Day 4 Barcelona, May 31

May 31, 2026

Today we kind of chilled. Stayed in bed until 9 am (went to bed at midnight last night) and left our hotel room around noon to visit Mountjuic, which is a “hill” in Barcelona. The name means “Jewish Mountain” in medieval Latin and Catalan. Some describe it as a broad, shallow hill with a rich history. The “hill” is 173 meters or about 568 feet.

There is surprisingly little information out about where that name comes from. The history of Jewish people in Barcelona echoes the experience in many cities across Europe. In the late 14th Century, the Jewish population was around 15% of the city’s total. That came to a violent end in 1391 with pogroms, persecution and forced conversion. There wasn’t a sizeable Jewish population again until the late 19th Century. Others can’t say definitely if Montjuïc was home to a Jewish community; it seems to be just a Jewish cemetery that gave the hill its name.

Some history of Jews in Barcelona: The Jewish Quarter, known as El Call, is a labyrinthine networks of streets nestled in the heart of the Gothic Quarter. Flourishing from the 9th to 14th centuries, this historic area was one of the most prominent Jewish centers in the Iberian Peninsula; it was an intellectual and cultural powerhouse, home to the influential 13th-century Rabbi and scholar Salomo Bed Adret (Rashba). A dark turning point occurred in 1391 when anti-Jewish riots devastated the quarter, killing an estimated 300 Jews. The remaining community was forced to convert. The ultimate blow came in 1492 with the royal degree that expelled all professing Jews from Spain

A few more historical facts about Barcelona: The Gothic Quarter (Barri Gòtic) is the historic heart of Barcelona, spanning over 2,000 years. It began as the Roman settlement of Barcino during the reign of Emperor Augustus. It flourished into a medieval maritime powerhouse. It was a compact, walled city featuring traditional Roman grid streets. We spotted several places where the portions of massive, defensive Roman walls remain.

We took the cable car up to the top of the hill to the castle. It is an old military fortress with roots dating back from 1640: it was constructed at the beginning of the Reaper Revolte on Corpus Christi Day (June 7, 1640), in which the viceroy was murdered. The real reason for the revolt of peasants and harvest workers (Reapers) was against the Castilian King Felipe IV because he stationed Castilian troops and oppressive feudal lords during the Franco-Spanish classes during the Thirty Years’ War. The conflict against the Spanish king continued beyond the end of the Thirty Years' War.

There’s a lot more history to the castle that you can Google if you want to learn more, but the Castell de Montjuïc became a symbol of oppression at the time of the Spanish Civil War and the time under Franco. Between 1936 and 1938 alone, 173 people were executed, the president of the Generalitat de Catalunya, Lluís Companys, on October 15, 1940 was one of them.

As a symbol of oppression, the castle was restored for the 1992 Olympic games and made accessible to the public. Mountjuic was the focal point of the 1992 Olympics and home to the main sporting infrastructure such as the Olympic Stadium and the sports arena, the Palau Sant Jordi.

We did not visit the Olympic sites nor did we go inside the castle. Our goal for the day was to get somewhere above the din of Barcelona. Mountjuic also is a great urban park, and you can see the city, the sea, the harbor, the Conserolla massif and the airport. We looked over the harbor and the east portion of Barcelona before finding a nice shady bench to sit and relax. We did see a Monk Parakeet (Quaker parrot). They’re huge!

We’re beginning to experience some traveler fatigue, so we came back to our hotel and napped. We’re meeting Sandy and Deb tonight for paella, then we’re up early tomorrow for a Montserrat full-day tour with a farmhouse lunch and winery visit.