The Rambles and Rumbles off La Ramblas

After the market we strolled down La Rambla or Les Rambles (Catalan) it is an iconic and busy street in central Barcelona, popular with both tourists and locals alike. The name La Rambla means, in Spanish and Catalan, an intermittent ( Sporadic or irregular) water flow, and is derived from the Arabic 'Ramla' which means 'sandy riverbed'. Barcelona moves, it lives, it throbs, and in no place does it throb harder and faster than along Las Ramblas. For sure it serves as the flowing emotional hub of Barcelona.... 

It is a 1.2 km long road, running from the Plaça Catalunya to the harbor. It's really more of a promenade than a road, the cars being restricted to two narrow strips of tar on either side of a wide pedestrian walkway. 

It's this central spot that provides the entertainment, as it is perpetually filled with strolling people and a collection of street entertainers. most of whom, in fact, don't actually do anything. Las Ramblas, you see, is particularly well known for its human statues. You can find human statues in most major cities—in many cases, being a human statue is the last refuge of the talentless street performer: "I can't sing or dance, but I can paint myself green and pretend to be a tree." There are certainly plenty of this type of human statue along Las Ramblas (including one who pretends to be a tree), but you can also find those who take human-statuing to unexpected heights. 

For example, there is the guy who is painted all in black with specks of gold and is wearing wings. I assume he's some kind of ambiguous angel, but whatever he is, it's just beautiful. Really. And then there's the guy who has built an ornate structure out of rubbish, all painted a kind of copper color, and who paints himself the same kind of copper color, then melts into his own sculpture. 

The best sculpture’s dont move, whereas the less artistic human statues tend to ham it up for picture-snapping tourists. 

Besides those already noted, I google reasearched a brief list of Las Ramblas's human statues on a weekend in August (admittedly the height of human-statue season) includes: Julius Caesar
The devil ; 
A very white guy ; 
Mickey Mouse ; 
Che Guevara ; 
2 Korean soldiers ; 
A cowboy ; 
A cowgirl; 
Several Indians ; 
A guy in an electric chair ; 
A guy manning the wheel on a ship... and, of course, lots of Egyptian statues and the like. 


If you're looking for performing artists who actually perform, then you're better off checking the streets of the Bari Gotica, the section of the old town just to the east of Las Ramblas. This is a fantastic maze of tiny, winding streets that contains the nicest square in Barcelona, the Plaça Real. This is actually not as old as it looks (nor as old as the surrounding streets), but it fits right in. It consists of a large open space bordered by arcaded sidewalks. It also has palm trees planted in it. That's nice. 

Around the edges are a number of trendy cafés and restaurants, all of which have seating that extends out into the central plaza. On a summer's evening, all manner of performing artists come to dance and prance and sing and play. Most of them, it must be said, are pretty bad. ..We walked and explored for what i seeme like an eternity but in fact it was just a short few hours… All of this enevetably lead us to the Quiet Beast lurking around the corner : The Cathedral