L'Estel Ferit: Rebecca Horn's Wounded Star
Why is it significant?
There they are: four rusty steel boxes, each with windows cut into it, piled one on top of another on the sand and leaning at odd angles, like a stack of shoeboxes about to topple. Children stare at it; sunbathers lie in its shadow.
Key Facts
| Place | L'Estel Ferit: Rebecca Horn's Wounded Star |
|---|---|
| Address | Passeig Marítim de la Barceloneta, 08003 Barcelona, Spain |
| Geo Coordinates | 41.37650, 2.19110 |
| Part of Walk | Barceloneta and the Sea: Barcelona's Fishermen, Bombas and Beaches |
| Generated | Generated |
There they are: four rusty steel boxes, each with windows cut into it, piled one on top of another on the sand and leaning at odd angles, like a stack of shoeboxes about to topple. Children stare at it; sunbathers lie in its shadow. It has been called ugly, it has been called beautiful, and it is easily the most loved strange object on this beach.
It is a sculpture by the German artist Rebecca Horn, made in 1992 for the Olympic year, and its name is L'Estel Ferit, the Wounded Shooting Star. Its other title is Homenatge a la Barceloneta, Homage to Barceloneta. Horn wanted to remember something that had just disappeared from this beach, and once you know what it was, the cubes make sense.
For decades this sand was lined with chiringuitos, the beach shacks of Barceloneta. They were wooden, makeshift, often family-run, and they served what the neighbourhood did best: paella and fideuà in big pans, grilled sardines, fried fish, cold beer, with your feet in the sand. Families from all over Barcelona came on Sundays for lunch here, and they are remembered with real tenderness.
But they were also unlicensed, built on public land, and they did not fit the new seafront. Before the Olympics they were demolished, all of them, and with them went a whole way of eating and of spending a Sunday. The neighbours felt it as a loss, and the stacked, slightly wounded rooms of Horn's tower are a memorial to those little lost houses, with their windows, their light and their noise.
The good news is that the cooking never left; it simply moved indoors, into the streets behind the promenade. And this is the moment to go and find it. Turn away from the sea and walk inland a few blocks, up one of the long straight streets, to the market square of Barceloneta, where a very particular local invention is waiting.