Monument Toibin

In 1983 Barcelona built its monument to Picasso in Passeig de Picasso, beside the Parc de la Ciutadella. It was designed by Antoni Tapies as a glass box in a pool of water containing some old chairs and an old hall-​stand, old ropes and sheets with indecipherable messages written on them. All the furniture is cut through with iron grids. It is an astonishing piece of work. It stands there as a monument the mind’s ability to create images, to our freedom to imagine.
While Tóibín has obviously failed to convert me to surrealist art, I’m sure I’ll be referring back to his book, not only when I revisit Barcelona to visit the places I missed this time round, but as I’m reading my way through the Spanish literature TBR that had amassed prior to my visit. I had to abandon Manuel Rivas’s Books Burn Badly because there were too many unrecognised cultural references. I think that Homage to Barcelona may have resolved many of those difficulties for me.