'MUSEU AGBAR DE LES AIGÜES', WATER ORIGIN OF LIFE

Arriving to the Museu Agbar de les Aigües

Today, The Grandma has visited the Museu Agbar de les Aigües in Cornellà de Llobregat, a city near Barcelona. She has not gone alone because she has accompanied to her closer friend Mayte, who is a great photographer and has taken all the photos that appear on this post.

Last September, Mayte and The Grandma visited Casa Vicens, the first Antoni Gaudí's house built in Barcelona. During their visit, they discovered that there was something that had disappeared from the original structure of this Modernist house, its waterfall.

In 2017, this waterfall was reconstructed inside the Museu Agbar de les Aigües and Mayte and The Grandma have wanted to visit it to homage the greatest Modernist architect of all times and to remember the importance of water in our lives.

During the trip from Barcelona to Cornellà by tram, The Grandma has read a new chapter of Clare West's Treading on Dreams-Stories from Ireland.

The Museu Agbar de les Aigües is a fresh water pumping station and a museum in Cornellà de Llobregat, Barcelona.

The museum is an Anchor point on the European Route of Industrial Heritage.

The plant was designed to raise water from the Llobregat aquifer. The museum interprets water and its properties, the history of water extraction and distribution. On site there is lots of machinery including the 1909 stationary steam engines.

The European Route of Industrial Heritage (ERIH) is a network, theme route, of the most important industrial heritage sites in Europe. This is a tourism industry information initiative to present a network of industrial heritage sites across Europe. The aim of the project is to create interest for the common European Heritage of the Industrialisation and its legacy.

Contemplating Antoni Gaudí's waterfall

ERIH also wants to promote regions, towns and sites showing the industrial history and market them as visitor attractions in the leisure and tourism industry.

The concept of using a European Route of Industrial Heritage was born in 1999; it was recognised there had be no single event to shape the European landscape greater than the industrial revolution. That changed the working culture of all Europeans, and gave common experiences to communities across Europe whether it be deep mine coal working in the Rühr or South Wales.

Four countries, Great Britain, Belgian, Germany and the Netherlands successfully applied for EU Interreg IIC (North-Western Europe) funding to draw up a master plan. The plan demonstrates the economic potential as a primarily marketing brand. It also shows a possible structure. Its reasoning was that many individual sites had great footfall others had a very low profile. They used the analogy of small shops gathering together in large shopping centres for joint promotion. In the language of EU proposals the hubs are called anchor points; these could be cities or existing industrial sites with a developed tourism infrastructure.

With the plan adopted its implementation was funded by Interreg IIIB-north-western Europe, and the scheme rolled out; starting in the northwest and progressing south and east.

ERIH is a registered association under German law. When funding ran out there were 850 member attractions which has risen to 1,850 sites across the EU28 countries.

In October 2014 further funding was obtained from the EU Creative Europe progamme. The European Route of Industrial Heritage has been a Cultural Route of the Council of Europe since 2019.

More information: Museu Agbar de les Aigües-Fundació Agbar

Water is an inorganic, transparent, tasteless, odorless, and nearly colorless chemical substance, which is the main constituent of Earth's hydrosphere, and the fluids of most living organisms.

It is vital for all known forms of life, even though it provides no calories or organic nutrients. Its chemical formula is H2O, meaning that each of its molecules contains one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms, connected by covalent bonds.

Water is the name of the liquid state of H2O at standard ambient temperature and pressure. It forms precipitation in the form of rain and aerosols in the form of fog. Clouds are formed from suspended droplets of water and ice, its solid state. When finely divided, crystalline ice may precipitate in the form of snow. The gaseous state of water is steam or water vapor.

Mayte visits the Museu Agbar de les Aigües

Water moves continually through the water cycle of evaporation, transpiration, condensation, precipitation, and runoff, usually reaching the sea.

Water covers 71% of the Earth's surface, mostly in seas and oceans. Small portions of water occur as groundwater (1.7%), in the glaciers and the ice caps of Antarctica and Greenland (1.7%), and in the air as vapor, clouds (formed of ice and liquid water suspended in air), and precipitation (0.001%).

