Spain « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Spain

adventures / Andorra / Friday / photo / Spain / video — Comments Off
17
Mar 23

Balearic Sea, Mediterranean Ocean, all saltwater to me

We woke up yesterday in Andorra, beneath snow capped mountains and, this morning we woke up to the sounds of the ocean in Spain. Tonight — or tomorrow, or next year, whatever — we’ll go to sleep in … exotic Indiana.

Yeah.

Anyway.

Here’s the ocean, just outside our hotel room last night.

We walked down to feel the sand and hear the sound and touch the too chilly water for just a moment, before our cab to the airport came along.

This trip, like so many of our wonderful trips, was planned by my lovely bride. She’s undefeated on amazing trip planning.

Except for when they end. She hasn’t figured out how to keep them going and going and going yet.

Just give her time.

adventures / history / photo / Spain / Thursday — Comments Off
16
Mar 23

Visiting Santa Maria de Montserrat Abbey

On the drive down from Andorra, through the clear skies of the Pyrenees, the soon-to-be verdant scenery of rural southwest France, and the quietude of Catalonia as an entrance into the Iberian peninsula. We saw a hazy vision of the Catalan Pre-Coastal Range pop up onto the horizon. There’s Sant Jeroni, Montgrós and Miranda de les Agulles, with peaks ranging from 2,962 to 4,055 feet above sea level. From a distance, they’re jagged and ragged and they struck me as the sort of thing I would put to paper if you asked me to draw a mountain.

Imagine going up there, The Yankee said. We were still a good distance away and I said no one drives up there.

This was “Montserrat,” a Catalan word which means means “serrated (like the common handsaw) mountain” — a precise name for a rugged place — and as we got closer, following the general trend of the road, we realized we were going up there. And so we did.

Montserrat is the highest point of the Catalan lowlands, with commanding views of the countryside. The road up is five miles, moderately steep grade and some lovely hairpin switchbacks to give it all a bit of character. And when you get up there, into the peaks, you find yourself on a flat spot, but still looking up.

Just below these peaks, you’ll find Santa Maria de Montserrat Abbey, founded in the 11th century and still an active monastery, where more than 70 monks live today.

Here we are standing in the courtyard of the abbey, which was burned and looted twice during the Napoleon’s invasion of Spain. During the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s 22 monks who lived here were murdered. The Germans visited here quite often a decade later and, since World War II this site has been a prominent symbol of Catalonian nationalism, and has long been an important feature of the local culture. This is a post WW2 facade.

The origin is a bit murky. In the ninth century an important statue was found here, according to legend. More certainly, in the 11th century a monk was sent from one monastery to another and from the subsequent church politics the monastery of Santa Maria was born. That venerated statue is an important part of the place, and I’ve now unsuccessfully reduced a millennia into two sentences.

In 1881 Pope Leo XIII gave this place the status of a minor basilica. The Plateresque Revival facade was built in 1901, by the architect Francisco de Paula del Villar y Carmona, who was completing his father’s work. It’s quite something to take in. Small courtyard, with an imposing, yet not overwhelming style. It came from a time that blends things that feel old and modern to our contemporary eyes. It’s neat and tidy, feels quite collegial, and they built all of this making great concessions to topography.

I used the term collegial on purpose, since so much of this place has a wonderful, peaceful campus feel. I spend too much time on a college campus, of course, but I’m sure, in places like this, that the college campuses that get it right were all moved by kernels of inspiration from places like this.

It is even in the walls.

The basilica’s origins date to the 16th century and was rebuilt for the first time in 1811, after the Peninsular War. The new facade was built between 1942 and 1968, after the destruction brought about during the Spanish Civil War. There are reliefs featuring prominent members of church, and monastery history. On one frieze there’s the phrase “Catalonia will be Christian or it will not be,” which is a quote attributed to an early 20th century bishop, and from there you can see how this place is important to the region on down the mountain.

