Barcelona Street Art

One of my favorite things to do when traveling is to check out the street art and see what it tells me about the place.

Here are some of my favorites from Barcelona:

It was good to look into the courtyard and see support for Ukraine.

I also like observing the signs and posters and stickers on the walls, because they tell you something about local concerns and interests.

Like this one which I think is rallying folks for a protest about the cost of living (if you speak Catalan, please confirm because Google translate was useless on this). Different country, but same problem we face here in the States.

I also saw a lot of posters celebrating Pablo Escobar, the late head of the Medellin cartel. It was confusing because I’d only ever seen him portrayed as a ruthless narcoterrorist in the American media, but upon doing some research back at the hotel, I learned that he is viewed by many as a “Robin Hood” figure for his charitable works. 1 One of the many reasons I love traveling, because there are learning experiences everyone.

Not being a fan of fascists, it was nice to learn that Girona was in La Zone Antifa.

And given the Trump administration’s attempted decimation of US scientific knowledge and climate change denial, it was good to see that Barcelona is taking it seriously.

From the omnipresent “I (heart) Boobs” t-shirts and shot glasses, I observed that the tourists who visit Barcelona are very into Boobs.

Finally, El Caganer. I was both bemused and amused by the pooping figures I saw everywhere, because I have the sense of humor of an eight year-old boy.

You can get these in many different forms although the traditional one is the man in Catalan clothing. It is a good luck figure, traditionally hidden in nativity scenes, because he’s viewed as ”blessing the lands, fertilizing them with his miraculous feces.”2. Hilarious, until I saw the Trump caganers. He’s certainly spreading feces all over our country and our constitution. Hard to view him as a good luck symbol.

I’ll leave you a nice affirmation to stick up by your bathroom mirror:

Paris coming tomorrow.