Avinguda Diagonal

This guide to Avinguda Diagonal in Barcelona follows the boulevard from engineer Ildefons Cerda's unnamed line across his new city grid in the 1850s, through a string of political renamings under a queen, a republic and a dictatorship. It touches on the ETA bombings that struck the avenue in 2000, and on the ordinary Barcelonans who kept calling it by one name no government ever managed to erase. The route still runs eleven kilometers straight from the hills down to the sea, cutting across every right angle Cerda drew elsewhere.