Dr. Johanna Cleary allowed me to tag along on a field trip for her television students to the leading broadcaster in Catalonia, TV3. We were shown around by Laura Dugo of the station's public relations staff.

The network is like crossing a television station with a movie studio. It produces news and genuine (ahem, America!) children's educational programming. It also produces comedies, soap operas and dramas. We saw set-design shops, a live studio audience and newsrooms with robotic cameras. Its most popular show is a comedy about football (soccer).

TV3 broadcasts everything, including commercials, in Catalan. For the record, Catalan is not a Spanish dialect. It is a distinct language that seems to have as many words in common with French as it does with Spanish. Everyone who works at the station, even the stage hands, must pass a Catalan language test.

The station used to be half-funded by the government, which subsidizes news media that keeps Catalan alive instead of letting everything be in Spanish. But thanks to government belt-tightening, TV3 now gets 70 percent of its revenue from advertising. Still, the government appoints the station's top executive.

About 2,000 people work at the network. Of those, about 250 work in news -- and of those, 11 are based overseas, including Washington, D.C. My guess is that's probably more international reporters than a typical American network has.

Turnover is low, so people must like working for the network, which serves a region with 7 million people.

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Protests centered in Catalunya plaza, the heart of Barcelona, took action today to try to block banks from foreclosing on four families and sent a "funeral" procession through the streets to push back against government austerity measures.

That's the first straight-news lede I've written for awhile, and it felt thrilling to be in the midst of the action again.

Parents, have no fear. The protests were relatively small and orderly. And they were some distance from where we live and have classes.

But it was exciting to see democracy in action, however messy. Spain is suffering through 25 percent unemployment. I've been told that it reaches 50 percent among the young. And when the only light you can see on the horizon is more cuts to education and social programs -- well, you can't blame the Spaniards for feeling a bit like their world has gone mad.

I interviewed an English-speaking medical student about the economic situation and its effect on her and her friends. She said she's lucky, for her parents can afford to pay her medical school tuition bill, which is nearly doubling this fall. But many of her classmates have had to drop out of college because they no longer get financial aid or loans.

The economic woes have meant a cut in health services, too, so that people wait longer to get health care. They have also meant that banks send unemployed people out of homes when they cannot pay their mortgages (Spain had a huge housing bubble) and yet demand full payment. The person I interviewed said other protesters were planning an "action" to keep banks from evicting four families from their homes.

Spain's economic problems are far more complex than can be described here, of course, and they defy easy solutions, no matter what the signs in the square say. Still, I can't blame a young Spaniard for feeling like banks get favored treatment while a college education suddenly is out of reach for a new generation. No country can cut its way to prosperity.

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Is art lost on today's youth? Not this study-abroad group.

Many of our students were enthralled by the Salvador Dali museum in his home town of Figueres, about 90 minutes from Barcelona. The surrealist painter sought to bring our dream life to consciousness, and he achieved fame in his lifetime thanks to his showmanship and marketer-muse-wife Gala.

Our guide, Jose, was terrific at helping us understand Dali and the symbols in his paintings, such as the crutches to depict the support he received from Gala. Several students lingered after the tour through the lunch hour to look at Dali's work in more detail.

We finished the day with a stop in Girona, a city noted for its well-preserved Jewish quarter and centuries-old streets. The city just happened to have its annual flower show, which is something of a contest to display flowers in an artistic way. The rain that hit our bus on the way to Girona left us alone in the town, providing a nice coda to an educational day.

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Today we took buses about an hour from Barcelona to tour a winery and Montserrat. The latter was just a half-hour picture stop, so we didn't have time to view the Benedictine monastery. But the view was spectacular.

About half the group voted to return to Barcelona after lunch because of fears the wait to get into the Montserrat bus parking lot might be 90 minutes or more. As it turns out, we got right in and soaked in the view.

