Day 100(!), 12 October 2012, Barcelona Gaudi Walking Tour with Runner Bean Tours - Gaudi is Barcelona's favourite son (not to say he wasn't controversial in his time, mind you). Until we reached Barcelona, we would have been hard pressed to say if Gaudi was an artist or an architect... that is we knew nothing at all. The tour soon fixed that. First stop was Placa Reial where we saw Gaudi's one and only commission for the city council of the time - the exotic lamp posts featuring a Catalan flag and also the helmet of Mercury at the top - God of commerce so a good thing to have in the business district. They wanted to pay the current equivalent of €5. Gaudi wanted €30. They settled on €12 and then never hired him again. Possibly for the best as he demanded complete artistic and financial freedom from his private commissions. When he completed his course at the School of Architects the Dean said he wasn't sure if he was a genius or a madman. Genius appears to be the accepted wisdom these days. Second stop was Palau Guell - commissioned by a very rich bloke called Eusebi Guell who eventually went bankrupt. Probably due to Gaudi since the facade of the Palau Guell was ripped down and rebuilt three times before Gaudi was satisfied. Pictured you see Casa Batllo, one of his most well loved buildings from the Catalan Art Nouveau period from around 1890 - known as Modernisme. So pretty, so organic, so colourful. There is so much going on within Gaudi's work that I'll just point out a couple of things - he was a staunch pro-Catalan independence man and you can see the reference to St George (Sant Jordi) in the cross at the top of the building. The balconies represent opera masks to some peoples eyes. The colour is from smashed up tiles laid in a mosaic fashion. The original owners loved the house to bits not surprisingly but these days it's owned by the Barnet family who invented, wait for it, the Chupa Chupp (look at the top of a Chupa Chupp wrapper and you will recognise the melting work of Dali, another son of Spain). Unfortunately the Chupa Chupp business wasn't that great in the beginning and they got into massive debt of over €100 million... hence the €20+ entrance fee (which wasn't hindering the queues surprisingly enough). Another local man was so impressed with Casa Batllo he commissioned Gaudi to build him a masterpiece a little further down the road, Casa Mila aka La Padrera. Entirely reminiscent of the caves of Cappadocia in Turkey (from memory it's where St George's family came from), it was not however quite as entrancing as Battlo in it's day and the locals thought it looked like a garage for Zeppelins. Much more popular these days though. Gaudi and Mila never saw eye to eye (and Senora Mila hated it). Gaudi thought that everything in the house should be the best of the best - whether it be the master apartment or the servants quarters. Mila only wanted to spend money on his own area and where it could be seen. Gaudi played lots of games and in the wrought iron of the balconies he includes the mask of Hippocrates - as a dig at Mila. Final stop is the work in progress of the Basilica of the Sagrada Familia (or Holy Family). Best guess is another 25 years. But that would be Spanish years, so maybe in 100 years the final facade will be finished and all twelve bell towers and the Jesus tower and Mary tower. There are only 4 bell towers now going to a height of 100m. The final tower for Jesus is planned at 170m. Gaudi is interred within, which worked out well for him as he always went to church twice a day and now he gets to go all the time. The stunning nativity facade which was the only face completed in his lifetime was incredible to see. He made plaster casts of real people to get the models as lifelike as possible. And that included chloroforming the animals (see the donkey example) and casting them whilst asleep. He also sourced still born babies from the local hospital for the babies at the feet of Pontius Pilate when he was killing the male children. Hmmm. But stunning. The modern facade completed in the 50s is neither here nor there to our taste. The models and plans Gaudi left before he died were in most part destroyed by Anarchists and only one picture was left of how he envisaged this face. As homage to Gaudi there is one statue designed to look like him and another grouping designed like the Starship Troopers (PS. Gaudi's work at Casa Mira inspired George Luca's Darth Vader and the Troopers. We sometimes feel that we are following in Senor Lucas's footsteps... remember back in Cappadocia we saw the location that inspired the home of the Sand People). In any event, it was a great finish to a great tour. Who knows, with science going the way it is, we might still be alive in 100 years and able to see the finished masterpiece.
PS... Saw the funniest thing in Placa Reial... Easy 20 or so men, mostly older, set up an impromptu market in the alley behind the Placa. Just mats on the ground covered in all manner of pens, watches, perfumes, trinkets, shoes, penknives... some new, some ancient. It was like a pickpockets convention. Then someone got a text or a wave and in the blink of an eye they picked up their mats and wares and disappeared... someone had alerted them to the police coming around the corner. Now you might think that there would suddenly be shady characters standing around with bags of tat... not so, we don't know where they went or if they hid the bags up their jumpers, but they just weren't there. 10 minutes later the market was up and running again, bigger and better.... until the police came again. It was happening so fast that tourists and locals could be left standing with something in their hand and turn around and the seller would have vanished in a puff of smoke! Nothing to see here officers....