Water plays an important role in the world economy. Approximately 70% of the freshwater used by humans goes to agriculture. Fishing in salt and fresh water bodies is a major source of food for many parts of the world. Much of long-distance trade of commodities, such as oil and natural gas, and manufactured products is transported by boats through seas, rivers, lakes, and canals. Large quantities of water, ice, and steam are used for cooling and heating, in industry and homes.

Water is an excellent solvent for a wide variety of substances both mineral and organic; as such it is widely used in industrial processes, and in cooking and washing.

Water, ice and snow are also central to many sports and other forms of entertainment, such as swimming, pleasure boating, boat racing, surfing, sport fishing, diving, ice skating and skiing.

More information: Casa Vicens

Water (H2O) is a polar inorganic compound that is at room temperature a tasteless and odorless liquid, nearly colorless with a hint of blue. This simplest hydrogen chalcogenide is by far the most studied chemical compound and is described as the universal solvent for its ability to dissolve many substances. This allows it to be the solvent of life. It is the only common substance to exist as a solid, liquid, and gas in normal terrestrial conditions.

Water is a liquid at the temperatures and pressures that are most adequate for life. Specifically, at a standard pressure of 1 atm, water is a liquid between 0 and 100 °C. Increasing the pressure slightly (−8 °F) at 2100 atm. This effect is relevant, for example, to ice skating, to the buried lakes of Antarctica, and to the movement of glaciers. At pressures higher than 2100 atm the melting point rapidly increases again, and ice takes several exotic forms that do not exist at lower pressures.

Increasing the pressure has a more dramatic effect on the boiling point, that is about 374 °C at 220 atm. This effect is important in, among other things, deep-sea hydrothermal vents and geysers, pressure cooking, and steam engine design. At the top of Mount Everest, where the atmospheric pressure is about 0.34 atm, water boils at 68 °C.

Mayte visits the Museu Agbar de les Aigües

At very low pressures, below about 0.006 atm, water cannot exist in the liquid state and passes directly from solid to gas by sublimation -a phenomenon exploited in the freeze drying of food. At very high pressures above 221 atm, the liquid and gas states are no longer distinguishable, a state called supercritical steam.

Water also differs from most liquids in that it becomes less dense as it freezes. The maximum density of water in its liquid form at 1 atm is 1,000 kg/m3; that occurs at 3.98 °C. The density of ice is 917 kg/m3. Thus, water expands 9% in volume as it freezes, which accounts for the fact that ice floats on liquid water.

The details of the exact chemical nature of liquid water are not well understood; some theories suggest that the unusual behaviour of water is due to the existence of 2 liquid states.

Pure water is usually described as tasteless and odorless, although humans have specific sensors that can feel the presence of water in their mouths, and frogs are known to be able to smell it. However, water from ordinary sources -including bottled mineral water- usually has many dissolved substances, that may give it varying tastes and odors. Humans and other animals have developed senses that enable them to evaluate the potability of water by avoiding water that is too salty or putrid.

More information: How Stuff Works

The apparent color of natural bodies of water -and swimming pools- is often determined more by dissolved and suspended solids, or by reflection of the sky, than by water itself.

Light in the visible electromagnetic spectrum can traverse a couple meters of pure water or ice without significant absorption, so that it looks transparent and colorless. Thus aquatic plants, algae, and other photosynthetic organisms can live in water up to hundreds of meters deep, because sunlight can reach them. Water vapour is essentially invisible as a gas.

Through a thickness of 10 meters or more, however, the intrinsic color of water or ice is visibly turquoise, greenish-blue. Its absorption spectrum has a sharp minimum at a violet-blue color of light, 1/227 m−1 at 418 nm. The lower, but still significant, absorption of longer wavelengths makes the perceived colour to be nearer to a turquoise shade. The color becomes increasingly stronger and darker with increasing thickness. Practically no sunlight reaches the parts of the oceans below 1,000 of depth. Infrared and ultraviolet light, on the other hand, is strongly absorbed by water.

The Grandma visits Museu Agbar de les Aigües

The refraction index of liquid water (1.333 at 20 °C) is much higher than that of air (1.0), similar to those of alkanes and ethanol, but lower than those of glycerol (1.473), benzene (1.501), carbon disulfide (1.627), and common types of glass (1.4 to 1.6). The refraction index of ice (1.31) is lower than that of liquid water.

