Before breakfast, the city was already at work

Start at the Born with the people who made morning possible before most Barcelona residents had woken up. From 1921 until 1971 this iron market became the city's central wholesale fruit-and-vegetable hub. Municipal research describes a logistics system that spilled beyond the building and congested the surrounding streets. The most vivid sense of its hours comes from testimony collected for the Born's own memory exhibition: neighbours remembered a churro shop doing business in the small hours and a rush around seven in the morning as retailers arrived to buy from wholesalers. Treat that second detail correctly — as remembered experience, not a universal timetable. Stand outside the quiet cultural centre and picture the same square filled with boxes, carts, porters and buyers whose working day began in what everyone else called night.