SAILING THE MEDITERRANEAN BY CATBOAT & LATEEN

Today, The Grandma and her friends have enjoyed sailing on a catboat along the Mediterranean coast from Sant Feliu de Guíxols to Cadaqués (Cap de Creus), where they have continued their journey through the Natural Park in a 4x4 vehicle.

Corto Maltese is an experienced sailor and has guided his friends on this journey through the history of llaguts and lateen sailing, typical elements of the Costa Brava.

A catboat is a sailboat with a single sail on a single mast set well forward in the bow of a very beamy and (usually) shallow draft hull. Typically they are gaff rigged, though Bermuda rig is also used. Most are fitted with a centreboard, although some have a keel. The hull can be 3.7 to 12.2 metres long with a beam half as wide as the hull length at the waterline. 

Advantages of this sail plan include the economies derived from a rig with a limited number of component parts. It is quick to hoist sail and get underway. The cat rig sails well to windward, especially in calmer water. As a working boat, the forward mast placement gave ample room in the cockpit for fishing gear. Cruising versions can provide a large usable cabin space in a relatively short hull.

Disadvantages of the rig include the limited deck space around the mast, which can be problematical when raising or lowering sail, or when reefing; halyards are often led back to the cockpit, so partially mitigating this problem. It is usually wise to reef early in a rising wind to avoid an excess of weather helm. The weight of the mast in the bow has to be allowed for in the hull design -if this is got wrong the bow may be buried when sailing downwind. The narrow beam where the mast is stepped makes it difficult to gain any benefit from shrouds, so the mast has to be stronger, and so heavier. Despite the simplicity of the rig, a good level of skill is required to design a balanced catboat, since there are limited options to correct any slight errors.

A lateen, from French latine, meaning Latin, or latin-rig is a triangular sail set on a long yard mounted at an angle on the mast, and running in a fore-and-aft direction. The settee can be considered to be an associated type of the same overall category of sail.

The lateen originated in the Mediterranean as early as the 2nd century AD, during Roman times, and became common there by the 5th century. The wider introduction of lateen rig at this time coincided with a reduction in the use of the Mediterranean square rig of the classical era. Since the performance of these two rigs is broadly similar, it is suggested that the change from one to the other was on cost grounds, since lateen rigs used fewer components and had less cordage to be replaced when it wore out.

Arab seafarers adopted the lateen rig at a later date -there is some limited archaeological evidence of lateen rig in the Indian Ocean in the 13th century AD and iconographic evidence from the 16th century. It has been suggested that this Arab use of lateen transferred to Austronesian maritime technology in the Far East, giving rise to the various fore-and-aft rigs used in that region, such as the crab claw sail.

The lateen sail played a prominent part in the shifts in maritime technology that occurred as Mediterranean and Northern European ship-construction traditions merged in the 16th century, with the lateen mizzen being, for a time, universally used in the full-rigged ships of the time -though later supplanted by gaff rig in this role.

The lateen also exists as a subtype: the settee. Instead of being a triangular sail, this has a short vertical luff -having the appearance of a triangular lateen with the front corner cut off. Both types of lateen were likely used from an early date on: a 2nd-century AD gravestone depicts a quadrilateral lateen sail (also known as a settee), while a 4th-century mosaic shows a triangular one, which was to become the standard rig throughout the Middle Ages.

The earliest archaeologically excavated ship that has been reconstructed with a lateen rig is dated to ca. 400 AD (Yassi Ada II), with a further four being attested prior to the Arab advance to the Mediterranean. The Kelenderis ship mosaic (late 5th to early 6th century) and the Kellia ship graffito from the early 7th century complement the picture.

By the 6th century, the lateen sail had largely replaced the square sail throughout the Mediterranean, the latter almost disappearing from Mediterranean iconography until the mid-13th century. It became the standard rig of the Byzantine dromon war galley and was probably also employed by Belisarius' flagship in the 532 AD invasion of the Vandal Kingdom. The fully triangular lateen and the settee continued to coexist in the middle Byzantine period, as evidenced by Christian iconography, as well as a recent find of a graffito in the Yenikapı excavations.

