A Labrynth of Art , Museums and Music in Cataluna

Barcelona 1^st Day

June 5-6 , 2014

A Labrynth of Art, Museums and Music in Cataluña

I arrive in Heathrow Airport and thanks to I-phone texting meet up with John in the HR bookstore where I am buying Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book about Giants and David. Because John is in business class he can spend our 4-hour transfer wait in the lovely BA lounge. We decide to ask if I can enter.  John makes a valiant effort about wanting his wife with him while I offer to pay extra. A sensitive Muslim BA man says if I stay in there the whole time and don’t come out to shop he will let me in. Since his shift ends in 1 hour he can’t guarantee I will get back in.  John thinks this is great because I won’t be able to shop and he can relax in this oasis with plenty of food.

Neri Hotel: On the plane to Barcelona I sit next to a man from Italy who says he is Italian but has moved to Barcelona because it is more beautiful than Italy. Since I am an Italy fan and have traveled there many times, I cannot believe something can be more spectacular than Italy. Apparently there are over 15,000 Italians in this city. We arrive at the Neri Hotel, located in the Old City and chosen after much research by John. It is a jewel of a hotel with 20 rooms in the center of the Gothic Quarter. Our small, quaint room has all our needs provided for including a Nespresso machine, Wi-Fi, soft towels, a balcony and dark chocolate on our bed.

We awake the next morning to the sounds of children laughing and playing in a school playground near our balcony. Suddenly a beautiful sound emerges from the children singing. 

Wings of Peace

I rush down to the square (placa) beside our hotel with my camera. There I see over 100 children ages 4 to 10 years singing joyously, waving their arms in synchrony while a throng of parents are watching them and taking pictures. 

They finish their performance with hugs from their parents and enter the school.

Other children who have come from other schools to be part of this performance stay for awhile playing .. what sport?  Soccer of course. I think I would like to be a psychologist in this school. 

Cataluña: Barcelona, a city of 1.4 million (like Belfast) but 4 million for the wider area is said by our tour book not to be in Spain but actually in Cataluña. Historically the Catalan language and culture were discouraged after the failure of the last pocket of Catalan resistance against the military coup of the fascist dictator Francisco Franco. However, by the mid 70’s (after the death of Franco) the language made a come back and now all school classes are in Catalan as their first language and Spanish their second.

We venture out at noon to find a restaurant called Academia, which has been recommended to us. The architecture seems unique, funky and playful with buildings that all seem to have beautiful, detailed ironwork balconies. 
We immediately are lost in a labyrinth of narrow streets (not big enough for cars) and placas with churches. 

John grumbles about the failure of his upgraded cellular data on the I-pad to show a map and the poor hotel map we were given because he can’t find where we are on the map. 

Truly this area is the maze of all mazes!  Suddenly we arrive at a placa that took us 20 minutes to get to (but is really only 5 min from our hotel) where there is a poster in front of a church announcing a classical Spanish guitar show that evening.  John is quickly revived by this news and we decide we will try to take this concert in. However, John tells the ticket seller we won’t buy the discounted priced tickets (before 6 pm) now because we aren’t sure we will be able to find our way back here. She looks at us rather strangely and I imagine her thinking, “why are these old people not on a tour?” However, she graciously helps us find where we are on the map, which turns out to be in the exact opposite direction of where John thought we were going to find the restaurant. Yikes, I chuckle as John who always seems to have an innate sense of direction is experiencing how I frequently feel.  He responds by buying another more detailed map. 

We are finally successful at finding this delightful restaurant with tables out on the Saint Just placa. I order tuna salad and a prawns pasta while John orders the same salad and mint beef soup and tries to find out what is wrong with his I-pad data plan by calling them. 

He is disappointed there is no paella and I know we will be searching for the restaurant with the best paella that evening. We are entertained with music from a couple playing a guitar and singing as well as the church bells.  

John comments that this is much better than being on a tour because there is more of a sense of discovery. I wonder about this, as he seems to have difficulty with the discovery process when his technology doesn’t work.  

Barcelona’s World Class Museums

Picasso Museum

We have purchased a Barcelona Articket BCN online, which gives entrance to 6 different museums. I wonder how we can visit all of these in our time frame, especially given our propensity for getting lost. Despite our new map we again get lost trying to find the Picasso museum by overshooting the distance. Luckily we are able to bypass the long line-ups and enter what I think is the most beautiful museum I have ever been in. Already I know I want to come back and we don’t have enough time to see everything. This museum has over 450 Picasso works and is the most comprehensive exhibit of the early years of his youth, his art apprenticeship and his family. We start in the first room, which shows paintings of his father who was also an artist and was his mentor.  There is a large wonderful painting of a doctor (who has his father’s face) standing next to a young, poor patient in bed, while a nun holding a baby looks on. This amazing painting called Science and Charity was completed when Picasso was 15 years old!  This is why Picasso is known as “boy wonder” and I am astounded by his empathy at such a young age.  We proceed through the rooms starting with the realistic paintings of his family and disadvantaged people painted in his early years. The exhibit continues to 1904 where we see Picasso’s masterpieces of the blue period, his melancholy period. We view some paintings from the beginning of his creative period where his paintings are less realistic and more geometric with simple outlines and almond eyes.  This is the beginning of his Cubism style.  This collection illustrates Picasso’s early genius but I think it also illustrates the power a father can have on a child. We would have stayed longer except we had a reserved 4 pm time to visit La Sagrada Familia and wanted time to get lost.  

