Brian's Rick Steves' Tour of Spain Scrapbook
3) The pull of gravity on the stone of the church and an aura of light captured in the catenary curve of the arches in the interior pull one into a meditation on beauty. I thought about Arthur Schopenhauer’s The World As Will and Representation during our tour and later at the concert. The philosopher writes, “Moreover, I am of the opinion that architecture is destined to reveal not only gravity and rigidity, but at the same time the nature of light, which is their very opposite. The light is intercepted, impeded and reflected by the large, opaque, sharply contoured and variously formed masses of stone, and thus unfolds its nature and qualities in the purest and clearest way, to the great delight of the beholder; for light is the most agreeable of things as the condition and objective correlative of the most perfect kind of knowledge through perception.” (p 216) Schopenhauer looked to art as a way (through contemplation) to move outside the individual encounter with time. The light and the dance like-grace against the curves of space in the church were beautiful.
Journal of Barcelona
View of Montjuïc from the harbor in Barcelona
Ceiling - Catalan Music Palace
My First Impression of Spain - A Short Essay
In the morning (9/16) while it was still pretty dark we made our way to La Boqueria. Spain is on Central European time which means it is on the same time as Germany far to the east. We walked past stalls still empty and some just then beginning to get stocked with beautiful arrangements of fruits, peppers, tomatoes – we walked to the back and found a hole-in-the-wall bar with pictures of the food that one could order. Two men sat on stools outside drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes.
After a time of indecision, we each ordered a Spanish omelet (egg, potato, onion and herb) sandwich, which turned out to be excessive. I asked the tall handsome powerful-looking man serving us -- ¿no estamos en españa; estamos en catalunya? (We are not in Spain; we are in Catalunya?) His eyes became very serious as he looked down at me across the counter where I sat. – Es muy importante – he said. (It is very important). I saw perhaps a little late that this was not a subject to bring up while practicing my Spanish, nor a subject I should take lightly. In the man’s eyes I thought I saw a passion deep enough that he would die for his cause. In fact, if I may digress a little, there is a surface happiness among the Spaniards reserved for tourists.
On a deeper level I think there is a very complex sense of honor, reverence and Sisyphean determination that is no laughing matter in the Spanish character. It is very much tied to the Civil War and the order and injustice of Franco. And if I might say so, it is even deeper than this. The expulsion of the Muslims completed in 1492 in Granada, the pride and shame of empire won and lost, the heroism and savagery of conquest, imperialism and inquisition, the genius and desperation of great art, of bull fights and corporal suffering, the traditions and horrors of royalty and poverty, and the adoration and hatred of resurrection and anarchy emanate simply as an impatient modesty in the people I met. I will try to be more specific as I go along. But this great powerful man serving me an omelet with his passionate eyes (while answering my stupid tourist questions) alerted me that I was making only a surface visit of Spain.
Still I am prone to speculate about (perhaps “trifle with” would be a better way of saying it) what lies under the surface.
I felt at the time, on that first morning, like I was participating a little bit in something very genuine in Spanish life. On the wall near the ceiling behind the counter was a small, framed chalkboard with a quotation from Tolstoy. (Why didn’t I memorize it?) In any case as we waited for our sandwiches the place became packed with people wanting a quick pastry and morning coffee before heading to work. The six or so stools filled up with customers so that there was now standing room only. I asked the man serving us if he knew what the passage meant. ¿En Inglais, que significa las oraciones en la pared? He shook his head no. A young woman standing nearby said in broken English that she thought it might have something to do with love and that Tolstoy was loyal to those who emphasized love for humanity rather than excess.
I thanked the woman in Castilian Spanish and we finished our excessively oversized breakfast. The woman, by the way, was very beautiful. And as we traveled through Spain I became aware that she was in fact typical of Spanish women.
Everywhere in Spain there are reminders of the Civil War. I have always hated Franco. I was raised to hate him. So now to see his fortress in democratic Spain was to see the failure of repression and the triumph of human rights. I felt pretty righteous.
We said goodbye and left the market and descended the stairs at the Liceu Metro Station. We bought a T10 ticket (ten euros, good for ten trips) and rode the subway to Paral-lel estacion where we boarded the funicular, a cable car, to Montjuïc (pronounced, moanjour-éek).
This simple event was made complicated because we exited the gates at the Paral-lel station and then realized we would have to use our tickets again because the funicular was boarded inside the station. The funicular car took us with a group of school children half way up the bluff that is Montjuïc. From there we walked to the top where there is a spectacular view of the city as well as a fortress that Franco used while torturing opposition fighters and sympathizers.
