Barcelona
(For those of you eagerly awaiting Castellon Part II, I have some sad news. It turned into a tome that made War and Peace looke like a novella so I can’t be bothered typing it out. That and the fact that it contains nothing of interest to anyone but me and can be summarised quite accurately in an SMS worth of characters as follows: “Great festival with many great bands playing in fantastic venues leading to excessive drinking and sleep deprivation.” So without further ado, onto Barcelona:)
After the ‘pleasantness’ of Castellon (despite the great music), both Rachelle and I were buzzing to be in a vibrant metropolis like Barcelona. After checking in at our hostel we set out to see what a Sunday night in Barcelona had to offer. We headed off down Nou de la Rambla, a fairly seedy street of small bars, immigrant cafes and restaurants (mainly Middle Eastern kebab and falafel joints) and 24 hour shops with well stocked liquor sections. It was an immediate revitalising shock to the system after the quiet peaceful streets of Castellon.
We emerged onto La Rambla, an equally beguilling but radically different street. It is the backbone of the old town, running from the port up to the city’s largest square Placa de Catalunya. On either side of the central boulevard cars run separated by a wide central walkway full of souvenir stands and restaurant seating. When we return tomorrow during the day, there will be more ‘human statues’ busking in more innovative outfits than I have ever seen. But now it is just a throng of tourists moving every which way with little discernable purpose in mind. After a few minutes barging our way along we take a right turn and disappear into the Barri Gotic and the face of Barcelona changes again. Now the streets are narrow and haphazard and looking up always a sense of the long history contained here and, as in Valencia, regularly opening out onto plazas (although they are now placas as Catalan is the official language of Barcelona and the region of Catalonia, though everyone also speaks Spanish).
The varying nature of the city we experienced in this first half hour is just one manifestation of its diversity. It is a world city, with the cosmopolitan feel to match. In many ways it doesn’t feel part of Spain due to Catalonians fierce independence, the more widespread use of English and the more varied range of food. Some things however don’t change with the first two veggie restaurants that we check out — both of which are supposedly ‘open daily’ being closed (this being a Sunday and therefore excluded from the Spanish definition of a day).
Whereas Castellon had been a feast for the ears, Barcelona is one primarily for the eyes. On our first full day we visit two of Gaudi’s most stunning construction. It has often seemed odd to me that unlike, say, the ancient Egyptians or medieval Europeans, we no longer build buildings that take many decades of even over a century to build. Of course modern technology speeds up the process and the lack of narcissistic leaders with absolute power and a direct link to God makes the costs involved harder to justify but it still seemed strange that there wasn’t the occasional exception. Well it turns out there is in the form of La Sagrada Familia, Gaudi’s crowning glory. Started in 1882 and still a decade or two at least from completion, it is the most unbelievable church I have ever seen. It currently has eight towers of around 100 metres in height, which will eventually number 12 with one for each apostle. In addition there will be taller towers for the four evangelists, one for the virgin Mary and a final one for Jesus himself which will be 170 metres high.
The stone of the spires is intricately carved and on two of the faces of the church elements of the story of Jesus are told. On one side is a quite traditionally but extremely detailed depiction of Jesus’ birth, while on the other his crucifixion is depicted in much starker, simpler modernist style, which is no less dramatic.
Inside there is a cavernous hall held up by many pillars and catenaric curves (the ideal construction for an arch, more difficult to build but stronger than a traditional arc, parabola or hyperbola). That a building based on the century old designs of Gaudi can still look so modern and cutting edge is a testament to his genius.
Awesome as it is, the church’s impact on me is inevitably somewhat muted by the choice of subject matter and I therefore found his Parc Guell an equally impressive and far more moving experience. Freed from the stricutures building a church necessarily imposed on him, he was able to let his imagination run wild. This was immediately evident entering the park through its main gates with a Hansel and Gretel-esque ‘gingerbread’ house either side. It is built on a hill, so climbing up some colourfully designed stairs we come first to a vast hall of pillars with a bulbous roof covered in small mosaic tiles, atop which sits an even more expansive square. To one side is a passageway made from the ground above, it seeming to be a crashing wave rolling down the mountain. The shapes are such that Gaudi’s constructions seem just as natural as the plants around them.
The feast continues the next day with a visit to the Picasso museum. Rather than for any particular work, this stood out as a demonstration of the true diversity of his work and his all-round technical brilliance. This talent was obvious in his early work, painted when he was as young as 15 and showing his mastery of the traditional techniques he was being taught and various paintings in the style of other masters who he very convincingly mimics. Slowly he begins to experiment, his lines become less rigid and his paintings more interpretations than straight depictions. There is more experimentation as he travels to Paris and is exposed to more styles. We move on through his blue and rose periods. Eventually we reach the cubist paintings for which he is most famous. Their ability to capture a moment so abstractly yet to still tell a story (perhaps even more of one) and connect emotionally is amazing. The highlights for me come at the end of the museum. First his experimentation in ceramic later in his life once again demonstrating his versatility as he adapts his cubist style to best suit this new medium. Then his interpretations of 17th century painter Velazquez’s masterpiece, Las Meninas. In the dozens of paintings here he depicts the scene from that painting both in parts and as a whole. In each, his abstract bold style completely differs from that of Valazquez but somehow he still manages to convey the emotion contained in that original work.
The final artistic experience of our time in Barcelona was a trip to Figures, two hours east of the city and birthplace of Dali. Designed by Dali over the last 20 years of his life, the museum itself is as much one of his works of art as anything hung in the galleries. While he did not have the technical mastery of Picasso, he certainly had an amazing imagination with his works overflowing with innovation, whimsy and the surreal. Highlights include his portrait of Abraham Lincoln, which could only be viewed as such from a great distance (or with modern technology, on the screen of a digital camera) — from any other perspective revealing only a naked women walking off into the sunset; his attempts at 3d art in the form of stereographic images and holograms; and his bizarre pieces of jewellery including a beating heart of rubies and diamonds.
So as to dispel any impressions that this was an art connoisseurs week, plenty of time was left for our usula interests of eating and drinking. On our first few days we visited a couple of great restaurants for veggies — an Indian and an organic buffet. Following the arrival of Hayko and his girlfriend Kathi the visits to veggie restaurants decreased but were adequately replaced by some heavy nights’ drinking (helped along by the 3 euro litres of beer at our hostel and the 3.50 euro bottles of vodka from the nearby supermarket). But after a sleepless final night in which we (ok, me and my new Rangers supporters friends) drank the hostel dry it was time to move on to Morocco.
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