The church is of a single nave, some 220 feet long and 108 feet high. The roof is supported by central wooden columns representing Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel. The main altar features enamel decorations of the Last Supper, the Multiplication of Loaves and Fishes and other biblical stories. The 15th century cross is the work of Lorenzo Ghiberti, an Italian Renaissance sculptor, a key figure in the Early Renaissance.

We visited the room of the Virgin, which is full of beautiful mosaic walls and paintings. This is one of those places where a knowledgable guide could point to everything you see, and make you dizzy with its historical weight, it’s spiritual importance and the craftsmanship of generations past. Most people wander aimlessly, or chit chat their way through the place.

And if not for the chit chatters, one small group placed conveniently behind us, you’d be hard pressed to find a more quiet and solemn indoor space.

Back outside, in the abbey’s courtyard, I took a little panorama. Click to embiggen.

And we stood there just long enough to see the sun slice through the mountain’s peak. I wonder what monks, what guests, what spiritual seekers, have stood there over the centuries and what they must have thought about seeing this same view.

And then we did the thing where I take a photo of The Yankee striking a sculpture’s pose.

The museum was, sadly, closed for some renovation work. Inside, though is one of Spain’s most significant collections. Caravaggio, Dali, Picasso, Monet, Degas, El Greco, Renoir, Sean Scully, Vaccaro and a collection of ancient world archeology would be on display. I hate that we missed that. We’ll have to go back.

More on the legend of Our Lady of Montserrat.

This evening we completed the drive back to Barcelona. We are staying at an airport hotel. The hotel is right on the beach. We had dinner at a snooty place, got a gelato, dropped off the rental car and we’re now reshuffling things in luggage. Tomorrow we’ll fly back. Spain was brief, but fun. We’ll come back to Barcelona one day, I’m sure. Andorra we loved, and I bet we’ll be back there, as well.

How does next week sound?

adventures / Andorra / photo / Spain / weekend — Comments Off
12
Mar 23

And now, on to our vacation

After traveling to Spain via Amsterdam (almost Zurich) and New York, we attended two days of conference work, and just a few of Barcelona’s wonderful sites, we returned to the airport. But not for a plane, thank goodness, but a car.

We then pointed that car three hours north. We figured, let’s do most of the drive in daylight. You know, for the views, but also because we were in another country, on roads we’ve never seen before. But also for the views.

So we did that, GPS-aglow on the dash of a blue Volkswagen rental. It is a sedan-over-cross-UV, the sort of hideously designed thing where you have to step up, and duck down, at the same time, to get in. For four or five days, though, it’s perfect.

Here’s why, that great big beautiful GPS in the dash. Possibly the backup camera. And the side mirrors fold in. This is critically important.

So these shots are a but a few glimpses we saw as we made our way up the autovía, A-2 and C-14, with the idea of the Pyrennes looming ahead of us.

After we put the big city and a bit of sprawl behind us, the car started pointing up, and it never stopped pointing up. The airport, the car rental place are right on the shore of the Mediterranean. It is, for the Spainard, a seasonably cool early spring. They’re all still wearing coats down there as the mercury heroically makes its way into the mid-70s, or 23 degrees, Celsius. You can be sure that everyone we saw in Barcelona wearing light clothing was a tourist. Someone we know at the conference said he went back to his room and changed out of shorts one day, because he felt conspicuous.

In light of that, we’re spending the next few nights above the snow line.

We’re leaving Spain for this vacation. When my lovely bride built out this trip — she is the chief builder outer of all of our adventures and she is, despite the occasional logistical hiccup, undefeated — we considered going to the beach or going into the mountains.

We quickly decided that we made the correct choice. Not without plenty of consultation mind you. We talked with colleagues, neighbors and I even asked a few questions of a college buddy of mine who is from Spain. They all pointed us this way.

This way is to a microstate, population 80,000, bordered by France to the north and Spain to the south. We’re staying in a small village in that small state. Wikipedia tells me it is the 10th largest city, by population. Wikipedia says 1,641 live there. It is a ski resort town.

