Barcelona

As Feria is a week long festival, we had the whole week off from school, and because there really is only so much to see at Feria, we (my roommate and some friends) decided to use the extra time to take a trip to Barcelona.

Barcelona, the second largest city in Spain, is the capital of Cataluña, located on the northern Mediterranean coast of Spain. During the time of the Guerra Civil (Civil War) in Spain, many of the artists and intellectuals fled to Barcelona to escape the oppression and censorship. Even now, Barcelona is a very artistic city, the frontlines of the Vanguardia.

I loved the artistic character of the city and all the art we were able to see there. One of my favorite parts was the modernist architecture of Antoni Gaudí. We took almost a whole day to see Gaudí's Park Güel, the apartment buildings he designed, and the Sagrada Familia (the cathedral that most view as his masterpiece, although it was never finished). I loved them all, but was most intrigued by the Sagrada Familia, which is still under construction.

Gaudí was a devout Catholic, to the point that in his later years he abandoned secular work and devoted his life to working on the Sagrada Familia. His intention with the project of the Sagrada Familia was to depict the Bible, that is to say all the importnat stories of the Bible, in stone. There were supposed to be three facades-- one depicting the birth of Christ, one depicting his death, and the third the ressurrection and heaven. He designed it to have 18 towers, 12 for the 12 apostles, 4 for the 4 evangelists, one for Mary and one for Jesus.

Towards the end of his life, many of Gaudí's friends and family began to die and this put him into a state of depression that slowed down his work. In 1926, Gaudí was killed in an accident and left the cathedral unfinished. The only existing copy of his last recorded blue prints was destroyed by the anarchists in 1938 during the Guerra Civil (the Spanish Civil War). This has made it very difficult to complete the church in the fashion Gaudí most likely would have wished. It is still under construction and they predict it will be finished relatively soon (well, for Europe)-- forty or fifty years.

After his formation as an artist, Spanish painter Pablo Picasso divided his time between Barcelona and Paris. For this reason, Picasso is also very important to the city of Barcelona and it's artistic character. On our first day in Barcelona, we went to the Picasso Museum which I enjoyed a lot. When people think of Picasso, they think of Cubism, which makes sense. The thing is, Picasso has such a variety of styles ranging through so many different periods of art history. Picasso did a series of paintings manipulating the light and composition of Velazquez's Las Meninas which I just recently saw in the Museo del Prado in Madrid. I can not tell you how amazing it is to be studying about a work of art or a movement of art and then go to see it.

Icing on the cake:
There is a bar in Barcelona where Picasso, Buñuel, Dalí and many other artists and intellectuals of the modernist movement in Spain would sit drinking coffee and discussing there work. It is called Los Cuatro Gatos, which literally translated means The Four Cats, but "cuatro gatos" is a colloquial expression here used to mean "nobody or no one." I like understanding Spanish puns, although I do not yet make them. Coming soon, though, I assure you. Anyway, we went to Cuatro Gatos and were geeking out over our coffee and desserts.

(photos from Parque Güel)