Gaudí's Barcelona

Is it possible to visit Barcelona and not wish to stay longer? I have long wished to return. My recent visit for the ELIA Together Translation Conference provided the perfect opportunity to see more. Park Güell and the Sagrada Família by Antoni Gaudí, Barcelona’s famous architect, were top of my list. I also wanted to find out more about Barcelona as a popular smart city. And try out my recently acquired Spanish...

Park Güell

On the Saturday morning I knew that I been right to extend my stay. I sat relaxing on a bench in warm Catalan sunshine in Gaudí’s Park Güell. The temperature hit 23°C that afternoon. T-shirt weather in February. I even had live Spanish guitar music nearby.

Park Güell: view in sunshine over Barcelona

Gaudí’s Park Güell was the result of an extraordinary patronage and friendship between the architect and Eusebi Güell. It was originally intended to be a British-style residential estate. That plan did not work out. Park Güell gained UNESCO World Heritage status in 1984. Seven of  Gaudí’s works now have this status. 

Inside the Porter's Lodge (see top photo), it was possible to see the historical pictures of the park's development and its two influential men. Construction started back in 1900.

Today, Park Güell provides Barcelona with a fabulous public space overlooking the city. Gaudí’s architecture has a dream-like quality. It combines a number of influences from the classical to modern. The end result is an eclectic mix and uniquely creative at the same time.

Basílica de la Sagrada Família

On the Sunday we went to see Gaudí’s most famous work, the Sagrada Família. Gaudí never lived to see it finished. In fact, work is still ongoing. The completion date seems to vary according to the source. 

It was interesting to see how more work had been done since my previous visit. Last time much of the inside was obscured by scaffolding. This time I could marvel at the coloured light streaming through the windows.

With Gaudí, everywhere you look you see amazing detail. For example, below is a photo of the statues above the entrance. The opposite side has statues in a completely different style. They are very angular. Modernist in style.

Details above the entrance to Sagrada Família

As you walk around, you find yourself constantly looking up to the Heavens. Gaudí was a very religious man. He devoted the final years of his life to his expiatory church and even lived on site.

Looking up at the ceiling of the Sagrada Família's nave

My few Spanish words came in handy. Knowing how to pronounce Spanish words correctly was a big improvement on my first visit. I didn't understand the Spanish and Catalan spoken around me at speed. It's frustrating for a linguist to go back to beginner's level. I bought a children's book about Gaudí in the Park Güell shop. It is the perfect inspiration to keep going.

I hope to return to see the Sagrada Família finished one day in all the glory that Gaudí intended.

1984 in 2015

Back in the early 1980s, my Latin teacher urged our class to hurry up and read George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Half jesting, half warning. Orwell's nightmare was a matter of years away. I got on and read the book pdq*.

Fast forward 30+ years: my reading of 1984 is a dim memory. A Time Out Magazine promotion brought me to the Playhouse Theatre for the new adaptation by Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan. The ticket price was an appropriate £19.84. 

In retrospect, I wish I hadn't gone. This was a bewildering, unnerving and harrowing production. And yet, as Dr Paolo Gerbaudo of King's College London wrote in the play's programme:

"We have become the consenting surveilled, people who by accepting the system of Internet communication and its "free" economy have ended up unwittingly accepting the surveillance of state security agencies."

The time sequence becomes increasingly confusing. What is a real time event? What is a portrayal of Winston's memory or madness? 

The events are more unsettling than my teenage memories of the novel. Was that due to the adaptation? My youthful understanding? Or simply that drama is more vivid than my own imagined world in reading? Could it be because 2015 more closely resembles Orwell's 1984 than my memory of that time?

1984 turned out to be one of the best years of my life. It included the second half of my year abroad - a year at Nancy University in the East of France. A year that informed and shaped my thinking far more than I realised at the time. It intrigued me to contrast news reports from both sides of the Channel.

In 1984, Winston rewrites history according to the state's current allies. People become "unpersons" under his direction - as later happens to him. It turns out that he and Julia are under surveillance even in bed. No privacy at all.

During the torture scene, I was glad that I was perched high up in the gods**, unable to see the full stage. I couldn't bear to look. And yet, I remember how just before Christmas 2014, the US Senate report confirmed torture.

And I remember my old Latin teacher's warning about the need to be aware before the unthinkable happens...

*pdq = pretty dammed quick
** the gods