In the 12th to 13th centuries the rigging underwent a change when the hook-shaped masthead made way for an arrangement more akin to a barrel-like crow's nest.

After the Muslim conquests, the Arabs adopted the lateen sail by way of the Coptic populace, which shared the existing Mediterranean maritime tradition and continued to provide the bulk of galley crews for Muslim-led fleets for centuries to come. This is also indicated by the terminology of the lateen among Mediterranean Arabs which is derived from Greco-Roman nomenclature. More detailed research into their early use of the lateen is hampered by a distinct lack of unequivocal depictions of sailing rigs in early Islamic art. A glazed pottery dish from Saracenic Dénia dating to the 11th century is at present the earliest securely identifiable example found in the Mediterranean.

More information: Southern Woodenboat Sailing

 It is not the ship so much as the skillful sailing 
that assures the prosperous voyage.

George William Curtis

FROM NORWEGIAN 'HJELL' TO CATALAN 'PEIXOPALO'

Today, The Grandma and her friends have enjoyed a fantastic dinner with local cuisine in Sant Feliu de Guíxols. They have tasted peixopalo, also known as stockfish, the unsalted cod whose origins are in Norway, where it is named hjell.

Stockfish is unsalted fish, especially cod, dried by cold air and wind on wooden racks (which are called hjell in Norway) on the foreshore. The drying of food is the world's oldest known preservation method, and dried fish has a storage life of several years. The method is cheap and effective in suitable climates; the work can be done by the fisherman and family, and the resulting product is easily transported to market.

Over the centuries, several variants of dried fish have evolved. The stockfish (fresh dried, not salted) category is often mistaken for the klippfisk, or salted cod, category where the fish is salted before drying. Salting was not economically feasible until the 17th century, when cheap salt from southern Europe became available to the maritime nations of northern Europe.

Stockfish is cured in a fermentation process where cold-adapted bacteria matures the fish, similar to the maturing process of cheese.

In English legal records of the medieval period, stock fishmongers are differentiated from ordinary fishmongers when the occupation of a plaintiff or defendant is recorded.

The word stockfish is a loan word from West Frisian stokfisk (stick fish), possibly referring to the wooden racks on which stockfish are traditionally dried or because the dried fish resembles a stick.

Stock may also refer to a wooden yoke or harness on a horse or mule, once used to carry large fish from the sea or after drying/smoking for trade in nearby villages. This etymology is consistent with the fact that Stockmaß is German for the height of a horse at the withers.

Stockfish is Norway's longest sustained export commodity. Stockfish is first mentioned as a commodity in the 13th-century Icelandic prose work Egil's Saga, where chieftain Thorolf Kveldulfsson, in the year 875 AD, ships stockfish from Helgeland in mid-Norway to Britain. This product accounted for most of Norway's trade income from the Viking Age throughout the Medieval period.

Preserved cod fed Iceland for centuries, to the extent that it has been described as a local equivalent of bread.

Stockfish is extremely popular and is widely consumed in Catholic Mediterranean countries, mostly in Italy. Stockfish is called stoccafisso in most Italian dialects, but confusingly baccalà -which normally refers to salt cod- in the Veneto.

In Russian cuisine dried stockfish is a very popular dish which is often eaten with vodka and beer. In the 16th century Russian and Swedish stockfish were sold to many European countries.

The science of producing good stockfish is in many ways comparable to that of making a good cognac, Parma ham, or a well-matured cheese. Practitioners of the Slow Food movement insist that all these artisanal products must be made on a small scale and given time to mature.

The fish is prepared immediately after capture. After gutting the fish, it is either dried whole, or split along the spine leaving the tail connected. The fish is hung on the hjell from February to May. Stable cool weather protects the fish from insects and prevents an uncontrolled bacterial growth. A temperature just above zero degrees Celsius, with little rain, is ideal. Too much frost will spoil the fish, as ice destroys the fibers in the fish. The climate in northern Norway is excellent for stockfish production, and remains so even with changing climate conditions. Salted/dried whitefish (klippfisk) was more common in the fisheries districts of Western Norway. Further south in Norway, the cod was salted in barrells from the 15th century.

