The Spanish Town

Sitting on a pavement bench and watching the passing parade has long been one of the leisurely joys of civilized living. However, with the introduction of the car and the ubiquitous bitumen, people-watching on western boulevards often comes with a disturbing dose of noise and fumes.

This is not the case in the old towns and villages of Europe, where the Roman town plan is still predominant. Incorporating a closed complex of car-free laneways and plaza´s, it provides places for the population to enjoy a community lifestyle.

Vilanova i la Geltru, a Catalan port town an hour south of Barcelona, has a town plan that includes all of the classic features of European cities: a central “Rambla Principal” running from the oldest and largest church in the centre of town down to the port; an “old city” (the “Geltru” of the town´s name), many closely interlaced lanes, some with shops and restaurants and others solely residential, and occasional plaza´s and squares, attractively paved and often with fountains, either as centre pieces or simply for drinking water.

Whiling away the hours in the cool of the evening during the summer, observing the effect on the culture of these car-free rambla´s and plaza´s, I came to see the genius of this style of city plan. In Australia, community living occurs in designated places that are more activity centred: the sports ground, the park, the beach, or the church, are some examples. The town plan is based on suburbs with relatively large, free standing houses, situated along relatively wide streets along which fast moving cars frequently pass. Hence cultural life inevitably centres more in the house, especially if the house has a patio and a back yard.

There is not the same opportunity for regular, casual, or serendipitous meetings of fellow townspeople as there is if you live in a relatively small apartment above a safe and pleasant plaza, which might also include a couple of bars and cafes in which to partake of a snack and a drink with friends.

The essential difference is that a plan inspired by the walled village of the Roman and medieval periods manifests in a town whereby there is an inversion of the new world´s conception of inside and outside. In Spain the village itself is an edifice. The plaza below your window is like a large common room, a secure, closed environment with a leafy canopy for a ceiling, having as its furniture not only bench seats but groups of single chairs fixed to the pavement in a haphazard manner, as if a group of friends each pulled up a chair in a café or pub. In these plaza´s you are in a sense still “inside”.

Like a lounge room, it is protected and intimate, walled on all sides by apartment blocks, with doors represented by lane ways leading off to other plaza´s. Being so important a space in the daily lives of the citizens, a lot of attention and work is put into the “interior design” of the plaza´s. The patterned tiled pavements, magnificent facades of fronting apartment buildings, often modernist or Art Nouveau, creative ironwork balconies like laced curtains, centre piece statutes and fountains, and small trees like interior potted plants, all reminiscent of a covered interior courtyard.

And so you have the town built to accommodate the immediate human needs of a community: the rambla for leisurely exercise, outdoor café´s for a snack or a drink, and the various squares and plaza´s to sit and watch the passing parade, or to socialise with companions. It is often more likely that your small apartment will be for audio-visual entertainment and sleeping, with your cultural and dietary needs being met in the plaza below.