Paral·lel, celebrity tributes in Raval, and a gritty garden

Today’s shots come from the free walls at Tres Xemeneies, near Avinguda Paral·lel, some random wanderings through the neighbouring Raval, and a new location (at least for me): the Jardins de Walter Benjamin, which are just near the Port, and mark the last frontier before the city gives way to Montjuic Park. As suggested in the title, the “gardens” themselves are nothing to marvel at, but the walls, which separate them from the playground of a local school, are the main attraction.

The Raval was full of tributes to famous faces, among them Debbie Harry, Kafka, Dennis Rodman, the late Prince, Jesus Christ (by artist sm172), and Football Club Barcelona’s favourite tax-dodging wunderkind, Neymar Jr.

As my geo-tagging feature on my camera app has become a bit unpredictable with the latest android update, my locations aren’t quite a precise as before. That said, a good wander round the Raval/Poble Sec area does a body good!

 

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Free wall in Castelldefels

I decided to take advantage of the weeklong Easter holiday break (known here as Setmana Santa, or Holy Week) to pick up my camera and capture some images that I’ve been passing twice a week since the end of September. All of these images come from a wall which runs along the rail tracks near the Castelldefels station. I had passed the image of the frost king every Monday and Wednesday before entering the underpass on my way back to Barcelona and have been meaning to take the time to photograph it.
To my surprise, the murals stretch on for nearly 200 meters (my non-metric brain estimate) until the wall ends at some type of power substation. There are a number of tags in this gallery, which I generally don’t include on this blog. these, however are quite well done and are an important part of the overall mural, so not including them didn’t seem right to me

Angry cat over layers of tags

This is another shot from the Poblenou neighborhood. This wall was once the corner of a factory that was demolished into a large dusty parking lot and community garden. This angry looking cat slapped atop what are at least three or four layers of tags is one of two walls; a corner for a room that no longer exists. On the other side of this wall the corner is filled with the green and brown glass of broken beer bottles and fragments of brick and mortar. I like to imagine that maybe the “owner” of this property commissioned the cat to be painted in an attempt to keep out intruders, after the 30 cm concrete barriers proved inadequate protection. Seems the cat, so far has been effective in keeping the taggers away, but not so for “IRINA”.