Gaudi (... and Barcelona)
Stolen Wallet
Sagrada Familia
El Corte Inglese and waterfront
Casa Battlo, Parc Guell and a bus tour
Palace of Music and other Barcelona site
see also Fit the First of the European pilgrimage - Bologna, Ferrara, Ravenna, Siena
Fit the Second of the European pilgrimage - Pisa and the Cinque Terra
Fit the Fourth of the European pilgrimage - Santiago de Compostela
Fit the Fifth of the European pilgrimage - Northern Spain
Fit the Sixth of the European pilgrimage - Salamanca, Segovia, Madrid and home
14, 15, 16 June - Barcelona. As an entry point into Spain Barcelona is ideal, once you recognise that you're in Catalonia, not Spain. Travelling now with Cath's mother, Margaret, who was on her first ever overseas trip and had just completed a two-week bus tour of Austria, Switzerland and Italy, we flew in from Zurich, purchased Barcelona Tickets at the airport (these covered train fares and some museum admissions for the days we'd be in Barcelona), trained into the city and made our way to the one-star hotel we'd pre-booked. The stay was marred by the necessity of clearing up the effects of the theft of my wallet on the way into town and by the fact that the hotel provided us with what was basically a single disguised as a triple. Most uncomfortable it was and the place where I had the worst nights of the trip, with my great difficulty in sleeping clearly disturbing my roommates. 
Still, there are reasons to be in Barcelona, despite the fact that it is the city in Spain most likely to see you robbed: primarily Antoni Gaudi, his architecture and, especially, the unfinished Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Familia. Because we lost the first afternoon and evening, we had only two whole days in the city: one for the church and one for the rest of the place, which ended up being seen courtesy of a round-the-city tourist bus.
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Bereft
It was undoubtedly my own fault that my wallet was stolen. Cath wanted to take a taxi from the airport to the pre-booked hotel. I insisted on getting on the train that would take us to the centre of the city. That would have been OK in itself had I not neglected one of the prime rules of the Occidental Tourist: after purchasing the train tickets I should have put my wallet back in my backpack for safe-keeping. Instead it went into my front right-hand pants pocket. I didn't subsequently move it while on the train because I didn't want to draw attention to it. That's about half-a-dozen mistakes within fifteen minutes; not a good record for someone who claims to be an experienced traveller. The robbery was simple in the extreme - if it occurred when I think it did. As we were exiting the train, with my hands laden with a bag in each, an older man with a bicycle, standing near the exit door on the other side of the train, brushed against me. I didn't realise the wallet was missing until we were partway up the steps from the station to the city proper. By the time I did, it was too late. The train had gone, and the ticket window clerk was unable (or unwilling) to assist me. "Report it to the railway police", she said. And they were situated at the main railway station, not at this station's office. The following thirty minutes were panic, mixed with expletive, interspersed with nightmares and recriminations. And that was all me. Cath and Margaret were taking it somewhat more calmly, even though the wallet contained stolen Visa cards that linked to the same accounts as both of Cath's credit cards and we were unsure how the issuing companies would react.
The first thing we did was walk to, and book into, the hotel. Then I got on the mobile phone to my travel insurance 24-hour hotline. There I was advised on the best ways of dealing with the crisis. They connected me with Visa who immediately stopped both Visa cards and to Amex to stop the American Express card. I was assured that I would be called back to advise on further action. It was mid-afternoon by this stage and we noticed an Internet cafe across the street from our hotel. So we went there to see if the cards had been used in the hour or so between the theft and the reporting of the theft. Nothing wrong was immediately apparent. So leaving Margaret to guard the room, Cath and I used the two remaining Barcelona Cards to proceed to Catalunya station to find the railway police and report the theft. Thus far all conversation with railway officials in Spain had been via my (not very good) Spanish. This continued with the railway police who finally communicated to me that they needed me to report the matter to the tourist police, not them, and the TP station was along La Rambla, Barcelona's main drag which goes from Placa de Catalunya to the Columbus statue at the waterfront. A short walk, we thought. Thirty minutes later, down the cosmopolitan road - which I will describe presently - we found the police station and a tourist policewoman who spoke English much better than I spoke Spanish. We were able then to complete the formalities. She held out little hope of my recovering the wallet, which in addition to some Euros, 2 Visa cards and the Amex, carried my driver's licence, my Medicare card, the recently purchased Barcelona Card and a couple of other minor bits and pieces of little importance or use. Fortunately it did not contain my passport so I did not need to visit the Australian consulate, as she first advised me to. Thence we found a nearer railway station and went back to Catalunya to buy a replacement Barcelona Card and thence to the hotel to collect Margaret and become tourists again.