Afterward we returned to the hotel and napped until four o’clock. I am still wondering how Annie woke up, but she did and roused me shortly thereafter. At six we met our two guides, Jorge and Augustine (who turned out to be the best guides everr) and we began to get to know our fellow tour-group members. We then walked over to Carrer de Gran Gracia where we saw the facades of three modernist buildings one of which Gaudi had designed.
From there we walked across the street toward Placa de Catalunya stopping at a restaurant (Botafumeiro) for a tapas meal that Jorge organized. Jorge impressed me with his laughter and his enthusiasm for good food and wine. The meal was estupendo. It was also huge, dish following dish – Iberian cured ham "Cumbres Mayores" Crispy Catalan bread with spread tomato and olive oil, Castro Urdiales anchovies, Capricious salad with avocado and prawns, Sautéed Prawns with garlic, Deep fried squid Andalusia style (calamari) -- The Spanish wine flowed. Each dish was muy sabroso (very tasty). Annie and I sat across from Judy, a vegetarian with long salt and pepper braided hair. She and husband James live in Bellingham. Toward the end of our feast, Mark, David, Ramona and Bonnie became famous for leaving the group to return to the hotel while the rest of us had dessert. They said they were too stuffed to eat another bite and too tired after the flight from Florida the day before. On the way back we found them outside on a bench like naughty school children eating helado (ice cream). Everyone laughed and immediately grew closer at the whimsical little scandal.
A yellow flag with red triangles on one edge, the flag of Catalunya, hung victoriously from the walls of Franco’s house of torture -- Good over Evil. We ventured inside, climbed stairs and emerged inside a spacious courtyard that these-days serves as a venue for entertainment. Still there are ghosts, and the silent bricks sing of hatred.
Riding the Gondola on Montjuïc
After breakfast we met our local guide in the hotel lobby. She led us to the Cathedral of Barcelona, pointing out along the way the squiggles in concrete that constitute the first floor façade over the Tourist Information Office. The building houses the Catalan College of Architects and the squiggles are the work of Picasso
Barcelona - City of Music, Dance, Creativity
Casa Battó Designed By Antoni Gaudí
Next we made our way around the big gothic cathedral where we noted the Roman wall as well as the Roman temple columns in the interior of the church. For a reason I now cannot recollect I asked the guide where Christopher Columbus was born. She laughed playfully and claimed that the people of Barcelona believe he was born in their city.
After walking through the nave we we found the geese that in ancient times were used as alarms against intruders. I never in all my life imagined that geese would be used for security purposes.
Honk Honk Honk
Soon we boarded a metro for a visit to the Sagrada Família – the Gaudi church. It is breath taking. It is excellent and extravagant and monumental. The effort, the energy the desire to reach god is natural, extraordinary and full of pathos. It is Camus’s Sisyphus laughing at absurdity, it is Zorba dancing over failure and it is deeply devout. But this was not my first impression. At first I was contemptuous as travelers often are when encountering something powerful that contradicts their own beliefs.
Annie - Outside the Fortress
Fortress and Flag
Are You Kidding Me?
The House Next to Casa Battó
On the Way to the Catheral
We passed a wall pockmarked by bullets used during an execution during the Civil War
Following the Guide
Gothic Cathedral
“Such excess!” was my first -ill-considered thought. I felt the stirrings of contempt for the extravagance. So much wealth extracted often from terrified poor people worried that if they don’t pay, they will end in hell.
After the tour of the Sagrada Família, Tom, Judy, Annie and I took the metro following the instructions of our guide who said we should ride the #2 to Gracia (near where we had eaten tapas the night before) and not far from our hotel. We descended into the nearby metro station, using our T10 ticket and the four of us passed through the automated gate. We boarded a train and traveled one stop only to realize that the Gracia was not on our current route. We disembarked and returned to the place we had just left. Tom decided that he and Judy would take the same trains (#5 and #4) we had ridden in the first place. I was determined to find the #2. And we found it after climbing stairs to a different set of tracks heading in a different direction. This was a moment of small triumph.
