The Barcelona of The Shadow of the Wind

In case you have not read the book, I will do my best NOT to give anything away. I will, however, give those who like me have the Zafon itch (and yes, I do consider it a strange kind of exotic disease) a chance to see the book through his eyes. Unless otherwise noted, the locations mentioned in the book are real places - real streets, real churches, real cemeteries, and real buildings. Although we could not always identify the actual building numbers of these locations, these are the actual streets where Zafon, Daniel, and Julian walked... Welcome to Barcelona.

"I still remember the day my father took me to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books for the first time... we walked through the streets of a Barcelona trapped beneath ashen skies as dawn poured over Rambla de Santa Monica... When we reached Calle Arco del Teatro, we continued through its arch toward the Raval quarter, entering a vault of blue haze...

...I followed my father through that narrow lane, more of a scar than a street, until the glimmer of the Ramblas faded behind us."

"Shortly after the Civil War, an outbreak of cholera had taken my mother away. We buried her in Montjuic on my fourth birthday."

"My father and I lived in a modest apartment [directly above the bookshop] on Calle Santa Anna...

...a stone's throw away from the church square."

"[Gustavo Barcelo,] the bookseller and his niece shared a palatial apartment in Plaza Real."

"'Are you all right?' asked [the beggar] in the shadow... He took me by the arm and led me to a corner under the arches [in the Plaza Real] where he kept a bundle of possessions and a bag with old, dirty clothes."

"[Clara's] father, a prominent lawyer linked to the Catalan president's cabinet, had had the foresight to send his wife and daughter to the other side of the border at the start of the Civil War... For a few months he wrote a letter to his wife and daughter once a week. At first he did it from his office on Calle Diputacion, but later his letters had no return address. In the end he wrote secretly, from a cell in Montjuic Castle, into which no one saw him go and from which, like countless others, he would never come out."

"Plaza de San Felipe Neri is like a small breathing space in the maze of streets that crisscross the Gothic quarter, hidden behind the old Roman walls. The holes left by machine-gun fire during the war pockmark the church walls...

... The address showed that Nuria Monfort lived in a building by the entrance to the square... Nuria Monfort lived adrift in shadows... The entire apartment was sunk in perpetual gloom."

"Dawn was breaking, and a purple blade of light cut through the clouds, spraying its hue over the fronts of mansions and the stately homes that bordered Avenida del Tibidabo. A blue tram was crawling lazily uphill in the mist."

"The Aldaya residence was on the opposite side of the street, guarded by a large wrought-iron gate woven with ivy and dead leaves...

...I tried to peer into the property from there but could only make out the angles and arches of a dark tower."

And for those of you who have read the second book (which I unfortunately do not have with me in Paris...), here are some views from the gondola above the city. You know what happens there...