After its three months hanging on the hjell, the fish is then matured for another two to three months indoors in a dry and airy environment. During the drying, about 80% of the water in the fish evaporates. The stockfish retains much of the nutrients from the fresh fish, only concentrated: it is therefore rich in proteins, vitamins, iron, and calcium.

Most of the Norwegian dried cod is exported to Portugal, Sweden, Nigeria, Brazil, and Italy. In Norway and Iceland, the stockfish is mostly used as a snack and for lutefisk production. In Italy, the fish (called stoccafisso) is soaked and used in various courses, and is viewed as a delicacy.

Low-quality stockfish is also commonly used as supplemental food for pets, primarily as dog food or dog treats.

The 2012-2015, project SafeTrackFood developed a method of indoor production of stockfish to accelerate the maturing and drying of the fish in a safe manner.

In Catalonia, stockfish is an ingredient of a kind of surf and turf named Es Niu, a dish very popular on the Costa Brava.

More information: Visita Costa Brava

 Travel is so important in its capacity to expand the mind. 
It's exciting to start as young as possible 
-you get to see how other cultures live, 
challenge your senses, and try different cuisines.

Natalie Dormer

'HOSTAL DE LA GAVINA', THE AMERICAN FILMS IN S’AGARÓ

Extracted from www.lagavina.com

Having first set eyes on the area back in the 1920s, pioneering hotelier Josep Ensesa i Gubert had a vision. He was fixated with the stretch of beach between Bahia de Sant Pol and Sa Concha, which was not much more than a piece of uninhabited land back then, but Ensesa could see the potential. He persuaded his father to invest in the untapped land where, together with local architect Rafael Maso i Valentí, the pair, would go on to conceive a garden city overlooking this splendid corner of the Mediterranean, a place where media and the arts would stylishly converge. This included the magnificent Loggia de Senya Blanca, the first property built in the new S’Agaró development in 1922. But the jewel in the crown was Hostal de la Gavina, which opened ten years later on 2 January 1932, Catalunya's only five-star Grand Luxe resort hotel.

Maso i Valenti, an advocate of Noucentista style, incorporated local architectural nuances into his design: porticos, towers, terraces and low-pitched roofs which would help lure in a sophisticated clientele with refined artistic tastes –the great Salvador Dalí became a regular. La Gavina remains a byword for luxury and one of the most revered hotel addresses in the country. Under the guidance of Julia, Virginia, Carina and Josep Ensesa Viñas, the fourth generation of the Ensesa family carry on the mantle of their predecessors with the same enthusiasm.

The affluent neighbourhood of S'Agaró, which celebrated its 100th Anniversary in 2024, has often been described as the Beverly Hills of the Costa Brava. So it's no surprise it’s had its fair share of silver-screen stars who've passed beneath its iconic red canopied arcade entrance over the years: from Ava Gardner and Britt Ekland to John Wayne and Jack Nicholson to name but a few. Successions of tree-lined avenidas, which surround Hostal de la Gavina, wind their way up to decadent villas, while at the foot of the hotel, the idyllic coastal path of the Camí de Ronda, with its iconic tamarind trees interspersed with umbrella pines, snakes its way around the glistening bay.

The presence of seagulls catching the maritime breeze and soaring majestically above the bay inspired the hotel's name: gavina in Catalan means seagull – indeed the hotel's iconic motif is based on the gulls' dihedral angled wings. The 'hostal' part of the hotel’s name was consciously retained in order to reflect the warm and homely service offered to guests, taking inspiration from typical Catalan roadside houses. La Gavina has the feel of a grande dame, a place so rarefied in the modern world, beautifully preserving the charm of a bygone era with the contemporary in the most subtle and timeless way. 

S'Agaró and La Gavina have grown steadily in unison without ever losing sight of their origins. What started out as a modest 11-room property charging 25 pesetas per night, now houses 76 rooms and suites, with the addition of a show-stopping seawater outdoor pool and Valmont Spa, several restaurants alongside meeting and special events facilities. La Gavina continues to proudly encapsulate the original style and heritage which was installed on day one of its opening.

