“My client is not in a hurry. God is patient.”
Last full day in Barcelona and in Spain. We decided to fill it with Gaudi visits starting in the morning with Casa Batllo then a tour at Sagrada Familia and the evening at the Casa Mila La Pedrera apartments.
The Sagrada is unlike any of the giant churches that I have been in because it has no soul at this point of it’s life A huge noisy construction site that you don’t need a rosary or hard hat to visit. There are signs asking for silence so you can pray? Eventually, there will be twelve towers one for each of the Apostles, at this point a few of them are still construction cranes. The guide told us that the church is used only 12 times a year (noise) and tourist’s euros are the only source of construction funding. They are on a tight schedule with construction expected to be done in 2026, one hundred years after Gaudi’s death. When criticized for the length of time it was taking to finish Gaudi responded “My client is not in a hurry. God is patient.”
About the light… the outside is like a giant sand castle with all of the religious superstars of the Bible carved into the stone facades. When you walk in you are washed by the light of the building’s carefully placed stained glass windows. As the position of the sun changes so do the color patterns inside. The effect is like being inside one of those kaleidoscopes of our past, the light washes over, around, and though you especially as the sun goes down. The effect is brilliant. Some say art is about managing light and Gaudi was definitely an artist and architect.
When visiting these cavernous churches I question their whole concept. They are a great window on the past but stained by the fact they are more about tourists than congregants. The funds that have gone into building and maintaining these stone relics seem better spent on the people that they are meant to serve. Is it really about God? Or the power and politics of the people who built, managed, and paraded them? Spain is asking themselves a similar question. With thousands of cultural sites do you commit to keeping them all in good repair? or let a few hundred of them tumble? This is is just my humble opinion as an American without much exposure to even my own cultural heritage. And I am one who appreciates cultural sites before they become ruins.
Finishing our day with a nighttime light show on the Casa Mila rooftop was a bit anti-climatic after The Sagrada. Projectors paint the towers and chimneys of the building with images from nature and history. I’m not sure if Gods architect would have signed off on this one but I expect it helps support the upkeep of the building. A little Cava at the end of the show was a nice touch.
The beauty of spending the day with Gaudi is that you begin to see traces of his influence everywhere. The font on some of the building signs, the gothic modernist Art Deco feel of the older parts of the city. The undulating ceilings of the recently completed airport. Barcelona was lucky to have Gaudi the architect as a resident. And we were lucky to be touched by its light.
Barcelona Spain November 11th, 2015
November 9, 2015
From the time we walked through the front gate the family has made us and the other guests feel like they are happy that we are here. It is a “welcome to our home” attitude, a way in which we would treat a house guest or family member in our own home. This is hard to accomplish day after day, guest after guest, especially when some of the guests can be less than enchanting, even on a good day.