No rambling
One of the regrets of this trip, partly resulting from the time lost due to the robbery and the need to fix things up as a consequence, and partly because Margaret's feet were not up to very long walks, we didn't have the opportunity properly to cover La Rambla. However, even on the small exposure, as we searched for the tourist police, the street retains the ambience I recall from 1988. Although a wide boulevard, running from the central square to the waterfront over a couple of kilometres, the street has only two narrow lanes for traffic, one on each side. The remainder of the road is taken up with a tree-lined central pedestrian plaza, lined on both sides by stalls, interspersed with a plethora of performers. These range from traditional buskers (mostly guitars and song) to puppeteers to mime to living statues and a variety of other acts. I was particularly taken with a number of the living statues, the costumes of which were amazing: Roman soldiers competed with medieval dress and modern reality and were confronted by all sorts of faerie folk and the occasional beast. The stalls included tourist tat, but also flower stalls and pet stores. La Rambla seems to be busy 24 hours a day, with foot traffic going in both directions, and large crowds gathering around the better entertainers and the more outrageous living statues. Off the street on either side are the older barrios of Barcelona, narrow alleys leading to interesting churches and eateries, and hidden squares where Catalonian youth are likely to gather for a guitar jam session or an impromptu dance.
Recovering some poise
It was nearly 20.00 by the time we got back to the hotel and we'd wasted most of a day and hadn't eaten since breakfast at the hotel in Zurich. We decided that the best plan was to head for the Sagrada Familia, Gaudi's unfinished church, which was only a couple of railway stations from where we were, much closer than the main area of the city. There was some hope that the building might still be open for a look, but largely we were heading to an area where we might eat, against an interesting backdrop.
(Aside on daylight hours: Spain is largely west of the UK yet, because the continental EU countries had agreed on a common time [Paris', one hour ahead of Greenwich] and because they were practicing daylight saving, it meant that Spanish time was a ridiculous two hours ahead of Greenwich during the time we were there. That meant that sunset was after 21.00, and the heat of the day did not dissipate before midnight. This fit in well with Spanish eating habits, where the evening meal is taken at a strangely late hour, and occasionally suited our needs, such as the when we arrived very late in Madrid and were able still to get a good meal at 23.00, but threw my body clock off even more than the jet-laggedness, tiredness and general unwellness had already done.)
The church was closed but was a sight to see at sunset, and we sat in front of it, eating our tapas dinner at the Picasso Bar against one of the more serene and inspiring backdrops available. This (together with the quick action by the credit card companies) did much to centre my equilibrium after a trying day.
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Unfinished business
Antoni Gaudi started building the as-yet-unfinished Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Familia in 1884, taking over a project started a couple of years earlier by another designer. Until his death, Gaudi worked on the building, which had the ground-plan of a Gothic cathedral but the exterior of which was to be something unique,
with three grand entrances portraying the Nativity, Passion and Resurrection of Jesus, 18 towers representing the Apostles, the Evangelists, Jesus and Mary, and an interior that, like its exterior, would avoid straight lines and planes, taking its shapes and designs from aspects of nature. In this undertaking, Gaudi sought to build the great modernist cathedral. When a tram hit and killed him in 1926, he had completed the Nativity facade and one of the towers.
Although his work was carried forward intermittently for a decade, the Spanish Civil War was devastating: destroying parts of the work and causing a fire which burned the few written plans he had left. 