To get there, we just keep climbing up and up and up. Then there is, finally, a ski lodge. We get the key from a little black box. The keyring also holds a remote control that orders the elevator. The car elevator. You have to line the vehicle up between two narrow curb markers, pull your mirrors in, eeeeeease into a small cargo elevator, turn off the engine for CO2 purposes, and then wonder if the elevator does what the AirBnB hosts says it does.

And when it does, you’re in a creepy, dark, underground parking deck, dimly lit by fluorescent bulbs on motion sensors, with support pillars every 1.5 parking spaces. Navigating this would be tricky. My parking in college was substantially more demanding, and, what’s I am the grandson of men who drove great big trucks for a living. The weak link here is the Volkswagen, which, tonight, sits crooked in our assigned spot. And we are now settling into Andorra.

For dinner, we had a reservation at Surf Arinsal, an Argentian steak house highly recommended by the AirBnB. Just look at that menu, won’t you?

And look at this homemade bubble bread with garlic.

Tomorrow, we start the sightseeing!

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12
Mar 23

Sagrada Familia’s Passion Towers

Here’s one final post to share some of the sites from Sagrada Familia, specifically, we’re going up into the Passion Tower. But, first, the centerpiece of the great narthex. These are the central doors, of which there are seven. They were sculpted by the famed and controversial sculptor, Josep Maria Subirachs. Each door represents a sacrament — baptism, anointing of the sick, holy orders, confirmation, marriage and penance.

This is the central door, 15 feet by 16 feet, and it represents the Eucharist and features the Lord’s Prayer in Catalan. The doors also carry the phrase “Give us this day our daily bread” in 50 languages.

The door handles are the A and G, for Antoni Gaudí in “que cAiGuem en la temptació,” or “lead us not into temptation.

For more on this portion of the Sagrada Familia, I commend to you this PDF. But, now we’re going up into the Passion Tower,
built in the 1950s, years after Gaudí’s death. His plaster models had been restored and closely followed, with the tower’s shape at the base being slightly elliptical, opposed to the perfect circles of the Nativity.

Small windows.

Big views.

There are four towers in the facade, but only two are open to the public, the Philip Tower and the Thomas Tower. As a guest, the highest point you can reach is around 295 feet.

The towers go a bit farther up.

I believe this statue, between the towers, is intended to be a representation of Jesus. A Gaudí expert, sculptor, or an art history major will be along in a moment to correct me.

I mentioned two of the four status. The Bartholomew and James the Less towers aren’t open. It seems a family of falcons has taken to nesting there, so the tourists are kept away from the chicks. Guess they don’t mind the bells.

When you hear bells from far off, you might notice them. Perhaps you’ll think idly about them as you walk. Maybe you’ll stop and pay close attention. But when you’re right beside them you just wonder how far away they can be heard.

Gaudí planned for 18 bell towers — one each for the six spires are dedicated to the Four Evangelists, Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ, eight are so far completed — because everything here is steeped in symbolism. Some more noisy than others.

Visiting the towers is actually a diversion from the master architect’s plans. He figured them all to be only bell towers, which helps explains the narrow stairs. Apparently bell ringers in Spain are all petite and diminutive people.

If you’re interested in learning more about the towers, I’ll suggest Seven reasons why going up on Sagrada Familia towers is worth it. I suspect the views are worth it to some. And they were fine. It is just that I was too taken by the naves to have a solid impression of the towers. This is fine, but, with our time limited, I wanted to go back inside.

I’m sure one day we’ll be back. When we are powerful and can arrange for a private, hosted tour, we will definitely be back.

But, for now, we’re headed to Andorra!

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12
Mar 23

IACS, day two, or the rare weekend post, part one

Happy Sunday. We’re all out of sorts here, with extra posts because of our many adventures. So let’s dive in. Yesterday, Saturday, we spent at the conference, and chatting with friends old and new. It was a fine day with delightful people.

