Welcome to Barcelona

...As might be expected, toy versions of Pep-Juliân the Olympup occupy pride of place on the list of gifts young Catalan children have sent the Magi...

...Insularity and inferiority complexes breed where talents wilt...

...Yet, despite the sprawling conurbation, embracing well over 3 million people, Barcelona is not a crushing anonymous place...

...As a senior official of the Generalität told me recently, "We all studied together, we all took part in the same anti-Franco demonstrations in our youth...

...Catalans also dutifully send each other Crismases—greeting cards...

...Northwest of the city, the local authorities are trying to attract hightech industries to what they hope will become a Catalan Silicon Valley...

...The Catalan tradition of receptivity to outside influence does not clash with a tendency to consider Catalonia a nation that historical bad luck has demoted to amereregion of Spain...

...The sight of this roof being pumped up on hydraulic pillars— an unprecedented technical feat for so large a construction—was fitting in acity where, just over a century ago, Antonio Gaudi was starting work on a stillunfinished cathedral that was to break new architectural ground...

...The fact that one of the architects working on the construction being done to accommodate the Olympics comes from Japan stirs no passions here...

...Railway lines and stations are being buried out of sight and sound...

...The city's Olympic mascot is also Catalan-born...

...Romans were the first builders of Barcelona...

...The feeling is that the countdown has really begun...

...Looking ahead to 1992, when trade barriers are scheduled to crumble within the European Community, Catalonia is streamlining its textile, car production and chemical industries, while rapidly expanding in areas such as services and electronics...

...The logo for an international design exhibition currently being held in Barcelona—a chair by Gaudi—and the work of several local designers illustrate the city's tradition of creativity in furnishings and interior decoration...

...Inescapably, its share of pollution, poverty and other urban problems has grown...

...But this Catalan city's celebration of light and rebirth seems to glow with a special magic, perhaps because the mild Mediterranean winter invites visitors to linger in the streets after dark and discover how Barcelona has spliced together tradition and a modern, imported English-style Christmas...

...In Paris and New York, meanwhile, a young Catalan painter, Miquel Barceló, has been wowing fans of contemporary art as he timidly treads in the footsteps of such famous Catalan artists as Joan Mirò and Salvador Dali...

...In late November, the Mayor took time off from bickering over the city's annual budget with his Socialist-Communist administration to watch a domed roof being lifted atop one of the new Olympic stadiums...

...Thousands of people gathered there to celebrate when Francisco Franco, Spain's dictator, died in 1975...

...Socialist Mayor Pasqual Maragall has worked hard to improve the environment...

...A French brochure publicizing a project for a new tunnel in the Pyrenees points out that it will improve communications between Toulouse and Barcelona and provide "the shortest route to Catalonia and the future...

...The biggest demonstrations that have taken place in Spain since Franco's death—for regional power, for democracy, against terrorist violence—were held in Barcelona, amid a peaceful dignity that awed non-Catalans...

...Across the border in France, Toulouse and Montpellier look with admiration toward Barcelona...

...In contrast, Christmas is a relative newcomer to Spain...

...Control of industrial refuse has allowed bathers to return to beaches long closed...

...Today, plastic fir trees, polystyrene snow, carols sung in Catalan, and Santa Claus with his cottonwool beard are part of the December scenery...

...Rivalry is strong between Mayor Maragall and Catalonia's Right-of-Center Prime Minister Jordi Pujol, yet backstage relations between the two men and their teams are cordial...

...For the locals, the Rambla is where you meet for an evening paseo, to let off steam against the authorities, to mourn or rejoice over a major event...

...One of the first cities it reached was Barcelona, two decades ago...

...The lop-profiled pooch, whose Scottie stoutness should comfort unathletic members of the Olympic public, has been baptized "Julian" because the games will take place in July —Juli in Catalan...

...Agift of ubiquity enables the Magi to arrive simultaneously in each town and village of Spain where, after being greeted by the population, they are believed to slip quietly into the houses during the night, leaving presents for children to discover in the morning...

...Janice Valls-Russell writes about French and Spanish affairs for the NL...

...Squeezed between hills and the sea in a way that enables its inhabitants to sympathize with Israel's wasp-waist syndrome, the city has spread north and south as it could...

...And, of course, we're all Catalans, even those among us born in the south of Spain...

...A more suitable name for this provocative pup might be Pep, the internationally pronounceable diminutive of the Catalan name Josep...

...GETTING READY FOR THE OLYMPICS Welcome to Barcelona BY JANICE VALLS-RUSSELL Barcelona Like sparks that have leaped from blazing shop windows, tiny lights twinkle through the trees along the sidewalks here...

...All this seemingly shimmering lava flows toward the sea, itself starred with the lights of ships in the harbor...

...Off the main thoroughfares one finds unexpected pools of peace and dim lights, such as the quarter around the Gothic cathedral...

...The political class is similarly urbane...

...Pale bulbs strung across avenues form rows of pearls against the night-blue sky while on the roads belo w a red-white dazzle of autolamps periodically parts to go around illuminated fountains, their waters pink, yellow, green...

...Jeans-and-camera tourists drift there...

...Several international companies have their Spanish headquarters in Barcelona...

...The city has known nearly two years now that it would host the games—it naturally celebrated the news with a big fiesta on the Rambla and the adjoining Plaça de Catalunya —but a mood of suppressed excitement has been palpable since this summer's Olympics in Seoul...

...It is a simultaneously full-muzzle-and-profile dog à la Picasso, designed by Xavier Mariscal, a Walt Disney fan...

...From a mural at the city's airport to a central square where blue monsters raise their ceramic heads above palm trees, Mirò has left his vivid mark on Barcelona...

...The Rambla is the magnet of Barcelona...

...sailors and immigrants discover it on stepping off their ships...

...Asaresult, this is a favorite place with foreign investors seeking a foothold in the country...

...Pedestrians and cars are both catered to on broad avenues where eyecatching skyscrapers and convoluted turn-ofthe-century buildings somehow avoid jarring with the demure elegance of older next-door neighbors...

...Jews founded its first university...

...If Catalans know how to receive outsiders with a relaxed welcome, it is in part because they have so much of their own to offer...

...Catalan will be one of the official languages at the 1992 Olympic Games, which will be held in Barcelona...

...Every year on the evening of January 5, thousands of Barcelonese flock with their excited children to La Rambla—a tree-lined avenue leading down to the sea—to cheer an ornate procession headed by the Three Wise Men from the East, whom Spaniards have elevated to the rankof kings...

...A walk past the discreet palaces that house the City Council and the Generalitat (the regional government of Catalonia), facing each other across a quiet square, leads to the exuberant garishness of the Rambla, where the Opera House tries to ignore the striptease nightclubs further down the street...

...During the last years of his life, he supported events like the creation of an all-Catalan daily newspaper and an encyclopedia by producing posters with his distinctive blobs and stars of primary colors...

...Modernization of the harbor and a reorganization of its activities is permitting strollers to reclaim the seafront, as quaysides become promenades...

...Artistically, too, Barcelona ranks well ahead of many European cities— excepting Paris, London and Rome...

...Catalans have a strongly-developed collective sixth sense...

...So it is fitting that a design of his isbeingusedtocall attention to the Barcelona games...

...Natives took it for granted...

...Language, not race, creates togetherness: Eight years of teaching and television broadcasting in Catalan as well as Spanish have produced a bilingual society...

...More than Christmas has changed here over the past 20 years...

...Barcelona is not the only place in Spain to throw budgetary caution to the winds at Christmas...