Nugget Cache

 

 

Barcelona, July 2026:

Eddie Wildman's Report

 

The cruise liner guide read “Barcelona’s Old Port area has been transformed into a thriving area of cafes and restaurants. From there it is an easy stroll up the famous Rambla to the Old Town.” In real terms, the new port was too challenging a walk in the abnormal heat, and I took a taxi to the Gothic Quarter to begin my search. Barcelona has deteriorated over the last few years, I feel – The Ramblas is a throbbing hell of road works and barriers. I’ll not be drawn on the political situation regarding Barcelona and the tourists.

 

The basilica of Maria del Mar was stunning. It was not yet open, so I enjoyed a coffee in the square at the east end of the building with its enormous rose window. The huge stones used to build the edifice had been carried, I was informed, by the locals from the port. Stone saints frowned on the people below.

 

They had cause to disapprove. Next to the little café was a shop selling figurines of people pooping. By the doorway was a squatting statue of a traditional Catalan farm hand with dropped pants and a pile of poo. According to legend, such a figure - known as a cagener - would feature on rural Nativity scenes (I’d never noticed one) with his red cap, providing the soil with fundamental fertilisation. Nor was it the only figure on sale – President Trump along with Spain’s most celebrated footballer were depicted taking a shit. Christmas crappers to make the place look messy! I turned my back on them and admired the church’s architecture instead. I finished my coffee and walked round to the west door to gain admission.

 

The señorita who took my money pointed out the Barcelona football shield when I asked about it. It’s in the bottom central panel of a second-floor window in the south wall. At the top, equally discretely, is a stylised square and compasses. I understood that after the Spanish Civil War FC Barcelona made a donation for the restoration of the stained-glass windows. The club’s colours, scarlet and blue, are Masonic. Background reading informed me that FCF’s founder, Jean Gamper, and Rossend Arús, whom I shall mention later, were both Freemasons.

 

Incidentally, there is a parallel at home: When Manchester City (not Man U) faced a financial crisis in 1884 (they were then playing as Ardwick AFC) local Freemasons stepped in to help - the club adopted the Masonic colours of light blue and white in acknowledgement.

 

Climbing the steps was hard work, but I managed it, enjoying the view of Barcelona at seagull level. Back on the ground floor I discovered paving slabs which looked as though they may have concealed the bones of a Knight Templar, and admired the lofty embossed groined vaulting before leaving. Meanwhile the temperature outside had risen to over forty degrees.

 

I lost weight through perspiration in searching for the Castle of Three Dragons, and when I found it, it was covered in scaffolding and closed to public view. I replenished the pounds I’d shed with a local beer – delicious – and headed for the Biblioteca Arús – a legacy of Rossend Arús i Arrderu, an intellectual and cultural public library built in 1895 which reputedly houses a huge collection of Masonic books and artifacts. It is a research centre specialising in, amongst other topics, Freemasonry and the Sherlock Holmes universe, a collection of 80,000 volumes. I took a picture of the sign outside and climbed the steps to the replica Statue of Liberty on the landing.

 

(The designer of the Eiffel Tower, Frédéric August Bartholdi, a sculptor and, like Gustave Eiffel, who engineered the internal iron framework of the original, a member of the Alsace-Lorraine Lodge in Paris; the French political thinker who proposed the statue as a gift to the USA, was also on the square. The replica S of L I saw was created by the Catalan sculptor Manuel Fuxà i Leal in 1894, cast in bronze with the assistance of the Italian bronze specialist Oroardo Luis Razzuauti, but I do not think they were members of the Craft. Masonically, the Statue of Liberty represents the core Enlightenment ideals of intellectual illumination, moral law and the liberty of humanity from ignorance and tyranny.)

 

The señora at the desk wasn’t going to let me see any of the collection, however. If I cared to type in the catalogue list which volume I wished to consult, she told me, someone would fetch it for me to view. She would not entertain the idea of me actual going into the library itself, or of calling a guide to take me there. I’m sure it was because I was obviously a tourist; she was being deliberately difficult. I was too much a gentlemen to push her down the stone steps I’d ascended. But I don’t think Arús would have been impressed by her attitude.

 

I was disheartened and the heat was stifling; another local cervaza restored some of my diminishing body fluids. One more target, I decided, and I’d go back to the ship. (My list included more places to see –  the church of Santa Maria del Pi, I am told, had a lapidary slab with Masonic carvings. Bartumeu Mas was recognised as a 15th-century master stonemason and architect – responsible for the bell tower, and designer of elements  of  Santa Maria del Mar, which I’d already visited. If I come to Barcelona again, it will be a target, along with the famous skull and dagger carving on the underside of the Pont del Bisbe.

 

But I sought out the Calle Portaferrisa and risked life and limb with crazy Spanish drivers as I took a picture of the Masonic sculpture above a building which may have been a meeting place for the Masonic community and which was now the Fina Hostal. In a niche between two pillars, there is a short pedestal over which a triangle is supported. Two youthful figures, one on either side, hold a pair of compasses, a trowel and a pair of rulers.