Marieta de les Cols

The Internal Markets

Marieta of the Cabbages (Marieta de les Cols): This bighead is a vendor in Cabbages Plaza (Plaça de les Cols). Various markets came to occupy a good part of the city. At Pot Street potters were located, at Oil Plaza oil merchants and at Grain Street, presently Saint Francis Avenue, grain traders. At Plaza of Hotels, that is to say of inns—today the Plaza of Wine—people from outside the city came to satisfy their hunger, while at Troughs Street, animals were given feed and water. The most frequented place, however, was the market of foodstuffs in Cabbages Plaza, presently the Rambla of Liberty. 

Marieta of the Cauliflowers is an ostentatious woman, outfitted with a vivid blue dress, a scarf round her breast, a bonnet and outlandish striped stockings. She was inspired by a real person, a popular peasant woman who had a vegetable stall at the top of the Rambla. Joaquim Pla i Dalmau explained to us that she was a woman with little culture, a tad inattentive, who, when she had to relieve herself, just went close to one of the trees in the street and, without any ado, spread her legs apart a bit.