Under the Falangists, there was little progress, but in the 1970s Barcelona turned once again to Gaudi's church as a symbol of their religious faith and commun ity and undertook to complete the building. Increasingly since that time, there has been progress towards that goal. Cath and I saw it, largely from the exterior, in 1988 and were blown away by the size of the project and the genius of the design. Eight of the towers had been completed and the Passion facade was awaiting the completion of the carving of its sculptures and of its towers. Since that time, work has gone ahead even more quickly. An Australian designer has been able to use computers to recreate the original designs (from carvings left by Gaudi) and to create templates for the various aspects of the interior work, allowing the craftsmen to put together the pieces to make the church.
Thinking about the great buildings of the earlier eras of mankind, particularly the great cathedrals of Europe, many of them were works of several generations. It wasn't unusual for more than one architect to be involved in the design and 
for the design to change over the life of the building of the church. These days such projects are not usual. Landmark buildings are erected in short time and are the product of a single mind - and rarely are they inspiring. Gaudi's Sagrada Familia therefore provides the Occidental Tourist with a unique opportunity: the chance to see a major sacred building in construction, over many years. On this visit we were able to wander around the exterior and into the interior of the cathedral-in-building. The Nativity and Passion entrances, at the north and south of the building, are being used as the entrances and exits at the moment. The grand eastern entrance, with its symbolism of the Resurrection, will be the last built, because it will require the destruction of a city block, currently occupied by apartments and souvenir shops, before completion. 
The Passion facade now has a plethora of carvings to complement the towers and doors. These have been done in a modernist, almost cubist, style, with an elongation of figures that alludes to contemporary art, but also to the sacred art of earlier Spanish masters like El Greco. 
The towers over the entrance have been engraved with holy words, similar to the effect at the opposite end, and surmounted with colored decorative devices, in the shape of sun disks and of bunches of fruit. As one of the exhibitions in the crypt detailed, Gaudi derived many of his designs from aspects of nature. He argued that there were no straight lines in nature and, therefore, there'd be none in his designs.
The contrast of the Nativity and Passion facades is instructive and gives rise to one of the major controversies surrounding the continued work on the church. 
The Nativity side, which was completed largely under Gaudi's supervision, is replete with intricate carvings and decorations, almost overly ornate in their design and execution. On the opposite side, the carvings and panels in the facade are, by contrast, lean and spare, with a crisp and clean feel. Now, to an extent, this can be seen as the contrast between the Christmas and Easter symbolisms of Christianity itself; between the lessons drawn from the Birth and the Death of the religion's founder.
But it is also the cause of artistic disputation, as critics argue that the style used for the Passion entrance are not in keeping with the vision Gaudi had for the church as a whole. And here we get into murky waters because we don't have Gaudi's vision for all of the Sagrada Familia nor, in keeping with the generational nature of medieval cathedral building, should we. 
Each successive architect should place his or her stamp on those aspects supervised. Each new group of workers should seek their own inspiration for the holy work being done, as long as that vision fits within the grander scheme. With its thin, irregular, leaning columns emerging from around the pediments of the doors, forming almost a skeletal shape, and its rising levels of sculpture, engraving and illustration, 
the Passion facade may not be as Gaudi envisaged but it is beautiful, awful and artificial. I stood transfixed for a long, long time, and then spent even longer looking at each individual aspect of the work as a whole - rather like I'd done some years earlier in Dallas when first confronted by Rodin's Gates of Hell.
A work in progress
The interior of the cathedral space is largely occupied by workmen but you can walk around the eastern end of the current space from the northern to the southern entrance. 
Already some beautiful, abstract stained glass has been fitted providing colored highlights on the pale stone even on an overcast day such as the one when we visited the Sagrada Familia. Already carved out on the sides of the building are balcony spaces , each in an irregular wave formation, providing a further non-linear, but natural, shape to the work.