La Sagrada Familia (Church of the Family) & Gaudi

East Side Entrance of La Sagrada Familia

The building of this cathedral started in 1882 and the architecture was taken over by Gaudi in 1883. It won’t be finished until 2026.  Since we had reserved online for a 4 pm tour we found ourselves in a group of about 30 people and with a guide who spoke Spanish as well as poor English.  It was a 2-hour tour, which took that long because of the two languages.  John reminds me that this is why we don’t want to be on tours and I remind him that this tactic has resulted in us avoiding the 1-hour plus wait in the very long ticket line.  There are crowds of people despite the fact this is not officially tourist season and children are not out of school yet. I can’t imagine what this is like in tourist season in a few weeks.  

Children Tour Cathedral 

John listening to tour guide 

Gaudi, the star of Modernism is probably the most famous architect.   Having descended from 4 generations of metal and copper workers, he incorporated ironwork into his architecture to make jaw dropping building designs that barely have a straight line. His modernistic approach was influenced by the Catalan contemporary, Salvador Dali.  So while Dali was creating unlikely photo-realistic images (eg. dripping, wavy clock), Gaudi did the same with architecture.  

Nativity Facade East Entrance of La Sagrada Familial

Nativity Facade East Side of La Sagrada Familia 

Top of East Side Entrance 

On the east side of the La Sagrada Familial I am amazed with the many statues including chameleons going down the side of the door, turtles and tortoises which are said to represent permanence and seem fanciful and fun to me. 

Tree of Life 

The tree of life at the very top is adorned with colorful broken tile mosaics. There are soft wavy lines and ripples and towers topped with what look like candy balls. 

Tops of Towers on Cathedral

East Side Nativity Facade 

Additionally there are many statues depicting the celebration of the birth of baby Jesus with his mother.

While Gaudi died in 1926, he apparently had planned the Sagrada Familia architecture and design for this entire church structure. He worked on it for 40 years and even lived on site for many years.  He was influenced by Catalan Gothic architecture and later by Islamic style.  In the Spanish civil war in 1936 much of the church structure was burned out, including his architectural plans.  It was opened again in 1947 but the interior was not finished until 2010.  The guide tells us the architecture is more or less what Gaudi wanted but there have been guesses about his plan.

Joseph Subirachs who died 3 months ago has been largely responsible for translating Gaudi’s plans. We go inside the cathedral said to hold 8-14,000 people and there are stained glass windows everywhere. While I thought the outside was beautiful (although still under massive construction and sandstone cleaning) I was blown away by the interior, which I found simple, natural, and breathtaking. 

Inside La Sagrada Familial

Inside Cathedral

Forests 

It is very different from usual cathedrals with its wide naves and spaciousness, bright light streaming through the stained glass everywhere, and tall granite columns that look like forests.

 Gone are all the gold, statues and trinkets. Interestingly, John and I had different perceptions as he found the outside glorious while he thought the inside uninspiring.

Our tour book said that at the time of his graduation from architecture school, they were unsure if Gaudi was mad or if he was a genius. Time has answered that question and I find it inspiring and liberating to think about someone who successfully defies convention.

Passion Façade -Other side of La Sagrada Familia  

We leave the cathedral through an entrance on the opposite side and find an outside facade that is very modern and in sharp contrast to the first entrance. It reminds me of Picasso’s transformation from realistic portraits in is youth to his modern looking Cubist paintings of triangular shapes.

 On this side of the cathedral is a dramatic façade of the story of passion, death, resurrection and the ascension of Jesus.  There is a beautiful door which has engraved in bronze the texts of the gospels of St. Mathew and St. John which recount the last days of Jesus’s life  ~ “give us this day our daily bread” and in front of this door is a statue of Jesus in pain before he died.

Suffering

Crucifixion

Death 

Ressurection and Ascension

I found this statue behind the scaffolding and screens and thought it was one of the most beautiful.

Passion 

Gaudi’s School House

Afterwards we went to Gaudi’s schoolhouse built in 1902. I found this to be the most interesting of all with a school roof that was like undulating waves and its spaciousness somehow portending the unimaginable things to come from this great man. 

Current 

School Roof 

Original School 

Children Making Wavy Lines

There was one classroom room for students and another showing his workspace and study. On the blackboard is the statement by Gaudi saying, “When the building simply has what it needs with the resources available, it has character or dignity which is the same thing.”

Gaudi's Desk

Original Picture of Desk

Cathedral of Barcelona

On the way home we enter the cathedral just near our hotel.  It is dark and dingy with metal doors covering the golden images and pales I think in comparison to Gaudi’s La Sagrade Familia.

Spanish Guitar Concert ~ Xaveri Coll

This beautiful concert was in a small church. We misread the starting time, as 8 o’clock instead of 9 o’clock so were early.  John got lost going back to the hotel to change our dinner restaurants while I took this opportunity to peek in a few shops.  The streets were packed with people young and old and with the music of buskers.  John finds his way back and has some tapas while we listen to two men playing the cello and violin before going to the concert.

Xaveri told us about each of his guitars and played pieces written at the time of the particular guitar. He began with the Guitara Vihuela (16^th century) and then the

Guitara Barroca, Romantica (18^th century) and Moderna.  Of the 14 pieces he played John had recordings of 11 of them and has played them often at home. This was a wonderful gift to hear live classical, Spanish music in Spain in a very old cathedral.

And we only found out about it because we got lost.

Paella Dinner

Ending a great and very packed day we go at 10 pm to a nearby restaurant. Of course, John orders paella which did not meet his standards (as defined by our friend Zanny in Seattle). 

I eat half my spinach cannelloni which is also not inspiring.  How could food even compete now with such a fantastic day of different sounds and new visions?