Our last field trip in our Barcelona Past and Present class was to el Raval area in Barcelona, which is a neighborhood in the Ciutat Vella district that borders La Rambla and is home to 200,000 people. We started at La Rambla near Placa Catalunya and went through all of the winding streets. The area had many clothing shops and places to eat, and it was great to see all of the side streets of the famous La Rambla. Xavi took us to the MACBA building (pictured in this blog), which is the Modern Art Museum in Barcelona. While I have personally never been inside, the outside was very nice and modern, with a glass facade facing the square in front of it. Xavi also explained to us that a lot of skaters come to the area from all of Europe in order to skateboard and do tricks since it is a very respected and well-known place for modern skateboarding (see picture). When we were in one of the squares in el Raval we saw a few young skateboarders trying out some of their dangerous new tricks. One boy tried to jump about five feet, kickflip his skateboard and land, but we saw him painfully fall about 10 times. It was really hard to watch for a lot of us and I thought to myself that this boy would never be able to land such a difficult trick. Another boy was holding a camera filming the skater, I guess to record the trick if its ever landed successfully. This camera man seemed to be an injured skater, as he was limping around whenever he walked. Xavi explained to us that some skaters come to the Raval area from Germany on a very cheap bus with no money and just sleep outside at night and skate during the day. They come to Barcelona because of the nice weather during the wintertime. I could never imagine myself doing such a thing but I guess these people are really passionate about their skating hobby. I could never n be homeless for a span of time just to skate but these skaters seem to be a lot more high maintenance than me.
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