Today, we took in two of Barcelona’s sites.

First was Park Güell, on the northern face of the Collserola mountain range. The design was Antoni Gaudí’s, the architect is the face of local modernism, but more on him in the next post. The park was opened in 1926 and declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1984. More than 12 million tourists visit the park each year, but the initial plan was to build a complex of high-quality houses.

Also, it affords these outstanding views of the city and countryside.

The Calvary — or the hill of the three crosses, or El turó de les Tres Creus in Catalan — is a small manmade mountain. There are three crosses there. It was intended to be a chapel, but Gaudi didn’t finish it. Highest part of the park.

This was to be at the front of the failed housing project, and inspired by the story of Hänsel and Gretel. There are two buildings here, model houses, really. This one was to be an administrative building, but is now a bookstore and gift shop. That cross is not original. It was destroyed in the Spanish Civil War in 1936, and rebuilt sometime thereafter.

This is the Escalera Monumental, or dragon staircase. Very popular, and if you’ve ever seen photos from Güell, this is probably what you saw first. The highlights are the mosaics, which you can’t appreciate properly for all of these crowds.

A lot of Gaudi’s work doesn’t appeal to me. The explanations for what he was after often feel like apologia. “It’s an appeal to nature!” If you say so. Modernism has plenty of peculiar strains though, and it isn’t always better. I love the mosaic work, there’s not one in Spain I wouldn’t stop to admire, but I can dismiss much of the rest of Gaudi’s park.

We visited there with some friends from Louisville and Canada — you don’t know them. After, we cooled down with a gelato, took a group photo and said our goodbyes. The conference was ended, and we’re all going to separate places in the hours and days to come.

The first place The Yankee and I were going was to the Sagrada Familia. It was a mile or so away, and we strolled through beautiful high end neighborhoods. Apartment living looks fine, if, I’m sure, you can afford it.

This is Casa de les Punxes, or Casa Terradas. Bartomeu Terradas i Mont, a textile magnate, and his son, Bartomeu Terradas Brutau — a soccer player, a founding member of FC Barcelona and, briefly, the team president — had this house built for the women in their family in 1905. It is actually three buildings, but design and perspective make it all merge fairly seamlessly. (And if I’d been on my toes when we walked by, I’d have a better photo to show that.) The medieval modernism style makes it a signature Barcelona building, and in 1975, it was declared a national historic monument.

Soon after, we arrived at Sagrada Familia, the famous church — and famously unfinished church — designed by Antoni Gaudí.

We’ve seen beautiful churches and cathedrals in London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, across the United States. It’s just a thing we do on trips, now, and they never disappoint. But, as I said above, Gaudí’s quirky style isn’t to my taste. He was killed by a tram in 1926. He was 73 and about a quarter of the project was completed, so he was never going to see this place finished. Here we are, almost 100 years later, work still in progress.

The exterior is adorned with scenes depicting Jesus’ life.

Rich with symbolism, or at least stabs at explanation, it is quite … involved and ornate … in its own mottled sort of way.

I don’t care for the style, is all.

Except for these. While the church work has been underway since late in the 19th century, these doors were installed in 2015. Apparently there were no doors before that.

These are bronze, and that’s symbolic too, since the more it gets touched, the more brilliant and beautiful it becomes like the love between two people. These doors were crafted by a man named Etsuro Sotoo. The “Japanese Gaudí” came to Spain in 1978 and his devoted much of his life’s work to project. I’ve shortchanged his genius by capturing it with two hasty photos.

These doors, the Doors of the Charity, are absolutely stunning.

After Gaudí died, work continued, but then came a two-decade pause from the Spanish Civil War and World War II, and then some time repairing war damage. And the work always continues. A few generations of artisans and laborers since … they’re eyeing a tangible finish line. In the next decade or so, they’re anticipating finally having Sagrada Familia completed.

In the next post you’ll see the interior, and why we will most definitely be back.