Since the water molecule is not linear and the oxygen atom has a higher electronegativity than hydrogen atoms, it is a polar molecule, with an electrical dipole moment: the oxygen atom carries a slight negative charge, whereas the hydrogen atoms are slightly positive.

Water is a good polar solvent, that dissolves many salts and hydrophilic organic molecules such as sugars and simple alcohols such as ethanol.

Water also dissolves many gases, such as oxygen and carbon dioxide -the latter giving the fizz of carbonated beverages, sparkling wines and beers. In addition, many substances in living organisms, such as proteins, DNA and polysaccharides, are dissolved in water. The interactions between water and the subunits of these biomacromolecules shape protein folding, DNA base pairing, and other phenomena crucial to life, hydrophobic effect.

 More information: Smithsonian

Pure water has a low electrical conductivity, which increases with the dissolution of a small amount of ionic material such as common salt.

Liquid water can be split into the elements hydrogen and oxygen by passing an electric current through it -a process called electrolysis. The decomposition requires more energy input than the heat released by the inverse process, 285.8 kJ/mol.

Liquid water can be assumed to be incompressible for most purposes: its compressibility ranges from 4.4 to 5.1×10−10 Pa−1 in ordinary conditions. Even in oceans at 4 km depth, where the pressure is 400 atm, water suffers only a 1.8% decrease in volume.

The viscosity of water is about 10−3 Pa·s or 0.01 poise at 20 °C, and the speed of sound in liquid water ranges between 1,400 and 1,540 meters per second depending on temperature. Sound travels long distances in water with little attenuation, especially at low frequencies -roughly 0.03 dB/km for 1 kHz-, a property that is exploited by cetaceans and humans for communication and environment sensing (sonar).

Metallic elements which are more electropositive than hydrogen, particularly the alkali metals and alkaline earth metals such as lithium, sodium, calcium, potassium and caesium displace hydrogen from water, forming hydroxides and releasing hydrogen. At high temperatures, carbon reacts with steam to form carbon monoxide.

More information: National Geographic

Water is the softest of all things, yet it is the most powerful.

The ocean patiently allows all things to flow into it.

It is always flexible.

Wayne Dyer

JORDI SANTANYÍ, THE GREAT WRITER FROM MALLORCA

Jordi Santanyí in Can Mercader, Cornellà

Ramon Llull, Joan Alcover, Miquel Costa i Llobera, Miquel dels Sants Oliver, Llorenç Vilallonga, Bartomeu Rosselló-Pòrcel, Maria Antònia Salvà, Blai Bonet, Baltasar Porcel, Biel Mesquida, Sebastià Alzamora...

They are only some of the most popular writers from the Balearic Islands, especially Mallorca. All of them were and are the most important figures of their ages and represented different movements from Medieval ages to Modern ones. From the cradle of the Catalan language with Ramon Llull to important movements like Modernism, Noucentisme or Post War Literature in the last century and Contemporany Literature in our current one.

Jordi Santanyí is a Mallorcan writer who lives in Cornellà de Llobregat, the Roman city of Cornelianus. He has just arrived to this big city to improve his career as a writer. Jordi is one of The Grandma's friends, and he is going to join to the rest of the group (Claire Fontaine, Joseph de Ca'th Lon, Tina Picotes and Tonyi Tamaki) in this amazing experience called The Grandma's Logbook.

Jordi is a great expert in literature and, because of this, today The Grandma wants to introduce him talking about his new city, Cornellà, and his passion, writing and literature.

More information: The Culture Trip

Cornellà de Llobregat is a municipality in the comarca of the Baix Llobregat in Catalonia. It is situated on the left bank of the Llobregat River. It is in the south-western part of the Barcelona metropolitan area and is part of the wider urban area. It houses one of the three La Liga football clubs from Catalonia in RCD Espanyol.

The history of Cornellà de Llobregat is defined by three principal factors: its proximity to the city of Barcelona, its being an area of passage, as was the entire County of Baix Llobregat, to and from the capital of Catalonia, and the presence of the Llobregat River. Its name is of Roman origin, Cornelianus, and the city's architectural characteristics possess Visigoth traits.