La Gavina's guest book reads like a Who's Who of the silver screen. S'Agaró has been the stylish backdrop of famous Hollywood movies such as Pandora with Ava Gardner and Suddenly Last Summer starring Elizabeth Taylor. Those to have bedded down here include Lee Van Cleef, Peter Sellers, Britt Ekland, John Wayne, Sean Connery, Jack Nicholson, Robert De Niro, Liam Neeson, Laurence Olivier, Dirk Bogarde and Maureen Swanson while the late Johan Cruyff would often bring his FC Barcelona teams to stay.

Latterly Tom Waits, Santana and Lady Gaga. Culture and the arts have also played an active part in shaping La Gavina's rich history. Numerous artists, Nobel prize winners and other academics have not only holidayed here but used the property professionally as a meeting point for recitals and musical performances. Cole Porter, Josep Pla, Josep Carreras, Orson Welles and Rudolf Nureyev, are just a few of the luminaries to have passed through the Adolf Florensa designed lobby.

More information: Centenari S'Agaró

Today, The Grandma and her friends have visited Hostal de la Gavina, meeting place of many famous film stars, musicians, political figures and Nobel Prize winners, and set of some popular American films interpreted by Hollywood stars like Ava Gardner, James Mason, Orson Welles, Montgomery Clift or Katharine Hepburn.

Pandora and the Flying Dutchman is a 1951 British Technicolor romantic fantasy drama film written and directed by Albert Lewin. The screenplay is based on legend of the Flying Dutchman.

The film stars Ava Gardner and James Mason in the title roles, with Nigel Patrick, Sheila Sim, Harold Warrender, Mario Cabré, and Marius Goring in supporting parts.

More information: The Guardian

 I have only one rule in acting 
-trust the director and give him heart and soul.

Ava Gardner

Suddenly, Last Summer is a 1959 Southern Gothic psychological drama mystery film based on the 1958 play of the same name by Tennessee Williams. The film stars Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift with Albert Dekker, Mercedes McCambridge, and Gary Raymond. It was directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and produced by Sam Spiegel from a screenplay by Gore Vidal and Williams with cinematography by Jack Hildyard and production design by Oliver Messel. The musical score was composed by Buxton Orr, using themes by Malcolm Arnold.

The plot centers on Catherine Holly, a young woman who, at the insistence of her wealthy aunt, is being evaluated by a psychiatric doctor to receive a lobotomy after witnessing the death of her cousin Sebastian Venable while traveling with him in the (fictional) island of Cabeza de Lobo the previous summer.

More information: Cine Muse

Everything makes me nervous -except making films. 

Elizabeth Taylor

 

Mr. Arkadin, also released as Confidential Report, is a 1955 thriller film noir written, produced and directed by Orson Welles. It stars Welles, Robert Arden, Paola Mori, Michael Redgrave, Patricia Medina, Akim Tamiroff, Peter van Eyck, and Katina Paxinou. The film centers on an American smuggler (Arden) who is hired by a wealthy amnesiac, the titular Arkadin (Welles), to investigate his mysterious past.

The screenplay was based on scripts Welles had originally co-authored for his radio drama series The Adventures of Harry Lime. A co-production of France, Spain, and Switzerland, it was shot in several locations throughout Western Europe.

Like many of Welles' films, Mr. Arkadin had a difficult production and was released in several different versions. Critic Jonathan Rosenbaum identified at least seven different versions of the story. The film has been praised by directors like Christopher Nolan and Shinji Aoyama.

More information: Crime Reads

My kind of director is an actor-director who writes.

Orson Welles

 

Mysterious Island, in UK Jules Verne's Mysterious Island, is a 1961 science fiction adventure film about prisoners in the American Civil War who escape in a balloon and then find themselves stranded on a remote island populated by giant animals.

Loosely based upon the 1874 novel The Mysterious Island (L'Île mystérieuse) by Jules Verne (which was the sequel to two other novels by Verne, 1867's In Search of the Castaways and 1870's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas), the film was produced by Charles H. Schneer and directed by Cy Endfield.