Most of the day was spent at the Freixenet winery in the small town of Sant Sadurni d'Anoia. The winery makes 90 million bottles of cavas a year. Cavas is the Spanish word for sparking wine. Its most famous is champagne, which the French turn into the capital-letter Champagne and insist that only wine produced in that region of France can claim the title.

Freixenet wine is sold worldwide. Its most famous wines are the Carta Nevada and the Cordon Negro, which we tried. The latter gets its name from the bubbles arising in the champagne glass that look like a black rope.

After touring the winery, we walked into town and had a wonderful experience at a little cafe for lunch. The owner, unable to speak English, was nevertheless friendly with our students. Josep Urpi i Tejedor tried to take our picture, but his camera didn't work. So I took a picture of him with some of our students, and Joy King taught him the Gator chomp. I'll send him a print when we get back.

Senor Tejedor then insisted on showing me something. I asked Jillian Baach, who is bilingual, to accompany me. Mr. Tejedor took us into his basement cellar, where champagne was once made. An old well is there, and his excavations revealed old coins he collected in a vase. He insisted I take two.

After we all left, Mr. Tejedor decided he wanted others to have some coins, too. So he got on his Vespa scooter and tracked down some of the other students.

Those moments of unplanned serendipity, when language barriers are transcended by an act of human kindness, are what make study abroad priceless.

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Today after class, I toured the interior of la Sagrada Familia, the Gaudi-designed cathedral 130 years in the making and still 20 years away from completion.

Europe has more impressive cathedrals: the Duomo in Florence with its amazing-for-its-time dome, the historic Westminster cathedral and the mammoth St. Peter's Basilica. But none is more amazing for the story it tells through architecture. As the audio guide explained, every color in the stained glass windows and even the type of material used on the floor has a purpose. It is a place where nature, which inspired Gaudi, inspires worship of the Almighty.

In the evening, faculty members went for dinner and then to the magic fountain show in Barcelona, which features a Disney-esque fountain show of lights and water. Nice!

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Today was our first day of formal classes. We consider Barcelona to be our classroom, acquainting students with the culture of Spain and learning how to get along in a country where they may not speak the language, Catalan. But we have official classes, too.

In the afternoon, Andy of AIFS led an optional walking tour from the classrooms to Monjuic, where the Olympics were held. We walked about 3 miles, half of it up the steep hill. It was a good workout on a gorgeous summer day and a chance to see Barcelona up close.

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Today we toured Barcelona with a professional guide. Our group of 85 students plus faculty and staff were taken on two buses on a tour through some of the city's high spots. Our guide was Miguel, who was terrific. He took us up Monjuic, where the 1992 Olympics were held.

Miguel was especially helpful in helping us understand why the noted Barcelona architect Antoni Gaudi was so brilliant. He showed us how Gaudi was both innovative and practical. His curving figures use elements from nature (flowers, palm trees and salamanders) in striking details. At the same time, he was an environmentalist before such a thing existed; he designed his work to capture rain water to feed the landscape in this relatively arid land. Gaudi's work is showcased in Parc Guell.

We ended the tour with Gaudi's most famous work, Sagrada Familia. The church, began 130 years ago, is still about 20 years away from completion. The exterior is unlike any cathedral I've seen. I look forward to returning and touring the interior.

After a breezy morning, the weather for the afternoon tour was postcard-perfect. Barcelona is a wonderful city, save for its pickpockets. Last night, I got nicked. Some dude jostled me on the metro and before I realized what had happened, my 40-euro (about $55 U.S.) subway farecard was stolen. I have a special backpack to protect all my stuff and am pretty careful, but all it took was one moment of not being at attention. Lesson learned. 

We arrived early this morning in Barcelona after a mostly sleepless redeye flight from Philadelphia. We checked into our digs -- small but efficient -- and got oriented around the neighborhood. Then we held an opening dinner at a noted Spanish tapas restaurant. See pictures for more. Then I've got to get some sleep!