Jordi Santanyí in Cornellà de Llobregat

The first written reference to the city dates from 980 AD, at which time a church and a defense tower to ward off the Saracens already existed in the same place as the current castle, constructed in the fourteenth century.

The city was incorporated into Barcelona's territory in the thirteenth century and, for a short time, belonged to the Franqueses del Llobregat in which agricultural activity was principally developed.

More information: Consorci de Turisme-El Baix Llobregat

Literature, most generically, is any body of written works. More restrictively, literature refers to writing considered to be an art form or any single writing deemed to have artistic or intellectual value, often due to deploying language in ways that differ from ordinary usage.

Its Latin root literatura/litteratura, derived itself from littera: letter or handwriting, was used to refer to all written accounts. The concept has changed meaning over time to include texts that are spoken or sung, oral literature, and non-written verbal art forms. Developments in print technology have allowed an ever-growing distribution and proliferation of written works, culminating in electronic literature.

Literature is classified according to whether it is fiction or non-fiction, and whether it is poetry or prose. It can be further distinguished according to major forms such as the novel, short story or drama; and works are often categorized according to historical periods or their adherence to certain aesthetic features or expectations (genre).

Jordi & the Miranda Tower, Cornellà

The history of literature follows closely the development of civilization. When defined exclusively as written work, Ancient Egyptian literature, along with Sumerian literature, are considered the world's oldest literatures. The primary genres of the literature of Ancient Egypt—didactic texts, hymns and prayers, and tales—were written almost entirely in verse; while use of poetic devices is clearly recognizable, the prosody of the verse is unknown. Most Sumerian literature is apparently poetry, as it is written in left-justified lines,and could contain line-based organization such as the couplet or the stanza.

Different historical periods are reflected in literature. National and tribal sagas, accounts of the origin of the world and of customs, and myths which sometimes carry moral or spiritual messages predominate in the pre-urban eras. The epics of Homer, dating from the early to middle Iron age, and the great Indian epics of a slightly later period, have more evidence of deliberate literary authorship, surviving like the older myths through oral tradition for long periods before being written down.

More information: History

Literature in all its forms can be seen as written records, whether the literature itself be factual or fictional, it is still quite possible to decipher facts through things like characters' actions and words or the authors' style of writing and the intent behind the words. The plot is for more than just entertainment purposes; within it lies information about economics, psychology, science, religions, politics, cultures, and social depth.

Studying and analyzing literature becomes very important in terms of learning about human history. 

Literature provides insights about how society has evolved and about the societal norms during each of the different periods all throughout history. For instance, postmodern authors argue that history and fiction both constitute systems of signification by which we make sense of the past. It is asserted that both of these are discourses, human constructs, signifying systems, and both derive their major claim to truth from that identity.

Literature provides views of life, which is crucial in obtaining truth and in understanding human life throughout history and its periods. Specifically, it explores the possibilities of living in terms of certain values under given social and historical circumstances.

More information: History Today

Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary 

about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary 

words something extraordinary.

Boris Pasternak

THE CHARLIE RIVEL MEMORIAL IN CORNELLÀ: AAAAUUUU!

The Grandma visits Cornellà de Llobregat

Today, The Grandma is in Cornellà de Llobregat. After leaving the Ebre Lands, The Grandma has done an interesting stop before returning to her home in Barcelona.

The Grandma has visited the International Clown Festival which is celebrated every year in this city of the Baix Llobregat and which is dedicated to one of the best clowns along the history, Charlie Rivel, an old Grandma's friend.

Marta Jones told The Grandma about this festival and she hasn't wanted to lose the opportunity to enjoy this wonderful event.

During the travel by boat from Deltebre to Cornellà de Llobregat, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her First Certificate Language Practice manual (Vocabulary 15).

More information: Health and the body I & II

 

A clown is a comic performer who employs slapstick or similar types of physical comedy, often in a mime style.

Clowns have a varied tradition with significant variations in costume and performance. The most recognisable modern clown character is the Auguste or red clown type, with outlandish costumes featuring distinctive makeup, colourful wigs, exaggerated footwear, and colourful clothing. Their entertainment style is generally designed to entertain large audiences.

