a combi (shuttle van) that leaves from the train station in Adrogué and drops you off in the middle of downtown Buenos Aires near the Obelisco on 9 de Julio for a mere 7 pesos ($2 U.S.), so I hopped on and headed off for another day of exploring. "Exploring" in this case meant walking up and down the microcentro looking for books and absorbing life away from home, so I started off on calle Corrientes and started walking away from 9 de Julio to the west. What a day! Something like 13 million people, about a third of Argentina's population, live in its capital city, so walking down these main downtown arteries gives you a real feel for the more monumental side of things here. While Corrientes is far from my favorite street, there are masses of people everywhere and a librería (bookstore) seemingly every two or three stores. Sort of like a Times Square with books! I walked down Corrientes and some of the surrounding streets most of the day, stopping at calle Callao on my first run and ending up near Plaza San Martín in the Retiro district on the other side of 9 de Julio on my way back. Crazy walking which led me to a totally accidental discovery of one of Borges' houses! The part of Corrientes near where I started includes some of the theater district, but my happiest moment in the day was finding Distal Libros (http://www.distalnet.com/) at Florida 528: a decent but fairly nondescript smaller bookstore that had a copy of Rodrigo Fresán's Mantra for sale. I had this book checked out of my local university library for months without being able to find another copy for sale, and my attempts to order it online led me to discover that it's selling for upwards of $50 in the U.S. because it's out of print or just impossible to find here for some reason. I only paid 36 pesos (about $10 U.S.) for Mantra at Distal, and I was so excited to find a copy of this paperback grail at last that I briefly debated buying a second one to give away as a gift. I eventually decided against this, leaving the remaining copy at Distal for the next tourist from a faraway land to fortuitously encounter some day, and bought a copy of Ezequiel Martínez Estrada's 1942 Radiografía de la pampa (oft cited as one of the defining works in 20th century Argentinean letters) for 49 pesos instead. A bookstore or two later, and I had a copy of Juan José Saer's La pesquisa under my arm from the Ateneo bookstore (think of a good version of a B&N or Border's in the U.S. stocked with all those Spanish titles you could only dream about) at Florida 627. I could have gotten this book from the library, but the 37 peso price was just too good to pass up for this literary souvenir (Saer was one of my favorite fiction discoveries last year thanks to a marvelous professor I know, so here's a review of another work of his I read for the 2008 Orbis Terrarum Challenge). On my way back to Adrogué on the combi, I basked in the glow of my incredible book-buying good fortune and then laughed when I saw a parrilla called "ESTOY LOCO" along the route. Hey, I'm crazy, too! Anyway, here's a short article on Fresán, an argentino now living in Spain, and his Mantra, a kaleidoscopic feat of writing set in and inspired by Mexico City, that may help you understand why finding this one title in itself would have made for a totally satisfying book-buying trip for me. Which means that the other dozen or so to come were just icing on the Mantra cake!