When we were there, workmen were putting together hundreds of the mosaic-patterned ceiling stones, designed to fit in the appropriate spaces to complete the roof/ceiling of the nave of the cathedral. Masons were working on dressing some of the stones which would be used in the nave bays which were currently under construction. Still others were working on some of the columns which would define the aisles in the nave, leading to the apse. Again the columns avoided regularity and straight lines, instead taking their shapes from trees, making the space appear like a stone forest. 
Daylight from windows high in the sides and on the western wall augmented the colored light from the various stained glass windows. Everywhere you looked there was construction, activity and vibrancy. The buzz was reflected in the reaction of the tourists, with large numbers passing through, most of them far more quickly than we were prepared to. Anyone who has not stood in the midst of such labor has missed an inspiring experience.
This is our second visit, fifteen years after the first. In 1988 there appeared to be no hope that the project would ever be completed or completed to anything approximating Gaudi's plan. Now, with the help of the boffin from Melbourne, and plans for various aspects of the work being sent to Barcelona electronically for translation into the concrete, the tunnel is hoving into view and a light at the end of it may be visible RSN. Current estimates are that the church will be finished within the next forty years - meaning that Cath and I will probably walk through the work at least twice more before its completion; and then at least once when consecrated. Isn't it time that you prepared to go?
Crypt-ology
Underneath the church is a space that was among the first completed by Gaudi, and where his earthly remains rest to this day. The crypt has been turned into a museum, containing what remains of Gaudi's drawings, plans and models for the church. Additionally, there is a 'versioning' of the work, 
showing the progress at various points in the church's history, a recording of the building that, I trust, will continue. I have already noted the special exhibit on Gaudi and nature, which was on while we were there. Some of the material which survived fires and fascists include some of Gaudi's drawings and sketches, and some of the three-dimensional material he had prepared for use in the church.
Included in this were a beautiful wooden confessional, and a matching pulpit, as well as a metal and wood vestment storage box (there must be a technical term for such a thing - an image is here anyway) which must have been four meters high and five meters wide, 
and a stone model of the plan for the nave which reached to the ceiling of the crypt, about five meters above us. Walking through that model, at about a tenth of the final size, gave me shivers. I cannot yet imagine walking through the finished church. But I intend to.
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A different shrine
Five hours was barely enough time for this sight but we eventually had to tear ourselves away from Sagrada Familia as Cath and Margaret had an alternate pilgrimage to make: you cannot say you've visited Spain until you've prayed at El Corte Ingles. The major cities have several branches of this major department store and the main one in Barcelona - its commercial cathedral - is on the Placa de Catalunya whence we proceeded for the remainder of the afternoon. I'm pretty much a shopping agnostic and don't really appreciate the subtleties of the orthodox shopper, let alone the fundamentalist. But to find almost immediately a good pair of sandals for Margaret, whose feet I had noted earlier needed all the support they could stand, was a blessing. This first visit (the shoppers planned to pay further obeisance to their ghod in Madrid) also yielded a number of presents for relatives back in Australia and a wallet for Muggins. While Cath and Margaret were engaged in secret women's business with their spiritual advisers within the store, I was able to finalise with Visa the arrangements for dealing with the theft and discovered that occasionally banks are not complete bastards: the St George Bank immediately issued an 'emergency card', which could not be used in an ATM but could be used for EFTPOS, and arranged for its delivery to our Barcelona hotel - all at their own expense; the Teachers' Credit Union was not as co-operative, demanding a $150 fee for the issuing of an emergency card. I declined this offer. Cath's cards were still useable and we could survive on those with the emergency St George card in reserve in case of a further catastrophe. If we lost Cath's Credit Union card, we could always use Internet banking to transfer money from the Credit Union to the St George account. Such are the options available to the Occidental Tourist 6007 years after the Creation.
