Thursday Doors – March 19, 2020
Plaça del Rei – Barcelona

These doors, as do many places in the Gothic Quarter of Old Barcelona have been witness to many historical events. The story with this particular door, which is a courtyard entrance to a former royal palace is supposedly the door the Queen Isabella came through when she delivered her commission to Christopher Columbus, on these steps, to set out to the new world.

As I travelled Spain late last summer the many crossroads of history that were a blur to me in school all came together. In the same year as Columbus set out for America (1492 AD) the final Moorish stronghold in Granada surrendered, making Spain a Christian country once more. That coupled with Columbus and future explorers conquest of the Americas set Spain up for a meteoric rise in power and wealth. It’s an absolutely fascinating period in European history that I plan to research further.

It seemed that every town we visited was a further immersion in a very interesting history that I was quite sad that I was not aware of, except at a very superficial level.