Barcelona – Do it for Gaudi
Posted on August 1, 2015
The train ride from Paris to Barcelona was beautiful – dotted with old, stone-walled cemeteries, fields of mustard grass and cows, the Pyrenees, small villages with stone churches, and new suburbs.
We arrived in Barcelona in the early evening and were greeted by the friendly owner of our rental apartment. The apartment was twice the size of our Paris studio with a terrace that overlooked the core of Barcelona and onward to the Balearic Sea.
The next day, we followed the recommendation of a friend and headed to the Mercat St. Josep Boqueria for lunch and our first day of sightseeing. Inside the Boqueria, at Barcentral, we ate a bounty of sea creatures and vegetables, Pepe sucking the brains out of shrimp heads and me barely stomaching the display of mussel shells and langoustine bodies that were snipped in half, bearing their contents for consumption. I am the meat eater in this marriage, but sea creatures – also known to me as sea bugs (shrimp), sea boogers (oysters), and sea chews (mussels) – are not something I seek out. I can eat them, but I would prefer to not to. Luckily, Spanish food revolves around meat and sea food, so we were both going to eat well during this leg of our trip through Spain – well, eventually we would.
On day two in Barcelona, I caught a stomach bug – the kind where you can’t be more than 10 feet from the bathroom. Despite my illness, we trooped on through the sights of Barcelona. I was not going to miss Antoni Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia, which was the main reason for our stay in Barcelona.
The Sagrada Familia is flanked by a city park and tourist restaurants, and the exterior is covered in some parts by scaffolding that holds workers who attempt to complete the building phase before Gaudi celebrates his posthumous 100th birthday in 2026, and the church celebrates 144 years since construction began.
You pay for your ticket, zigzag through the line and walk from the sunshine, and cement coloured outside into the cool, mottled light and dampened noise interior that immediately feels like a forest. The ceiling narrows inward just like a ring of trees and even the billions of tourist inside fade away into background like moss. This is Gaudi’s gift – the ability to use manmade materials to honour and replicate Mother Earth while paying tribute to the Holy Family.
The organic, mystique of nature that is worshipped and incorporated to make this House of God, does not alienate me as a non-seculur observer but rather, welcomes me as a visitor. Standing inside, looking up at the ornate ceiling, it’s Christmas morning, a good kiss, you’re first promotion, it’s a humbling feeling that will imprint a memory of the overwhelming grace and genuine love of the Earth that is praised so accurately, not in replication, but in emotion, and I will cherish it. I regret that I didn’t shoot more images, but, like the church itself, it would take me 100 years to actually capture the intricate love and devotion on display for worship and admiration inside and out of the Sagrada Familia.
Beyond any other reason to visit Barcelona, do so for Gaudi.