A remera (t-shirt) touting Argentina's favorite sandwich: chorizo + pan

Th, March 19: I don't remember what C and my in-laws had going on during the day, but I took advantage of some free time to head into the city solo again. Today's destination: San Telmo, one of the oldest neighborhoods in town and one often hailed as the most "authentic" by people wowed by its history and beautiful, rapidly deteriorating architecture. I hadn't bought a map for this trip yet, so I wandered around Av. Carlos Calvo dodging loose tiles and trying to remember where Plaza Dorrego was located. I gave up temporarily a little more than a block away, dipping into the pastelería (pastry shop) Il Forno on Bolívar 933 to sample a couple of empanadas de carne and pour down an agua con gas: my typical traveling food in Bs.As. whenever I'm hungry or just need to regroup. The empanadas were OK but nothing special, but I ended up hitting the jackpot when I ordered an individual torta de ricotta (ricotta pie) and a café con leche from the spectacular looking pastry counter. I guess now's as good a time as any to mention that Paris is the only other city I've visited yet that can rival Buenos Aires for the quantity and quality of its breads and sweets. After leaving Il Forno, I wandered around the rest of San Telmo for a while enjoying its ramshackle ambience and paying a token visit to Plaza Dorrego--the lovely little plaza whose fame has only increased since one of the Bush daughters had her purse stolen here under the watchful eyes of various Secret Service agents a couple of years back! While heading down calle Defensa in the general direction of the microcentro, I stumbled upon the famous parilla Desnivel at Defensa 855 and decided to sit down for a "snack" in the interests of "research" for this informe. Although I wasn't all that hungry so soon after my last meal, I decided to order a serving of mollejas (sweetbreads) a la carte anyway since they're relatively hard to find in the states--probably because they gross almost everybody else out! I also asked for a glass of the house vino tinto with my appetizer, and the combination of masterfully-grilled mollejas, jarrito (little jar) of wine, and non-U.S. bread was so entirely satisfying that I decided to do some more research. I ordered a serving of chorizo next, which was also insanely good and a steal at a mere 5 pesos (~$1.50 U.S.). Feeling more than a little gluttonous but incredibly satisfied that Desnivel had lived up to the hype, I stopped at a locutorio to check my e-mail and waste precious time on a blog post ("Now Blogging From Buenos Aires") that I later deleted. Before the ride home on the combi, I made a quick detour to Corrientes again to pick up a couple of books at Librería Hernandez (Av. Corrientes 1311). For those keeping score, one book was for a friend and the other one was for me: Santiago Rosa's Abril rojo, a Peruvian thriller that won the Premio Alfaguera de Novela for 2006. I didn't eat again until way later that night, but my mother-in-law prepared two different kinds of milanesa for us, one meatless (eggplant) and one not (the "usual"). An excellent day for parilla and comida casera (home cooking) fare--if you ever get to eat in Buenos Aires, you'll soon understand why those I Love Choripan t-shirts are so popular! Coming soon: Mar del Plata and more.

Buenos Aires Trip Report

El Ateneo Grand Splendid: a bookstore situated in a magnificent old theater
(photo: longhorndave, used here with Creative Commons permission)

Dear Lurkers:

Since I just got back from a wonderful two-week trip to Argentina, I thought I'd share some of my adventures with you, my beloved public, while memories of all those book-buying binges and empanadas-eating rampages are still fairly fresh in my mind. I intend to update this post over the next week or so, so check back here from time to time if anything catches your eye.

Chau,

Richard

Sat, March 14: My wife ("C") and my father-in-law ("R") met me at the airport after I arrived from my 11-hour overnight flight from Boston to NYC to Buenos Aires (C's family is from Buenos Aires, so she had gone down a few weeks before I did to spend some extra time with them). Back in their home in Burzaco (a smallish working class city on the southern outskirts of la capital), my mother-in-law ("A") had prepared a "typical" Argentine lunch for us: a big plump chorizo del campo grilled to perfection, ñokis with meat sauce, a simple salad, etc. Delicious! Later on that evening, R took me to see a soccer match between his team, Banfield, and nearby rivals, San Lorenzo, a much anticipated thrill for me since I'd never seen a partido (game) live at the cancha (soccer field) in Argentina before. Although the stadium was only half-full due to threatening rains that never arrived in full force, the fans on both sides were as energetic as I would have expected: I got to see a pro-Banfield moshpit spontaneously erupt in one of the tunnels leading into the stands before the game, and during the match both teams' hinchadas (groups of rowdy fans) engaged in nonstop chanting and singing along with their respective bands, also hurling insults at each other and at the referees as often as possible ("la concha de tu madre," a staple expletive of Argentinean cinema, naturally was the epithet of choice!). We stopped for some great empanadas de carne y de jamón y queso (I had two meat and one ham-and-cheese turnovers) at Pizza Ranch in Adrogué (another nearby city in the provincia of Buenos Aires away from the city's core) on the way back, ending the day the way it'd started with some more of that great food that I love so much. Somewhere along the way, I also saw a great name for a carnicería (butcher's shop): Tu majestad, la vaca (Your Majesty, the Cow). Argentina, a vegetarian's nightmare!

