There are also questions about whether all of Europe is ready to embrace Kosovo. After Kosovo’s declaration, not all of the foreign ministers gathered in Brussels were willing to recognize it.

IT’S so hard to leave Barcelona. The sea, the food, the art, the music, the shopping (the shopping!).

With its soaring but impossibly slender columns and masonry that resembles heavy frosting, Antonio Gaudí’s unfinished masterwork La Sagrada Familia seems as if it might suddenly collapse on itself, like a surreal cake.

While the European Union also insists Kosovo is no precedent, some of its member states have their own restive regions to contend with -- Catalonia and the Basque country in Spain, Flanders in Belgium, Hungarian nationalists in Slovakia and Cyprus' breakaway Turkish Republic.

In the otherwise low-slung L'Hospitalet area and closer to the airport than the city center, the 350-foot high building — one of the tallest buildings in Catalonia — is steps away from the Fira de Barcelona, a major convention center.

Intel bets its design and manufacturing prowess will bury AMD's quad-core Barcelona CPU.

Eto’o, F.C. Barcelona’s lithe and explosive striker from Cameroon, has only recently returned to the field after having surgery on his right knee, which was injured in a European Champions League match against Werder Bremen of Germany on Sept. 27.

It was in Barcelona in the 1890s that Picasso found the artistic vanguard that propelled him to Paris and world renown. And this is where Gaudí spun Art Nouveau into his own quirky architectural idiom. Today the term avant-garde still applies: to Barcelona's fusion cuisine, design-accented boutique hotels, fun-loving fashion houses and even a delicious assortment of innovative chocolatiers, all of whom cut their teeth in the Catalan capital before taking on the rest of Spain.

The show's subtitle is ''Gaudí to Dalí,'' lest the public be deterred from an exhibition that's in fact heavy on Catalan heroes like the great (and vastly underappreciated) architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner, the whimsical jewelry designer Lluís Masriera and the painters Isidre Nonell and Ramon Casas (who, despite having passed out of fashion, was better than Picasso for many years; it was Casas, by the way, who owned the very first sports car in town, and his prestige and élan inspired the Dada artist Francis Picabia to develop his famous mania for them).

Mr. Mampel, who slides between Catalan, Spanish and French, with a dusting of English, started out catering and still prepares feasts for events. Since bubo opened in June 2005, he's been swamped with offers to franchise his concoctions.

Catalonia has a proud modern-dance tradition. And Ramón Oller (pronounced OH-yay) is one of its best-known choreographers, familiar to New York audiences from the works he created for Ballet Hispanico. Now he is back with his own Compañía Metros in "Carmen," which opened on Wednesday night at the Joyce Theater for a two-week engagement.

Moscow has often warned that Kosovo's status will serve as precedent for other nations with similar cases, including several breakaway provinces in the ex-Soviet Union. The Kremlin has hinted that, were Kosovo to gain independence, two pro-Russian rebel regions in Georgia and a breakaway province in Moldova, which enjoy Moscow's tacit support, could follow suit. Serbian officials also have warned that an independent Kosovo could also serve as a precedent for independence movements elsewhere, notably in Spain's Basque Country or Catalonia.

Six months ago, the University of California became the first of a second round of libraries to join, followed by the University Complutense of Madrid, the National Library of Catalonia and the University of Wisconsin, Madison, University of Virginia, and the University of Texas at Austin.

Conrad Adillon, who owns the business, even serves tapas for customers to sample as they shop and socialize. He started the warehouse sales in 2001 because he wanted to introduce his friends and neighbors to the foods of his native Catalonia and all of Spain. The atmosphere is convivial, and Mr. Adillon is always eager to share recipes.

''Tourists come in and want to know, 'Is it a jewelry shop?' '' says Carles Mampel, the 39-year-old award-winning pastry chef behind bubo and bubo bar. His establishment is actually a one-two punch of haute chocolatier and new-wave tapas bar near the Basilica Santa Maria del Mar, deep in Barcelona's El Born neighborhood, but ''people eat with their eyes,'' he says.

Andorra is one of those places that might have prompted the proverbial Irishman to say: “You can’t get there from here!”. This is almost true, in terms of modern transportation. The tiny country of Andorra, with a population of just 71,000, is almost hidden in the Pyrenees between France and Spain and can only be reached by road — or helicopter