Charlie Rivel

Modern clowns are strongly associated with the tradition of the circus clown, which developed out of earlier comedic roles in theatre or Varieté shows during the 19th to mid 20th centuries. Many circus clowns have become well known and are a key circus act in their own right. The first mainstream clown role was portrayed by Joseph Grimaldi, who also created the traditional whiteface make-up design. 

In the early 1800s, he expanded the role of Clown in the harlequinade that formed part of British pantomimes, notably at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane and the Sadler's Wells and Covent Garden theatres. He became so dominant on the London comic stage that harlequinade Clowns became known as Joey, and both the nickname and Grimaldi's whiteface make-up design were, and still are, used by other types of clowns.

The comedy that clowns perform is usually in the role of a fool whose everyday actions and tasks become extraordinary, and for whom the ridiculous, for a short while, becomes ordinary. This style of comedy has a long history in many countries and cultures across the world. Some writers have argued that due to the widespread use of such comedy and its long history it is a need that is part of the human condition.

More information: Clown Bluey

The fear of clowns, circus clowns in particular as a psychiatric condition has become known by the term coulrophobia.

The clown character developed out of the zanni rustic fool characters of the early modern commedia dell'arte, which were themselves directly based on the rustic fool characters of ancient Greek and Roman theatre. Rustic buffoon characters in Classical Greek theater were known as sklêro-paiktês or deikeliktas, besides other generic terms for rustic or peasant. In Roman theater, a term for clown was fossor, literally digger; labourer.

Stephen King's Pennywise provokes coulrophobia

The English word clown was first recorded c. 1560, as clowne, cloyne, in the generic meaning rustic, boor, peasant. The origin of the word is uncertain, perhaps from a Scandinavian word cognate with clumsy. It is in this sense that Clown is used as the name of fool characters in Shakespeare's Othello and The Winter's Tale. The sense of clown as referring to a professional or habitual fool or jester developed soon after 1600, based on Elizabethan rustic fool characters such as Shakespeare's.

The harlequinade developed in England in the 17th century, inspired by the commedia dell'arte. It was here that Clown came into use as the given name of a stock character. Originally a foil for Harlequin's slyness and adroit nature, Clown was a buffoon or bumpkin fool who resembled less a jester than a comical idiot. He was a lower class character dressed in tattered servants' garb.

More information: Smithsonian

The now-classical features of the clown character were developed in the early 1800s by Joseph Grimaldi, who played Clown in Charles Dibdin's 1800 pantomime Peter Wilkins: or Harlequin in the Flying World at Sadler's Wells Theatre, where Grimaldi built the character up into the central figure of the harlequinade.

The circus clown developed in the 19th century. The modern circus derives from Philip Astley's London riding school, which opened in 1768. Astley added a clown to his shows to amuse the spectators between equestrian sequences. American comedian George L. Fox became known for his clown role, directly inspired by Grimaldi, in the 1860s. 

A clown

Tom Belling senior (1843–1900) developed the red clown or Auguste, Dummer August, character c. 1870, acting as a foil for the more sophisticated white clown. Belling worked for Circus Renz in Vienna.

Belling's costume became the template for the modern stock character of circus or children's clown, based on a lower class or hobo character, with red nose, white makeup around the eyes and mouth, and oversized clothes and shoes. The clown character as developed by the late 19th century is reflected in Ruggero Leoncavallo's 1892 opera Pagliacci, Clowns. 

Belling's Auguste character was further popularized by Nicolai Poliakoff's Coco in the 1920s to 1930s.

The English word clown was borrowed, along with the circus clown act, into many other languages, such as French clown, Russian, and other Slavic languages, кло́ун, Greek κλόουν, Danish/Norwegian klovn and Romanian clovn.

Italian retains Pagliaccio, a Commedia dell'arte zanni character, and derivations of the Italian term are found in other Romance languages, such as French Paillasse, Spanish payaso, Catalan/Galician pallasso, Portuguese palhaço, Greek παλιάτσος, Turkish palyaço, German Pajass, Yiddish פּאַיאַץ, Russian пая́ц. 

More information: BBC

In the early 20th century, with the disappearance of the rustic simpleton or village idiot character of everyday experience, North American circuses developed characters such as the tramp or hobo. Examples include Marceline Orbes, who performed at the Hippodrome Theater (1905), Charlie Chaplin's The Tramp (1914), and Emmett Kelly's Weary Willie based on hobos of the Depression era.

