The Universal Exhibition of 1888

Barcelona had boomed in the 1870s, notably through exporting textiles and wine to Latin America. The population had quadrupled in 60 years. Stock prices had soared during the Febre d'Or 'Gold fever'; the medieval walls had gone down, the Eixample had been laid out, and the first palaces were going up. The Renaixença, with its new found pride in all things Catalan, was in full swing.

But by the early 1880s, the mood in Barcelona had turned glum. Phylloxera had devastated the vineyards, leaving the city and its hinterland without any brandy to sell, sending it into a

depression. Unemployed workers filled Barcelona and no one could see a way out, until the city's exhuberant Mayor Francesc de Paula Ruis i Taulet came up with the perfect solution: why not stage a World's Fair?

He even had the ideal location: the new Parc de la Ciutadella was the perfect spot to strut Barcelona's stuff. Ruis talked Madrid into granting a loan to pay for it. What's more (and well aware the Eiffel Tower was inching its way up in Paris for the 1889 Expostion) he boasted that Barcelona's fair that would 'dazzle the universe' and show that the Catalans were indeed 'the Yankees of Europe'. Furthermore, the big show would be ready by May 1888—in a mere 11 months.