Shot in Catalonia, and at Shepperton Studios, England, the film serves as a showcase for Ray Harryhausen's stop motion animation effects. Like several of Harryhausen's classic productions, the musical score was composed by Bernard Herrmann.

More information: Mana Pop

The sea is everything. 
It covers seven tenths of the terrestrial globe. 
Its breath is pure and healthy. 
It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, 
for he feels life stirring on all sides.

Jules Verne

DISCOVERING S'AGARÓ & SANT POL ON THE COSTA BRAVA

Summer is always a time for reunions. Today, The Grandma has arrived in Sant Pol (Sant Feliu de Guíxols) to spend a few days with her dear friends Claire Fontaine, Joseph de Ca'th Lon and Corto Maltese.

They are enjoying two beautiful places full of history and natural beauty such as Sant Pol and S'Agaró. A well-deserved holidays after a very intense year. 

S'Agaró is an upmarket resort on the Costa Brava between Sant Feliu de Guíxols and Platja d'Aro. It is part of the municipality of Castell-Platja d'Aro, itself in the comarca of Baix Empordà and province of Girona in Catalonia. The resort was developed from the early 1920s on the peninsular between the beaches of Platja de Sant Pol and Platja de Sa Conca.

To date, the promontory contains about 60 exclusive houses and hotels. The world famous five-star Hostal de la Gavina dominates the view from Sant Pol beach. The original development has been declared as a historical complex and protected as a cultural asset of national interest since 1995.

The GR 92 long-distance footpath, which runs the length the Mediterranean coast, uses the historic camí de ronda that follows S'Agaró's coastline. The camí de ronda was rebuilt as part of the development, creating a walk in a semi-artificial landscape between sea, rocks and pines that integrates the urbanization with nature. To the north, the GR 92 crosses the beach of Sa Conca and diverts around the extensive Marina de Port d'Oro to reach Platja d'Aro. To the south it passes along the beach of Sant Pol to reach Sant Feliu de Guíxols.

In 1916, the Girona industrialist Josep Ensesa i Pujades purchased a plot of land in between the beaches of Sant Pol and Sa Conca, near the mouth of a stream called Es Garó. His initial plan was to build a summer house, but he bought more land around it to make more plots, and thus the project to develop the area was born. The new area didn't have a name, so the family chose to call it after the stream that ran through it.

However, at least in part due to the disruption caused by the First World War, the plan did not initially prosper. After the war, Josep Ensesa i Gubert, the son of Josep Ensesa i Pujades, built the first house on the plot, called Senya Blanca and completed in 1924, entrusting the design to the architect Rafael Masó i Valentí. The house had neither electricity nor running water. More land was then bought, and the whole development entrusted to Masó, who was inspired by the ideas of the garden city movement of the time. Specifically, it is known the Masó had visited the garden city of Hellerau, near Dresden, in 1912.

It was Masó's role to assure that the development, which was planned as a community of seaside villas and a small inn, would be in sympathy with the landscape. Masó was a campaigner for traditional Catalan design, and he drew on the local architectural vocabulary of porticos, towers, terraces and low rooflines to conjure a colony aimed at those with artistic tastes. Purchasers of land bound themselves to carefully drawn contracts that guaranteed buildings of visual unity. After Masó's death, in 1935, Francesc Folguera took over the project, going on to build the church situated on the highest point of the resort.

Although originally built by Masó as a dwelling and soon after converted to a hotel, the current Hostal de la Gavina is largely the work of Folguera. Since the early 1950s famous Hollywood movies like Pandora and the Flying Dutchman with Ava Gardner, Suddenly Last Summer with Elizabeth Taylor and Mr. Arkadin by Orson Welles were shot in S'Agaró. This made the Hostal de La Gavina a meeting place of many famous film stars, musicians, political figures and Nobel Prize winners. The beach scenes in the movie Mysterious Island (1961) were filmed at S'Agaró.

Michael Frayn, the English comic writer, devoted a number of pieces about the developers of S'Agaro and their vision in The Guardian between 1960 and 1962, collected in The Original Michael Frayn.

A huge construction boom took place inland from the original resort, which does not form part of the gated community.