Another influential tramp character was played by Otto Griebling during the 1930s to 1950s. Red Skelton's Dodo the Clown in The Clown (1953), depicts the circus clown as a tragicomic stock character, a funny man with a drinking problem.

Ronald McDonald

In the United States, Bozo the Clown was an influential Auguste character since the late 1950s. The Bozo Show premiered in 1960 and appeared nationally on cable television in 1978. McDonald's derived its mascot clown, Ronald McDonald, from the Bozo character in the 1960s. Willard Scott, who had played Bozo during 1959–1962, performed as the mascot in 1963 television spots.

The McDonald's trademark application for the character dates to 1967. Based on the Bozo template, the US custom of birthday clown, private contractors who offer to perform as clowns at children's parties, developed in the 1960s to 1970s. The strong association of the, Bozo-derived, clown character with children's entertainment as it has developed since the 1960s also gave rise to Clown Care or hospital clowning in children's hospitals by the mid 1980s. 

Clowns of America International, established 1984, and World Clown Association, established 1987, are associations of semi-professionals and professional performers.

The shift of the Auguste or red clown character from his role as a foil for the white in circus or pantomime shows to a Bozo-derived standalone character in children's entertainment by the 1980s also gave rise to the evil clown character, the attraction of clowns for small children being based in their fundamentally threatening or frightening nature.

More information: Business Insider

I think we all have the urge to be a clown, 

whether we know it or not. 

Ernest Borgnine

SEPTEMBER 25, 1962: THE BIG TRAGEDY UNDER THE MUD

It was a normal day until the sky became dark and a terrible storm changed our lives forever. We mustn't forget that. - Joseph de Ca'th Lon.
 

Terrassa - September, 26th 1962

September, 25 1962

I was a child. We were visiting my grandparents in Terrassa. 

I remember Terrassa like an industrial city plenty of chimneys and factories. The sky was always grey; the workers wore grey clothes; the buildings were grey; life was grey in an important city that was living under a military dictatorship. 

It wasn't easy to visit my family but thanks to our Swiss nationality, nobody could forbid us to do it. My grandparents lived in the centre of the city, near the City Hall Square. Terrassa was one of the most important industrial cities of the state and lots of people lived in the city, the most part of them near the streams in poor huts made of wood and mud.

The previous day, we had visited Barcelona, the capital. Barcelona celebrated its big party and my grandparents thought that it could be interesting for me to enjoy it. Barcelona was a big city, bigger than Terrassa, the biggest city but the feeling was the same: grey people living grey lives and suffering an endless dictatorship.

I didn't understand why my grandparents didn't want to live with us in Geneva where life was plenty of colours and freedom but they had their lives in this city.

It was a typical day of autumn and we went to sleep after having dinner. Suddenly, a light across the window was the first signal. It started to rain. At the beginning, it seemed a normal storm but it wasn't. Hundreds of litres falling over the city and the disasters were tremendous.

More than one thousand people died because of the overflowing. The most important river in the area the Besòs and lots of streams overflowed.

Terrassa, Sabadell, Rubí, Sant Quirze del Vallès, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Ripollet, Mollet del Vallès, Castellar del Vallès, Montcada... 

Terrassa - September, 26th 1962

These cities were desolated by the force of the flood; thousands of people died and thousands and thousands of people lost their homes.

Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí, Antoni Tàpies, Georges Braque, Marc Chagall, Fernand Léger, Antoni Clavé, Modest Cuixart, Antoni Cumella and Joan-Josep Tharrats donated their works to an auction. They offered 204 works.

The political situation in 1962 and a nonexistent urban planning were the responsible of that disaster. Nobody paid enough attention about this catastrophe in the high spheres because nine years later, in September 20, 1971, it happened the same, this time with the Llobregat river and with the population of El Baix Llobregat, especially in the cities of Martorell, Sant Boi and Cornellà de Llobregat.

Almost a thousand people died, in a tragedy that someone could have avoided. Nobody did nothing and the tragedy repeated again.

In memoriam.

More information: Flood in the Vallès, 1962

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. 

Karl Marx