Travel in Europe

Before his death, José Enrique Rodó (1871-1917) visited Europe and wrote Viajes por Europa. He was in Portugal and was interested in the relations of that country with Latin America, he was also in Spain and praised the Catalan industriousness.
He also visited Italy. He wanted to verify on the ground that the messages of his famous Americanist books marked the belonging to the spiritual citizenship of ancient Rome, classical and Christian.

“Within so characteristic and energetic a national unity, Italy offers the most interesting and copious variety of aspects and forms that any people can present to the attention of the traveler; And this variety is manifested by the harmony, truly unique, of its cities. There is no nation in the world of as many cities as Italy. Great nations exist that do not count a single city; Great nations with populous capitals and overflowing with animation and wealth. Because a “city” is a spiritual value, a collective physiognomy, a persistent and creative character. The city can be large or small, rich or poor, active or static; but it is recognized in that it has a spirit, in that it realizes an idea, and that this idea and that spirit harmoniously relate what is done in it, from the way in which the stones are ordered to the tone with which men speak.”

Rodó then stops in Barcelona and makes a memorable literary portrait of the city and its people:

“Superb and beautiful she is, who doubts it? modern Barcelona. Looking at the height of the Valvidriera or Tibidabo where he used to go in the afternoons, dominate, in vast panorama, the stretched metropolis, and appear together the magnitude of its development and the magnificence of its construction, in which profuse lights respond to the fall of the shadows, like an immense assault of cocuyos. Of the two cities that can dispute the principality of the Mediterranean and that I have seen later: Marseilles and Genoa, the Provençal seemed to me more populous and active; the Ligurian, of more typical originality; but Barcelona is neater, more exquisite, more “composed”. I confess, however, that what has preferably captivated my attention in modern Barcelona is not the monumental arrogance, nor the splendors of the street, but those things, of modest appearance, which testify to the spiritual activity of the living generations.”

Viajes por Europa is another of the travel books of Latin Americans in Europe and the world that we have published. This work by José Enrique Rodó is also his intellectual testament. In it he fulfills, at the end of his life, his desire to know the Old Continent and understand it.