More information: Visit Guíxols

The three great elemental sounds 

in nature are the sound of rain, 

the sound of wind in a primeval wood,

and the sound of outer ocean on a beach.

Henry Beston

I PUT MY ARMOR ON, I SHOW YOU HOW STRONG I AM

All smiles, I know what it takes to fool this town
I'll do it 'til the sun goes down
And all through the nighttime
Oh, yeah

Oh, yeah, I'll tell you what you wanna hear
Leave my sunglasses on while I shed a tear
It's never the right time
Yeah, yeah

I put my armor on, show you how strong I am (am)
I put my armor on, I'll show you that I am

I'm unstoppable
I'm a Porsche with no brakes
I'm invincible
Yeah, I win every single game

I'm so powerful
I don't need batteries to play
I'm so confident
Yeah, I'm unstoppable today

Unstoppable today
Unstoppable today
Unstoppable today
I'm unstoppable today

Break down, only alone I will cry out now
You'll never see what's hiding out
Hiding out deep down
Yeah, yeah

I know, I've heard that to let your feelings show
Is the only way to make friendships grow
But I'm too afraid now
Yeah, yeah

I put my armor on, show you how strong I am (am)
I put my armor on, I'll show you that I am

I'm unstoppable
I'm a Porsche with no brakes
I'm invincible
Yeah, I win every single game

I'm so powerful
I don't need batteries to play
I'm so confident
Yeah, I'm unstoppable today

Unstoppable today
Unstoppable today
Unstoppable today
I'm unstoppable today

Unstoppable today
Unstoppable today
Unstoppable today
I'm unstoppable today

I put my armor on, show you how strong I am
I put my armor on, I'll show you that I am

I'm unstoppable
I'm a Porsche with no brakes
I'm invincible
Yeah, I win every single game

I'm so powerful
I don't need batteries to play
I'm so confident
Yeah, I'm unstoppable today

Unstoppable today
Unstoppable today
Unstoppable today
I'm unstoppable today

Unstoppable today
Unstoppable today
Unstoppable today
I'm unstoppable today

 I put my armor on, show you how strong I am
I put my armor on, I'll show you that I am

Sia

JOSEP SUNYOL, PRESIDENT OF FCB AND FCF, IS MURDERED

Today is a sad day for FC Barcelona family. They pay tribute and remember Josep Sunyol i Garriga, the president of Futbol Club Barcelona who was murdered by francoist troops on a day like today in 1936, and whose body has never been recovered like thousands and thousands of victims of the Spanish Civil War, who are still waiting for justice and reparation almost eighty nine years later. We continue working for this recognition, and we won't stop until the last victim has been recovered, brought to his/her family, buried with dignity and honoured.

The Grandma wants to talk about Josep Sunyol i Garriga, who also was an important Catalan politician, and the president of the Catalan Football Federation.

Josep Sunyol i Garriga (21 July 1898, Barcelona-6 August 1936, Sierra de Guadarrama) was a Catalan lawyer, journalist and politician. 

He was president of FC Barcelona, a prominent politician for the Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC), and ERC deputy in the Congress of Deputies in 1931, 1933 and 1936.

Sunyol came from both a wealthy family and a long line of Catalan political militants. He was a member of Acció Catalana, a left-wing group and Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya.

In 1928, he became a director of FC Barcelona and in 1930 he founded the left-wing newspaper La Rambla, which opposed the Primo de Rivera regime.

In 1931, he was elected to the Cortes as an ERC deputy. He was subsequently re-elected in 1933 and 1936.

He served as president of both the Reial Automòbil Club de Catalunya (RACC) and the Federació Catalana de Futbol (FCF).

In 1935, he was elected president of FC Barcelona.

On 6 August 1936, during the early days of the Spanish Civil War, Sunyol was arrested by Francoist troops in the Sierra de Guadarrama and was then murdered by one of Franco's soldiers.

A memorial stone to Sunyol was placed in a park nearby the location he was killed, and Sunyol is now described as the Martyr President by FC Barcelona.

More information: FCBarcelona

To speak of sport is to speak of race, enthusiasm, 
and the optimistic struggle of youth.

