Walking La Rambla with Sartre

I arrived Barcelona with some anxiety

Writer Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) is one of the most prominent feminist theorists of the 20th century. Her relationship with Barcelona goes back to 1931. That year she visited the city accompanied by her partner, philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. Curiously, Beauvoir would remember the amount of chocolate, nougat and cakes she ate. She also appreciated , "how both mixed with the walkers of Les Ramblas", a street they perceived impregnated with an "unusual agitation".

Simone de Beauvoir’s sister accompanied the couple to Barcelona for a few days. Their father, writer Georges de Beauvoir, had mentioned Barcelona years ago, in a school song alluding Barcelonians’ chic way of walking. Regarding Sartre, he would confess in his novel Nausea (1938) how he liked to "go down and up through La Rambla a hundred times, at night".

The author of The Second Sex (1949) would revisit the city in 1955. However, this time she did it with her lover: film director Claude Lanzmann. In her memories highlights a bullfight in which locals were delighted with Antonio Borrero Morano, better known as Chamaco. Beauvoir explained all these experiences in two memoirs: The Fulness of life and The Force of circumstance. In the end, she visited the Tibidabo and Montserrat mountains. They were a mandatory stop getaway for her.