Sun, March 15: Argentineans often have some combination of bread, toast, dulce de leche, and/or fiambres (cold cuts) for breakfast along with coffee, tea and/or mate, and today we had all of the above along with some Sunday mini facturas (mini-pastries). I was beginning to remember why so many consider the country a foodie's paradise! After breakfast, R drove everybody into the city (Burzaco is part of the provincia of Buenos Aires but not part of the city itself), where we walked around a mostly-deserted Plaza de Mayo and similarly quiet Calle Lavalle--both frenzied places during the week--downtown (more or less the Montserrat and San Nicolás barrios on the map above, but almost everybody just refers to the area as the microcentro). In the afternoon, R and I took in a late afternoon walking tour at the Cementerio de la Recoleta while C and A looked at arts and crafts on the Paseo de Recoleta in the upscale neighborhood. I had passed up a visit to the cementery on my only previous trip to Argentina since I didn't want to see all of the typical tourist sites, but I quickly realized what an idiot I had been when I saw all the wonderful statuary and mausoleum art in "este museo de los cuerpos" (museum of bodies). Historian Eduardo Lazzari, a radio show host and president of the Junta de Estudios Históricos del Buen Ayre, gave a great open-air lecture at the graves of various luminaries from 19th-century Buenos Aires history, focusing on the political wars between the federales and unitarios for a mere 15 pesos (~$4 U.S.). This turned out to be an unexpected highlight of the trip due to Lazzari's storytelling skills, obvious command of the material, and easy sense of humor. Even R, who's not a big history buff, walked away impressed. If you know Spanish and are considering a tour of the cementery, you shoud definitely think about taking in one of Lazzari's paseos históricos (the link I had for this doesn't work, but the talk was advertised in one of the Sunday newspapers). He drew about 50-75 people for this one, and many people practically mobbed him afterward to thank him for his efforts.

Mon, March 16: Is it too soon to talk about food again? After sleeping in late and playing with my in-laws' three totally lovable dogs, C and I shared some leftover sándwiches/sánguches de miga with my sister-in-law ("M-V")for lunch. We had bought 30 of these crustless sandwiches and two pre-fab pizzas from Sandwichería Espora in Adrogué the night before, and the 92 peso purchase (~$27 U.S.) was enough to feed several people for a few days in a row. I'm not sure I can explain what makes these predominantly white bread sandwiches so tasty, but they are moister than their U.S. counterparts and come in an astounding variety of styles: olives and egg (my favorite), salame, Roquefort cheese, palmitos (hearts of palm), etc. A must-try for any visitor to Argentina and a local comfort food with many vegetarian options. After M-V returned to work, C's parents took us to Quilmes, a city of about 250,000 also in Buenos Aires province, where C and her mom had some errands to do. I had passed up a chance to visit la capital on my own that day in order to to see what it was like in this smaller city, a tactical error of sorts since I'm not sure I'd really care to return to it. One interesting thing was seeing how many people were out and about at night in Quilmes' main peatonal (outdoor walking mall), an obvious difference from many U.S. cities where people seem to go into hiding as soon as it gets dark. Besides being famous for producing Argentina's most popular beer, Quilmes also boasts an old pizzeria, Pizza Los Maestros, which has been dishing out rustic pizzas for years and years. I tried an empanada gallega, a stuffed pizza featuring tuna, olives, and something spicy, and a strange-looking ham and hard-cooked egg slice that turned out to be super tasty. The cashier and at least one patron killed part of my pizza buzz by smoking in the restaurant while we ate, the first of a couple of times on the trip where the capital's no-smoking laws were ignored elsewhere in the province. Next up: my day in Palermo Soho. Still to come: book buying excesses in Bs.As. and a sunburn in Mar del Plata!

God's Middle Finger: Into the Lawless Heart of the Sierra Madre

God's Middle Finger: Into the Lawless Heart of the Sierra Madre (Free Press paperback, 2008)
by Richard Grant
USA, 2008

"If someone had come up to me in my early twenties, when men are supposed to be at their most reckless, and offered me a fortune to go into a place like the Sierra Madre, I would have thought about it for about three seconds before saying no. Except for alcohol and drugs, I was a fairly cautious young man, afraid of heights, roller coasters, high-speed driving, the police, guns, snakes, big spiders, and venereal disease. I avoided fights and adventure sports and I tended to doubt the sanity of those who put themselves deliberately in harm's way, much as some people now doubt my own sanity. So what happened?" --God's Middle Finger, p. 16