So we ended at Gracia and stopped by a travel agency in department store El Corte Inglais, which takes up one side of the Placa de Catalunya. It took us an hour because I had to give up my place in line when Annie wandered off, but we booked an AVE (bullet train) from Sevilla to Madrid for September 30. Jorge had said we needed to reserve our seats well in advance. This process took us an hour but I was able to use my Spanish in the transaction. Necitamos comprar dos billetas de la tren para viajar a Madrid de Sevilla por favor. We need to buy two train tickets in order to travel to Madrid from Sevilla, We also reserved a hotel room near the airport because our flight was scheduled to leave Madrid at six in the morning on October 1st. We then ate lunch and made our way to a very special museum.
Okay. Fine. But why does this church take your breath away?
Six Ways of Looking at a Big Church
1) The human cooperation to express spiritual energies can be pretty impressive. The Gaudi church -- a quest to know the source of our existence, a desire to express a love of creating and becoming, and a reaching through thirteen symbols (towers) of fertile potency toward the womb of the universe conveys a greatness of spirit --- hugely pathetic and desperate but also heroic and beautiful all at the same time. It is a human need to participate. Antonio Gaudi himself wrote that “The creation continues incessantly through the media of man.” I agree with Gaudi.
2) Like listening to great music the Sagrada Família is a physical effort to be near god. I thought this while listening to the Spanish guitar of Ekaterina Zaytseva performing Bach’s suite number one or Albioni’s adagio or Asturias later that night.
4) Like the playing of Ekaterina Zaytseva, the church strives for excellence.
5) I found a passage that seems appropriate: “Here in Barcelona, it's the architects who built the buildings that made the city iconic who are the objects of admiration - not a bunch of half-witted monarchs.” Julie Burchill, militant feminist and author of Ambition
6) Our guide showed us Gaudi’s use of weights in determining the design of the arches in the church. She said the hanging weights formed a parabola; however, later in the journey Mark Temte, the math professor from Purdue University/ Fort Wayne, told me the guide was wrong – that the weights actually defined a catenary curves.
We enjoyed a performance by Ekatrariana Zaytseva – Bach, Albioni, Rodrigo and Asturias, the anthem of Asturias and also the anthem of the Republican side during the civil war. It is now in my mind a song of triumph over Franco – of defiance and therefore of great significance.
Ekaterina Saytseva made beautiful music. Sitting behind us were a couple from Vienna and now I am wondering what they heard in the music. While the guitarist played I thought about the Gaudi church. Her music led me away from my cynicism and toward the beauty in the church.
After the concert Ekaterina Saytseva stood in the lobby of the dazzling Catalan Music Palace signing cd’s that she was selling. Annie bought several and had them autographed.
On the Way to the Cathedral
At 8:00 we made our way to the Catalan Music Palace. James Michener wrote about this place in his book, Iberia:
We entered a large auditorium each square inch of which seemed to be covered with florid decoration consisting of pillars covered with broken pieces of ceramic, gigantic sculptural groups featuring flying horses, and colored stones set at odd angles. The effect was that of crawling into an overwhelming grotto… I glanced at the empty stage and saw that its two side walls were covered with eighteen of the strangest statues I had ever seen. They were larger than life size and showed women in medieval costume playing a variety of unfamiliar instruments. They had been carved in a way that was new to me: everything from the waist down was painted flat on the wall in a stylized manner, using pieces of mosaic glass for effect; everything above the waist was carved in stone naturalistically and stood out from the wall like an ordinary statue. The union created an effect that was completely charming, bearing no relationship to reality but a great deal to art.…No other symphony hall had such horses, and when I looked closer I saw that Valkyries were riding them. Why not? If this was place where you come to hear music, why not have a gigantic bust of Beethoven on the right side of the stage…
The Picasso Museum was wonderful. We had to wait in line for twenty or so minutes to get in, but while we waited two street musicians performed. I dropped money in their guitar case, something I’ve never done. But these guys were really good. We encountered many excellent street musicians filling the air with their astoundingly beautiful music playing everywhere in Spain. Anyway, the museum featured an exhibit of the artist’s early work – portraits and landscapes. But the highlight (I thought) was the interpretation of Las Meninas (the ladies in waiting by Velasquez). We found these cartoons playful and amusing – Picasso wasn’t being serious was he?
A View of the Balcony
Many Ways of Looking at a Church
Roman Temple Ruins Inside The Cathedral
As we took el paseo (the walk) along Las Ramblas we spotted the flag of an independent Catalunya.
The week before we arrived people in Barcelona particiapted in an enormous demonstration for Catalan independence. Here Annie poses in an artist's version of the great crowd. Can you find her?