The Power of the Tower
A month back I wrote a column titled “Power of the Flower,” about the inspiring abundance of wildflowers we experienced this year. This column is about man’s ability to inspire through the emotional power of architecture.
On my way home from my paddle-less adventure in Ibiza, I laid over for two days in what has long been my favorite city in Europe, Barcelona. With its wide, tree-lined boulevards, café culture, and mild Mediterranean climate, it’s Paris with a tan. It had been 20 years since I last visited, and my main objective now was to see how far the city had come in restoring Antoni Gaudi’s unfinished masterpiece, the Sagrada Familia. That, and consume as much squid as possible.
Like in so many great destinations of the world (except one that comes to mind), we had the pleasure of feeling like locals by renting a furnished apartment. And guess what? No neighbor accused us of ruining their life. And like so many destinations that are reducing traffic and parking woes, we were encouraged to explore the lovely city by bike. What a joy to peddle leisurely through town, listening to the rhythms of the city, inhaling the flavors, seeing the sky, and stopping whenever we had the impulse.
Oh, and we could also eat past 10 p.m. Cafes spill onto the streets, filled with the joy of people from around the world mingling. It made me nostalgic for that two-month period last spring when the City Council actually put people before cars by permitting an outdoor dining parklet on Forest Avenue, allowing people to bask al fresco in the tree-lined splendor of our most storied street (before changing their minds). Boy, those were the days! Sixty of them, anyway.
But back to Gaudi. When I last visited the Sagrada, it was a jarring mashup of surreal, organic towers combining gothic and art nouveau styles, unlike any church I had ever seen. It stopped you in your tracks and made your jaw flop open. But it had no interior and was greatly obstructed by a cacophony of cranes, as Gaudi only completed a quarter of the building before his untimely death in 1926. When once asked about his prospects, Gaudi famously said, “My client isn’t in a hurry.”
So the city of Barcelona took on the gargantuan task of completing Gaudi’s vision, complicated by the fact that Gaudi innovated as he went, and didn’t leave any definitive blueprints. Instead, mere mortals were tasked with interpreting Gaudi’s intentions and wild, untested engineering challenges.
All I can say is this visit confirmed how awesome it is to be a member of the same species as Gaudi. Here was a humble man who believed in Christianity and sought to embody the entire story of the Bible in a single edifice. As Rowan Moore of The Observer wrote, “The Sagrada strives to compress all of earth and heaven into its structure – endless saints, biblical scenes, symbols, inscriptions, seashells, reptiles, birds, flowers and fruit.”
This is all the more remarkable because the western didactic up until then was imposing gothic churches depicting allegories of man’s birth, death and afterlife. Often jarring and violent. But in Gaudi’s vision, nature is godly, an inseparable part of the human story. The interior cement pillars are towering tree trunks that soar and open into a canopy of branches at the top. Spread over these branches are a stunning array of colorful glass flowers, some actually skylights, with celestial light streaming through. It’s the most environmental edifice I’ve ever experienced, embodying what is holy about nature, transporting you at once to the Amazon, or Pandora, or Laguna Coast Wilderness.
Great architecture can anchor a city, and define its culture and values, even if it means occasional lapses in other areas of civic life. You see, Spain was the last Western European country to evolve into the modern world. And every now and then you get a bracing reminder that it is still straddling its feudal past. On our day of departure, just before leaving for the airport, we got a text message that there was a citywide taxi strike. Barcelona doesn’t allow Uber, and sadly the train system is highly inefficient for getting to the airport.
Luckily, we were near the Plaza Catalunya where there is an express airport bus. We hoofed it over, and of course found a mile-long line. So while I was somewhat self-congratulatory last week when I wrote about remaining humble and calm amid a customer service debacle with my baggage in Ibiza, I had to revert back to ugly American status and push my way into line amid all the polite Euros. But I felt a sense of exceptionalism as an American. America First, right?
We made the flight, but the experience was a stark reminder that while America is lagging in universal healthcare, affordable education, cost of living, wages, jobs, and late night dining, we are still number one where it counts: efficiency and customer service. Not once during my visit did a single Spanish merchant bless me with those words that are holy and sacrosanct in American can-do consumerism: “Have a nice day!” I had to figure out how to do it on my own.
Billy Fried hosts “Laguna Talks” on Thursday nights at 8 p.m. on KX 93.5, and can be reached at [email protected].