I checked this out from the library last week as a change of pace from more serious reading I had going on, but it quickly took over to the point that those serious plans wound up shelved. Part travelogue/part one-man Mexican Jackass episode, God's Middle Finger is a hysterical account of the three months that the British-born/Tucson-based journalist/thrill seeker Grant spent chasing adventure in the Sierra Madre mountain range. Although some of his "research" involved things like binge drinking with new friends and doing coke off knives in bathrooms with the local cops, Grant survived to tell the tale and his journalistic chops served him well even when his judgement probably didn't. Here's an example. In trying to figure out the intense hold that the region held on his imagination, Grant questioned locals from all walks of life on subjects as diverse as the mystery surrounding the fate of the last Apaches, the effects of the drug trade on the area in recent times, the prodigious long-distance running feats of the Tarahumara Indians, and the historic roots of the bandit culture. The result is an entertaining, informative and surprisingly well-written traveler's tale that should provide great adventure reading fare for those skeptical of the idea that all narcotraficantes are saints. Includes a nice recap of previous writing on the Sierra Madre region and some of the most hilarious translations of Mexican profanities I've ever seen! (http://www.simonandschuster.com/)

Richard Grant

Click here for a 5-minute Arizona public TV interview with Grant about this book from April 2008.

A Time to Keep Silence

A Time to Keep Silence (New York Review Books Classics paperback, 2007)
by Patrick Leigh Fermor
UK, 1957

Lovely little travelogue about Leigh Fermor's stay in three French monasteries and visit to the ruins of another complex in Turkey sometime in the mid-1950s. Although the author's aims were decidedly secular at the outset (he candidly admits that his journey began with a search for a cheap and quiet place to stay where he could finish writing another book), NYRB's classification of this as "literature/religion" hints at how sucessfully the work touches on matters far beyond the mundane. Of the three chapters ("The Abbey of St. Wandrille de Fontanelle," "From Solesmes to La Grand Trappe," and "The Rock Monasteries of Cappadocia," all noteworthy for their simple but graceful prose), I particularly enjoyed the first for its insightful and completely absorbing account of what it's like for a lay person to undergo the retreat from the world that Benedictine monastic life requires. Cautioning the reader that he could only immerse himself in a very small measure of St. Wandrille's routine as an outsider, Leigh Fermor's sensitivity and openness to the experience as a guest are nevertheless evident in his ability to communicate the satisfactions of abbey life to a world so removed from its own. The sections on La Grande Trappe, an extremely austere Cistercian monastery, and the Cappadocian ruins, cradle of monasticism in the days of the desert fathers, are also interesting, so I'm happy to see that Sir Patrick has several other books for me to discover eventually if not sooner. (http://www.nyrb.com/)

Patrick Leigh Fermor

In lieu of a Wiki entry:
Helena Smith, Literary legend learning to type at 92 (2007)

William Dalrymple, Patrick Leigh Fermor: The man who walked (2008)

Ina Caro's Languedoc

Carcassonne: Cité Médiévale et Pont vieux

(image: Mairie de Carcassonne)

Although I've only spent two days in the Languedoc [Occitan: Lengadòc] in my entire life, the region has had a hold on my imagination out of all proportion to what you might make of that. Ina Caro's chapter on the area in The Road from the Past: Traveling Through History in France (1994) was one of the first books that got me hooked on the subject, a point I was reminded of while rereading the section in question over the weekend. Essentially a collection of six mini-travelogues on visits to Saint-Roman, Narbonne [Narbona], the Abbey of Fontfroide, Carcassonne [Carcassona], Albi [Albi], and the "pilgrimage churches" of Conques and Rocamadour, this spotlight on Languedoc obviously benefits from Caro's graceful prose and pleasantness as a travel companion. However, her novel approach to the genre--deciding to "visit these sites in the order they were built" in order for the reader to "feel almost as if you are traveling through the past" (Caro, p. 2)--adds an historical dimension to the writing that makes the reading experience so much richer. A lack of footnotes and at least one overly-confident assertion of a disputed 13th century "fact" (Caro claims that Simon de Montfort murdered Raymond-Roger Trencavel of Carcassonne, a point not in agreement with contemporary source Guilhelms de Tudela nor accepted by all modern historians either) tarnish the historiographic value of the work to a certain extent, but this is otherwise a great place to read about modern touring in the Languedoc région informed by a narrative that also travels from Roman times to the aftermath of the Albigensian crusades. Cool!