On the waterfront
We didn't walk from the Placa de Catalunya all the way down La Rambla to the statue of Christobel Colom but took the underground - taking advantage of the Barcelona Card - and thence it was a short stroll to the waterfront. Like all truly beautiful cities, Barcelona is built on a magnificent harbor. Unfortunately they have built out much of the beauty by the construction of a large tourist area within the confines of Port Vell for the 1992 Olympics, cutting off the view from the shore, except of course for a view of bars, restaurants, shops, cinemas and entertainment complexes. Imagine if you can that they built Darling Harbor in such a way as it cut out the view from Farm Cove down Port Jackson to the Heads. The tourist complex is linked to the mainland by footbridge and, had we been willing to traverse it, we would have rediscovered the view from Barcelona to the Mediterranean that we had seen in 1988, but it was late in the day after pilgrimages to Gaudi and El Corte Ingles. So instead we sat on a park bench and watched the passing parade, relaxed our feet and waited for the sunset. When we left at 20.30 it was still thinking about it.
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Neat but Gaudi
On our second day in Barcelona, we had an opportunity to look at some of Gaudi's secular buildings. First on the menu was the Casa Battlo. This six storey residence, on one of Barcelona's main streets, is typical of the modernist architecture that dominated the city in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century when, as the centre of Spanish industry and commerce, it developed a wealthy upper middle class wanting to splurge on status symbols. 
We were able to walk around the ground and first floors. The latter was the family's living area, with a formal dining room and a huge patio at the rear. The sense of style, the flow of the non-linear patterns of the walls and ceilings, the use of dark hardwoods and the eerie, curved front, supported by columns shaped like the thigh-bones of some huge creature all contributed to the whole.
The attached image of the front of the building conveys some of this but not the colors of the tiles and mosaics on the front of the building and particularly around the internal patio at the rear of the first floor. Among my favorite parts was the wooden semi-circular staircase built from the ground to the first floor, with a balustrade which resembled the spinal column of a huge dinosaur.
We also visited the Parc Guell, built by Gaudi originally as the green-space and central courtyard of the development of a residential estate in the hills north-west of the city. That the estate was never built is a shame but what remains is now more like a park in the sense of Hyde Park. 
It is built on several levels rising from a spectacular entrance flanked by two pavilions. On the upper level there is a huge open space around which is built a huge serpentine semi-circular park bench, decorated with elaborate tiling.
In fact beautiful and elaborate tiling is a feature of the park as it is of many other Gaudi buildings. I really like the main central stair from the entrance, in the middle of which is a tiled dragon that guards the place. 
This staircase leads to a covered area which is held up by scores of columns, again in various non-linear shapes that represent the forms of nature. Off the side of this, near a further staircase leading to the park-bench terrace, is a series of covered walkways, supported by rib like concrete pillars, a great place for kids to play. 
As we sat on a terrace, just above the park-bench terrace, sipping beer in the early evening, we had a great panorama of the city, looking south-east, over the Sagrada Familia to the harbor and the Mediterranean. Magic.
On the buses
The fact that we got to Parc Guell during the busy second day in Barcelona was on serendipitous outcome of travelling with a first time tourist. Margaret wanted to see as much as possible and it didn't seem like we'd be able to achieve that on public transport and shank's mare, so after the visit to Casa Battlo, we joined the Barcelona Bus Turistic. 
These double-decker buses run at regular intervals on three routes through the city and, for a day ticket, you can join a bus at any of its stops, exit when you feel like it and change between routes at the interchanges. This sort of thing was, of course, beneath our notice when we were parading around Europe as back-packers, with the benefit of the Eurail Pass in 1988-89, but the presence of the inexperienced traveller seeking an overview was just the excuse we needed. I have to say that, having been initially sceptical of the benefit we could obtain from this venture, I was wrong and the bus turned out to be a great way to see the city. So good in fact that we repeated the dose on the analogous system in Madrid. We first essayed the Blue Route, which took us through the main part of town and its near environs. With frequent stops at the various places of interest, and a fascinating commentary in English, Spanish and Catalan to accompany the trip, we drove from the Placa de Catalunya up the Passeig de Gracia, the most fashionable of Barcelona's streets (with a couple of Gaudi-designed houses), past the Estacio Sants, 
the central station for intercity trains, to the Placa d'Espanya, a medieval palace built for an International Exhibition in 1929. Thence we climbed the hill south of the city, Montjuic, on which were the stadiums for the 1992 Olympics. Down the other side of this hill to the waterfront, we drove around Port Vell, seeing all those bars, restaurants, shops, cinemas and entertainment complexes from the other side. Passing the Columbus statue once again, we went up La Rambla to the Barri Gotic, the oldest residential suburb in the city, where we exited the bus for lunch next to the city's Cathedral.
