Spain's Favorite City

Girona is consistently rated - by Spaniards - as the most desirable place in Spain to live. Quite an endorsement, given the competition: sophisticated Madrid... elegant Barcelona... fun-loving Seville... golden Salamanca... fertile Valencia...

The three things to see while you're here are: Girona Cathedral, the Arab Baths, and the Jewish quarter.

As you cross the river Onyar, which bisects the city, you enter the Barri Vell, the beautifully-preserved old quarter. As with many Spanish towns, the main artery of life is the Rambla, a pedestrianized boulevard; in Girona, it runs along the east bank of the Onyar, and it's here you'll find people at any hour of the day ambling among the designer boutiques and bookstores that line the street (Girona has more shops per person than anywhere else in Spain) or taking their ease at one of the numerous bars and cafes that intersperse them.

Behind the Rambla the streets narrow and start to climb, spreading out like ivy on a wall across the fortified hill on which the Barri Vell is built. Towering in imperious dominion over them, on a pedestal of sun-bleached flagstones, stands Girona's 15th-century cathedral.

Stepping through the doors into the hushed twilight within, the initial sense is of the scale of the structure. There are no aisles, just a cavernous vaulted interior; the second-widest nave in the world, surpassed only by St. Peter's in Rome.

Slightly north of the cathedral, on carrer Ferran el Catolic, are the Banys Arabs (Arab baths) - actually a 12th-century Romanesque construction on a Moorish design - which tip a hat to Girona's two centuries of Arab occupation.

El Call, to the south, was a thriving Jewish quarter that sprang up during the ninth century. However, persecution in succeeding centuries turned the area into a ghetto, until the Jews were finally expelled from Spain en masse in 1492, following the Christian Reconquest. Today, the Centre Bonastruc ca Porta, on carrer St Llorenc, provides a fascinating insight into Girona's Jewish history.

In more modern times, Gironins as a whole were to suffer their own share of repression, this time at the hands of General Franco, who sought to wipe out all sense of Catalan identity by banning use of the language and any manifestation of its independent culture. Roaming around the lovingly restored medieval streets and squares, savoring the palpable joie de vivre of Girona's inhabitants, I'm thankful he failed.

Paul Allen
for International Living.