"Beginning in September 1991 journalist Schweid ( Catfish and the Delta ) spent a year in Barcelona, and his reporter's notebook provides a consistently interesting mosaic of the city. As the title suggests, one theme is Spain's historically tortured relationship with Jews, culminating in their expulsion in 1492; he explores their present-day isolation in such a Christian country and probes tensions between the Moroccan and Argentine factions of the community. Another theme is sex: Schweid tracks the demimonde of transvestites and transsexuals in a country where sex was for a long time strictly regulated, and explains how Franco-era tourism opened the gates to more permissive mores. Schweid devotes relatively little attention to the Olympic preparations, but his sketches of Barcelona's many facets and characters provide a fuller portrait of the city: the struggles of immigrant workers, the absurdities of rent control, the shifting policies toward drug use during the AIDS epidemic, the intricate etiquette of food shopping."
Publisher's Weekly
Publisher's Weekly
