Steve in Public : Days 61-64: The Rain in Spain Stays Mainly in the Plain

The Rain in Spain Stays Mainly in the Plain

Days 61 – 64

February 27 – March 2

Barcelona, Spain

“What temperature did he say it was in Barcelona?” I have to admit, I didn’t fully process what the pilot said until the girl next to me asked this question. I just woke up from my overnight LAX-to-Barcelona flight, and only when a flight attendant ask me to return my seat to its upright position in preparation for landing.

My memory jostled: “One degree centigrade. And it’s snowing.”

“Yeah, I heard him say that. What is that in Fahrenheit?” We Americans can be easy to pick out of a lineup at times.

“It’s about 34 degrees.” Her jaw dropped. “I hope you came prepared.” I did. I heard that it can snow in the Pyrenees of Northern Spain in March, and I wasn’t taking any chances on being cold and wet all day during my pilgrimage. I got enough of that already in Patagonia. Although I didn’t expect to find that kind of weather here in Barcelona, even at this time in February. So much for the 330-days-a-year of sunshine I was promised. I happened to arrive just as the bad weather hit. It snowed for the first 24 hours and rained for the 24 after that before a modicum of warmth and sunshine arrived, only to be punctuated by clouds and more rain. Over the course of the four days, I kept repeating a lyric I heard in my childhood: “The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain.” I used to think this was an interesting bit of knowledge about a foreign country, only to later find out that it was sung in the musical My Fair Lady. Professor Higgins and Colonel Pickering are trying the break the Cockney accent of Eliza Doolittle, who just can’t seem to pronounce a long ‘a’ vowel sound. The phrase is complete gibberish. That is, unless you show up for the coldest and wettest days of Barcelona’s winter like I did.

But there was one benefit to the poor weather: the streets and museums were largely unoccupied. With so many vacant places to choose from, I decided I wanted to focus most of my attention on the artwork of one of the most controversial architects in history: Antoni Gaudi. I first became interested in him after he was mentioned in one of my engineering classes; long before computer modeling made it possible to evaluate static loads on unique architectural designs, Gaudi designed the polyfunicular (many strings), which allowed him to create stable versions of his amorphous buildings by turning his prototype model upside down and attaching lead sacks to a series of strings, simulating the best building shape that would ensure that it would stand. In other words: the man was a creative genius. He had a unique art form adopted from many sources, including nature, religion, and unconventional geometries. He was loved and hated by the people of Barcelona, and everyone had an opinion about him: insane, brilliant, arrogant, perfectionist, genius, fool. Call him what you like. I started at the Gaudi Exhibition Center to learn more about his life and work, then I visited some of his most famous pieces built in the city.

A recreation of one of Gaudi's polyfunicular models.

Gaudi was a man who thrived on criticism; he was never afraid to try something new and always sought to challenge the status quo with his works. To him, resistance from others was a sign that he was on the cutting edge of creativity. So when the premier front façade of Casa Batillo was widely praised by the public, Gaudi tore it down and rebuilt it into the façade here today, which received enough criticism to save Batillo the fortune he would have to pay to have another iteration built. This house is often called the “House of Bones” or the “House of Skulls” due to its structural resemblance to bones and skulls on the windows and balconies.

Front facade of Casa Batillo. The vertical posts in the windows are said to resemble bones.

The window balconies are said to resemble skulls.

The Sagrada Familia (Sacred Family) was Gaudi’s final work, considered his greatest work, and remained unfinished at the time of his death in 1926. It is still unfinished today. In 1882, he was conscripted to design a grandiose cathedral that would rival the Vatican, and he spared no expense exercising his impeccable attention to detail and stubborn perfectionism. He also designed it to be a gargantuan religious building; it strains the neck to stand at street-level and look to the peaks of the completed towers. Progress on the building has been slow, projected to be finished in 2026, 100 years after Gaudi’s death. Funded only by donations and built by 8 different architects over the last 92 years, the cathedral has seen its share of resistance to completion. In the civil war of 1936, the Passion-of-Christ façade was lit ablaze by Catalan anarchists, and Gaudi’s workshop with all Sagrada Familia models was destroyed. Much of the new construction has been guesswork as to how Gaudi would have built it himself.

The front facade of the Sagrada Familia towers high overhead.

By far, my favorite piece by Gaudi comes from Casa Mila, a house he designed with almost no straight lines, a feat that would be difficult even with today’s technology. At this point in his life, Gaudi had accumulated so much fame and influence in Barcelona that he could afford to break society’s rules the same way he broke the rules of traditional architecture. Pictured below is a column on the southwest face of Casa Mila, more commonly known as La Pedrera (a name meaning “rock” that was originally shouted as an insult, much to Gaudi’s delight, and a name that later became synonymous with the building). This column was not in the original plans drafted to city hall, and it extended past the allotted foundation. Gaudi was given two options: remove it or pay a penalty, which amounted to a recurring fee of one half of the property taxes. He refused both ultimatums and finished the building with the column in place. Even Mila, who contracted Gaudi to build the house, couldn’t sway the man’s will. When the city took Gaudi to court, threatening him with the burden of the fine, he told them to remove the column themselves and take responsibility for any unforeseen consequences. To his amusement, no architect in the city could figure out if the building would collapse if the column was removed, so it stayed in place. And because of the loophole allotted by Gaudi giving permission for the column to be removed, he did not have to pay the fine. So here it stands, solidified in concrete, a symbol to the freedom afforded by being a master at one’s craft and being completely insane as well.