ABSTRACT
The World Fairs of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were "Internationals" for commodities. Sizeable meetings, they drew together the latest products of ingenuity and labor and exposed them to the public gaze in vast modern pavilions on elaborately conceived precincts. Once the disparate components of a fair were in place, the exposition became a fantasy world of economic possibilities, reification and visual extravagance. Literary journals and newspapers have played an important role in the consolidation of Catalan culture. In Catalan, mirador means "vantage point" and the journal to which the Catalanist lawyer and businessman Amadeu Hurtado applied this name was both figuratively and literally well positioned within the city it observed. Mirador 's recurring interest m the built and natural environments of the city was a particularly integral part of its urban posture, a stance not at all incompatible with the more overtly political goals held by the editors.