Josep Sunyol

MARIA DO CARMO MIRANDA DA CUNHA & THE FRUIT HAT

Today, The Grandma has been watchong some films interpretd by Carmen Miranda, the Brazilian actress who died on a day like today in 1955 and was popular known by her fruit hats.

Maria do Carmo Miranda da Cunha  (9 February 1909-5 August 1955), known professionally as Carmen Miranda was a Portuguese-born Brazilian singer, dancer, and actress. 

Nicknamed The Brazilian Bombshell, she was known for her signature fruit hat outfit that she wore in her American films.

As a young woman, Miranda designed clothes and hats in a boutique before making her debut as a singer, recording with composer Josué de Barros in 1929. Miranda's 1930 recording of Taí (Pra Você Gostar de Mim), written by Joubert de Carvalho, catapulted her to stardom in Brazil as the foremost interpreter of samba.

During the 1930s, Miranda performed on Brazilian radio and appeared in five Brazilian chanchadas, films celebrating Brazilian music, dance and the country's carnival culture. Hello, Hello Brazil! and Hello, Hello, Carnival! embodied the spirit of these early Miranda films. The 1939 musical Banana da Terra, directed by Ruy Costa, gave the world her Baiana image, inspired by Afro-Brazilians from the north-eastern state of Bahia.

In 1939, Broadway producer Lee Shubert offered Miranda an eight-week contract to perform in The Streets of Paris after seeing her at Cassino da Urca in Rio de Janeiro. The following year she made her first Hollywood film, Down Argentine Way with Don Ameche and Betty Grable, and her exotic clothing and Brazilian Portuguese accent became her trademark. That year, she was voted the third-most-popular personality in the United States; she and her group, Bando da Lua, were invited to sing and dance for President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In 1943, Miranda starred in Busby Berkeley's The Gang's All Here, which featured musical numbers with the fruit hats that became her trademark. By 1945, she was the highest-paid woman in the United States.

Miranda made 14 Hollywood films between 1940 and 1953. Although she was hailed as a talented performer, her popularity waned by the end of World War II. Miranda came to resent the stereotypical Brazilian Bombshell image she had cultivated and attempted to free herself of it with limited success. She focused on nightclub appearances and became a fixture on television variety shows. Despite being stereotyped, Miranda's performances popularized Brazilian music and increased public awareness of Latin culture.

In 1941, she was the first Latin American star to be invited to leave her hand and footprints in the courtyard of Grauman's Chinese Theatre and was the first South American honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. 

Miranda is considered the precursor of Brazil's 1960s Tropicalismo cultural movement. A museum was built in Rio de Janeiro in her honor and she was the subject of the documentary Carmen Miranda: Bananas Is My Business (1995).

Miranda was born Maria do Carmo Miranda da Cunha in 1909 in Várzea da Ovelha e Aliviada, a village in the northern Portuguese municipality of Marco de Canaveses.

She was christened Carmen by her father because of his love for Bizet's Carmen. This passion for opera influenced his children, and Miranda's love for singing and dancing, at an early age. She was educated at the Convent of Saint Therese of Lisieux. Her father did not approve of Miranda's plans to enter show business; her mother supported her, despite being beaten when her father discovered that his daughter had auditioned for a radio show (she had sung at parties and festivals in Rio).

Miranda arrived in New York on 18 May 1939. She and the band had their first Broadway performance on 19 June 1939 in The Streets of Paris.

During the war years, Miranda starred in eight of her 14 films; although the studios called her the Brazilian Bombshell, the films blurred her Brazilian identity in favor of a Latin American image.

After World War II, Miranda's films at Fox were produced in black-and-white, indicative of Hollywood's diminishing interest in her and Latin Americans in general.

Miranda died on 5 August 1955. She is buried in São João Batista Cemetery in Rio de Janeiro.

In 1956, her belongings were donated by her husband and family to the Carmen Miranda Museum, which opened in Rio on 5 August 1976. For her contributions to the entertainment industry, Miranda has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at the south side of the 6262 block of Hollywood Boulevard.

More information: Medium

 Hollywood, it has treated me so nicely, 
I am ready to faint! 
As soon as I see Hollywood, I love it.

Carmen Miranda