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| Holiday in Barcelona |
 On Holiday in Barcelona you can visit the old city which is, without doubt, one of the nicest and most romantic of Europe. Its small streets, shops, the air you breathe, everything invites you to wander around, getting to know every place of this charming area. The best tip is to walk haphazardly around, without rushing, guided by what you see. Barcelona has emerged from a spotty history. With Castilian kings pumping cannonballs over the city walls and anarchists disagreeing on which shoulder to hang their rifles, the city shrank in the shadow of greater cities and powers for centuries. Though founded around 230 BC, likely by the Carthaginians, and invaded by the Visigoths and then the Muslims, the history of the city, in a sense, only truly began after armies from what is now France pushed back the Muslims in 801 AD. At the time, the plains and mountains to the northwest and north of Barcelona were populated by the people who by then could be identified as 'Catalans' (although surviving documentary references to the term only date to the 10th century). On Holiday in Barcelona you can see a numerous remains of the ancient Roman colony. They can still be admired today, such as certain parts of the fortified wall that surrounded the City, the temple of Augustus, the Necropolis, and a number of remains of structures that can be seen at the Museu d'Història de la Ciutat (underground rd and 2nd centuries BC the hills situated in the so- called "Pla de Barcelona" (plain).
The big international event to put Barcelona on the map since autonomy was the 1992 Olympics, which saw huge investment in the city and its conversion to modern European city.
On Holiday in Barcelona you can enjoy hot summers contrast with cool winters, and in August, despite the shade in the tree lined boulevards, locals desert the city for the coastal resorts to escape the heat. While the first temptation is to find a bar with tables outside in the sunshine and an ice cold beer, a few days spent in the heat has most people wanting to head for somewhere cooler. The beaches south of Barcelona at Castelldefels, Sitges and Vilanova are easy to get to by train, while further south towards Tarragona the Costa Daurada offers miles of beaches. Also The Costa Brava to the north offers many picturesque opportunities to lie back on the sand and work on a tan. Montserrat is only 40 kilometers (30 miles) inland from Barcelona.
If you decide to go around Spain the most famous events in Spain are the Bull Running, Flamenco and the ‘Tomatina’ Tomato fights. The Bull Running in Spain is every year from July 7th-14th thousands pack into Pamplona to start Spain's most famous bull-running fiesta to honour Navarre capital's patron saint, San Fermin. Spain stages more than 3,000 fiestas (festivals) each year but the 7 days of bull-running are the favourite in terms of spectacle and excitement.
After the daybreak of July 7th, runners (mainly young men) gather at the bottom of Santo Domingo, which is the starting line. They crowd together and sing to the image of San Fermin which is placed in a niche on a wall. Then, as a rocket goes off, a number of fighting bulls are let out onto the streets. A second rocket is then let off to make sure everyone knows the bulls are loose in the street. The bulls run along the narrow street 825 meters (half a mile) to a bull ring. The runners dash along in front of the bulls, aiming to feel the breath of the bull on their backs, getting as close as possible - all whilst trying to avoid getting gored by their sharp horns.
When the bulls finally reach the end of the street, they go into pens and are kept until later that day they are killed in a bullfight.
The tradition is said to have come from practicality when, in 1591 residents merely had to herd the bulls to the bull-fighting arena. As time passed the event became more and more popular and some people began to run in front of the bulls and not behind them, as the drovers do. Originally only a few daring souls ran with the bulls but the adrenaline rush of running in front of a 1500lb bull has since caught on. People now journey from all around the world to run with the bulls.
Flamenco is a folk art, around 200 years old. It is from Southern Spain and is individualistic, yet structured. Song, dance and guitar are blended into passionate rhythms which are often improvised and spontaneous. Flamenco will have any imaginable theme, from up to date stories, to politics, to love, to history, to humor, etc. Often however, the tragic lyrics and tone of flamenco reflect the sufferings of the gypsy people from whom it originated
Today the solo guitar flamenco has developed into a separate art and is fashionably blended with jazz, blues and pop music.
The 'Tomatina' Tomato Fight surely the worlds' biggest food-fight: every year around 3 000 people descend on the Spanish town of Bunol (in the Valencia region of Spain) to throw more than 240,000 pounds of tomatoes at each other.
The festival is started with a ham-on-a-stick contest where competitors raced up a pole to retrieve a smoked leg of ham. When the ham is cut down, people put on eye protection and cry for tomatoes as trucks dump the squishy produce onto the village streets. They then proceed to pelt each other with them until all have been used up.
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