La Mercè and Barcelona
Barcelona through the eyes of Aurora Altisent
La Mercè: when Barcelona takes to the streets
Around September 24, for La Mercè, Barcelona changes its pace and fills with celebrations, music, activities, shows, tradition, and culture. The festival of La Mercè, the city's patron saint, gained new momentum in 1871, when a Major Festival was held that would eventually become the model for those still celebrated throughout Catalonia today.
For almost a week each year, La Mercè brings millions of people together around a broad cultural, artistic, and festive program, making it one of Barcelona's most popular celebrations.
During these days, the city takes to the streets, transforming its usual spaces and inviting people to explore and observe them in a different way.
Aurora Altisent, graphic chronicler of Barcelona
Among the artists who dedicated a fundamental part of their work to representing Barcelona, Aurora Altisent stands out. Born in the city in 1928, she developed a career closely linked to drawing and the representation of her urban environment. For decades, she observed its streets, squares, buildings, shops, and interiors, transforming seemingly everyday scenes into testimonies of a Barcelona in constant transformation.
Aurora Altisent - Plaça del Rei
Her work is not limited to reproducing a monumental city through its most recognizable landmarks —the Cathedral, Plaça del Rei, La Pedrera or the Sagrada Família—, but rather focuses on details.
Architecture, facades, perspectives, small shops, alleys, and less-known corners, many of which have disappeared over time, take on a special prominence in her drawings. Altisent focuses on what builds a city's identity beyond its grand monuments: its everyday spaces, its ways of life, and its small urban landscapes.
From festive Barcelona to everyday Barcelona
During La Mercè, Barcelona appears especially lively, bustling, and communal. Aurora Altisent's drawings, on the other hand, offer us a quieter and more intimate city: a Barcelona observed in its daily life, where a street, a facade, a shop, or a square can become protagonists.
And perhaps that is precisely where the interest in contemplating both images together lies.
La Mercè invites us to experience and enjoy the city; Altisent invites us to pause and observe it. One perspective shows us Barcelona in motion; the other invites us to discover it in its details.
Aurora Altisent - Rooftops (La Pedrera)
Barcelona, a city to look at again
For all these reasons, La Mercè is a good opportunity to explore the city with different eyes and pay attention not only to what happens in its streets, but also to the places that have made this celebration possible for one hundred and fifty years.
Aurora Altisent's drawings allow us to recognize many of these spaces and approach a Barcelona of another time, establishing a dialogue between the city she observed and the one we still walk through today.
Because Barcelona changes, but some of its corners, its perspectives, and its memory remain.
And Aurora Altisent's gaze reminds us that a city is also discovered when we learn to look again.
