During his 1996 trip to Spain, the Monkey climbed to the top of Montjuic, a hill overlooking Barcelona. Montjuic is a sprawling city park featuring numerous attractions including an old fort with views over the sea and city, the Olympic Stadium, cablecars, and the Joan Miro Museum. The building behind the Monkey in this foggy photo is the Catalan National Art Museum.

El Mono rests in a park by Barcelona's Arc de Triomf. The brick arch was designed by Josep Vilaseca y Casanovas to serve as a ceremonial entryway to the grounds of Barcelona's 1888 Exposition.

The Monkey tours the hilly grounds of the 1929 Exposition, which Barcelona hosted in conjunction with Sevilla's 1929 Ibero-American Exposition. In the distance are some of Barcelona's high-rise buildings, and in front of them lies Plaza España, which, likely for Catalan nationalist reasons, is much smaller than Plaza Catalunya.

It was at the 1929 Expo that the relatively unknown German architect called Ludwig Mies van der Rohe made a name for himself with his German Pavilion. Mies made startling use of perpendicular lines, polished stone walls, floor-to-ceiling windows, and a steel skeleton that resulted in a light, airy interior. The one storey pavilion was one of the first Modern buildings, and became the sensation of the Exposition. Lamentably, the German Pavilion was torn down in 1930 just after the Expo. But owing to continued interest in the structure, in 1959 an exact replica of Mies' German Pavilion was erected at the Expo site and visitors could tour it once again. The Monkey forgot to get a photo there, but you can check out more of Mies' later works, where he applied the same principles to larger and multi-storey works, on the Monkey's Chicago pages.

The Monkey checks the handiwork along the Passeig da Graça, a stately boulevard leading away from Plaza Catalunya into the Eixample. The street is lined with Beaux-Artes and Art Nouveau buildings, including Antoni Gaudi's Pedrera.

Home to Espanyol, Barcelona's other football club (aside from Barcelona FC), the Olympic Stadium atop Montjuic was the centerpiece of Barcelona's highly successful 1992 Summer Olympic Games. The American football goalposts seen behind the Monkey here were in place for a game of the U.S. National Football League's cross-Atlantic venture, the NFL Europe. The Olympic Stadium is also home to the NFL Europe's Barcelona Dragons.

A blurry shot of the Monkey in front of the Catalan National Art Museum.

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