• Caro, Ina. "Languedoc." In The Road from the Past: Traveling Through History in France. San Diego and New York: Harvest, 1994, 55-111.

The Pilgrimage to Santiago

The Pilgrimage to Santiago (2001 paperback)
by Edwin Mullins
UK, 1974
ISBN 1-56656-371-2

"That evening, talking with Padre Agustín, there was no doubt at all in my mind that the cloister of Santo Domingo de Silos was among the most radiantly beautiful places on earth. Should I perhaps have been disturbed by my own very peace of mind? Here was I, after all, an atheist, brought up tepid C of E and now standing in a Roman Catholic monastery chatting to a monk who referred to my home city of London (albeit chucklingly) as 'Babylon,' and I dared to experience such a thing as peace of mind. But the thought did not disturb me. I merely became aware of how few secular buildings in the world were capable of inducing such a condition of peace. Why, asked General Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, should the Devil have all the best tunes? And why, I felt, should God have all the best buildings?" (Mullins, p. 159)

OK but occasionally uninspiring account of the "long journey to heaven" (120) also known as the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. While I didn't bond with Mullins quite as much as I would've liked to given the vividness of passages such as the one cited above, his hybrid travelogue/art history work/historic overview of the camino does a nice job of looking at its subject from the point of view of someone enamored of all the art and architecture along the various routes. I use the plural here because Mullins spends a good deal of time--a little too much for me, in fact--celebrating art finds on and off the beaten track of all four of the main pilgrim roads out of France. One problem with this approach is that it took the frequent use of a car to make visiting all these sites possible, something that seems to have prevented the author from conveying the first-person passion of a quality backpacker's account like Conrad Rudolph's engaging Pilgrimage to the End of the World: The Road to Santiago de Compostela (University of Chicago Press, 2004). In the final analysis, this may be less meaningful a book for those wanting to understand the pilgrim experience (medieval or modern) from an insider's perspective than it would be for those merely curious about architectural-oriented travel in France and Spain near the end of the Franco era.

• Mullins, Edwin. The Pilgrimage to Santiago. Northampton, MA: Interlink Books, 2001. (http://www.interlinkbooks.com/)

Santiago de Compostela

(NB: This is a probable alternate for one of my Back to History Challenge books. Conrad Rudolph, the humble "backpacker" mentioned above, doubles as an art historian/medievalist in his spare time!)

Catalogne, the Magazine

Dear Readers,

Finnish catalanophile Merike of Finès entre tots i totes fame, one of my blog friends, recently asked me for some more information about a travel magazine I had mentioned on her site. Rather than burying the details in another comment box, I decided to post the information here in case anybody else out there is also interested in vacation ideas for Barcelona and other parts of Catalunya.

The magazine in question is called Méditerranée Magazine, a French language publication of Milan Presse , and the Catalogne special issue is from Spring 2008. Since I've only really flipped through the thing at this point, I can't comment on the quality of the coverage--but here's a list of the contents for whatever it's worth.

• Chronologie
• Tarragone laisse du temps au temps
• Sagrada Familia, la cathédrale ensorcelée
• Le musée total (le musée de la Science)
• Lazlo Kubala, l'apatride catalan
• L'ombre du temps (le photographe catalan Francesc Català-Roca)
• Route buissonière de Port-Bou au delta de l'Èbre
• D'amour et de vin rouge (Priorat, Penedès, Conca de Barberà)
• Entre le ciel et la terre (des parc naturels situés dans les différentes montagnes catalanes)
• Domènech i Montaner: l'autre architecte
• Des châteaux en Espagne (ou presque...) (la tradition des "châteaux humains")
• La Bisbal, la mutation des potiers
• Suivez le guide
• Agenda
• Bibliographie

Before I go, here's a link for more tourist/cultural reading about Catalonia with descriptions in French and info in Catalan. And for those interested in a couple of other morsels on France and the other side of Spain from a less touristy perspective, I'll have a bite-sized book review post on the pilgrimage to Santiago and a movie review on Buñuel's La Voie lactée (1969) coming soon. Fins aviat!