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Palace of Music
Again the decision to take a tour of the Palau de la Musica Catalana was Margaret's choice. And again we were victims of some beneficial serendipity. This early twentieth century opera house, built 1905-8, conducts a series of tours throughout the day, alternately in English, Spanish and Catalan, with odd French or German tour added in. We arrived too late for the last English-language tour of the day, so we signed up for the Spanish one. And it would be my guess that fewer than half of those on the tour were fluent in Spanish, including a couple of Japanese girls and a few other English speakers. 
But the guide by judicious use of gesture, and the use of reasonably simple Spanish, communicated most of the important information. In any case, the tour enabled us to see the interior of the beautiful art nouveau music house, with its magnificent two-storey theatre, rehearsal hall and function rooms. The statuary, stained glass windows, mosaics and tiled floors were all magnificent but the highlight would have to be the grand central skylight in the centre of the ceiling of the concert hall. In this case, as cameras are banned from the tour, I direct you to the Palau's website, http://www.palaumusica.org/. Designed by Lluis Domenech I Montaner, the building demonstrates that Gaudi was not unique among the architects of Barcelona and the city, suddenly wealthy, truly was the centre of the modernist movement and a must for Occidental Tourists with an interest in architecture.
On the road again
From the music palace, we boarded the Red Route of the Barcelona Bus Turistic. This took us again up Passeig de Gracia, turning north this time so we drove past the Sagrada Familia, through the north-western suburbs, much more recent in construction, more dominated by the sort of apartment buildings which dominate cities elsewhere in Spain, and Europe, to Parc Guell, about which I spoke earlier. It was 19.00 by the time we walked back down the hill from the park and rejoined the red bus. The return trip took us along the northern outskirts of the city, at the foot of Tibidabo, rising above us, past the Monestir de Pedralbes, the Gaudi-designed Pavillions Guell and the city's university, to the last sacred site if the day, the stadium of the Futbol Club Barcelona. I might even have tried to persuade the orthodox shoppers that there was some value in visiting this shrine, were it not so late in the day. Instead we stayed on the bus as it navigated the Diagonal, the other of Barcelona's main linking thoroughfare back to the Placa de Catalunya and thence home.
Feeding the inner tourist
I haven't mentioned much, except in passing about the breakfasts, lunches and dinners we enjoyed. Generally, the food in Spain was good, if not great. We had sit-down lunches on both days in Barcelona but survived largely on tapas, the nibbles served in bars and restaurants, which taken together can form a great meal, in the evening. For example, at 21.00, after the exertions of the day on 16 June, we went to a pub called Le Cigne (the Swan), in the same block as our hotel, ordered cerveza for two and four or five small servings, including tortilla, salad russe and some calamares. It was a fine, and inexpensive, feed.
The next installment of the Pilgrimage brings out travelers to Santiago de Compostela, site of the shrine of the patron saint of Spain, Saint James the Elder (Santiago). Compostela was a major pilgrimage site throughout the entire medieval period, rivaling Rome and Jerusalem, and surpassing them among the citizens of western Europe. Thus it was a must for the Occident Tourists.
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First written: December 2004
see also Fit the First of the European pilgrimage - Bologna, Ferrara, Ravenna, Siena
Fit the Second of the European pilgrimage - Pisa and the Cinque Terra
Fit the Fourth of the European pilgrimage - Santiago de Compostela
Fit the Fifth of the European pilgrimage - Northern Spain
Fit the Sixth of the European pilgrimage - Salamanca, Segovia, Madrid and home
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