Tancant el Capítol de l'UB

{{Tu de què vas}}

Last Friday we had the goodbye party for all the students of Estudios Hispánicos at the Universitat de Barcelona. I wasn't quite done with the UB yet--I still had a test for Cine Español that afternoon and one for Historia de Arte Monday afternoon--but it gave a great symbolic close to the four months I've spent studying there. Throughout my time in Barcelona, the UB has been the only constant in terms of my classes. Differing French and Catalan courses have come and gone, but I have always known that several times a week I would walk or metro my way over to Universitat to learn more about Spain's artistic culture. Several of my closest friends--Alli, Marine, Lauren--have come from my classes at the UB, and I always feel a sense of great pride as I walk towards the great front doors of the Universitat.

To celebrate the goodbye, we all grouped in the Panorifam, a special room in the University that is only used for thesis presentations and special evening concerts. I had gotten to visit this spectacular room once with my art history professor, but I was completely as wowed the second time by the complete decadence and art inside. My professor explained to all the gathered Estudios Hispánicos students about the importance of the room. The right and left walls are covered in a series of paintings that depict important events in the history of Spain, uniting Muslims and Christians and Jews, scholars and kings, merchants and sultans, bringing together all the different facets of what makes Spain today. The far wall has paintings of two women, one representing the arts, with names of famous painters, composers, architects, and writers, surrounding her, and the other representing the sciences, with the names of such as Gallileo and Newton surrounding her. The room is magnificent and was a fittingly solemn place to say our goodbyes to our university away from home. My art professor wore the traditional formal professors' robe, which has been in use since the 1500s, and talked about the importance of the room and Estudios Hispánicos from the pulpit where the student delivering his/her thesis would defend it against the "Devil's lawyer".

After the ceremony we were invited to mix and mingle over tasty bocadillos and sodas. It was a perfect way for me to enjoy some last moments talking with some of my fellow students from classes and enjoy the atmosphere of Estudios Hispánicos one last time. Plus get a bit of free energy before my test!!

But my ultimate goodbye to the UB actually came this past Thursday, when I spent my last day with Alli before she flew back to the US. We wanted to wander around the gardens one last time, and what did we find, but a performance of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in Catalan, right in the middle of the gardens. The students were obviously rehearsing for a performance that night, still cleaning up a few entrances and lines, and unfortunately we arrived towards the end of the play. But that, however, didn't take away from the perfection of this particular play, in the language of Catalunya, for a final goodbye measure to our university. Only at l'UB would that happen, and only after living here would we be able to know which play it was after hearing only a few words in Catalan.

Adéu, l'Universitat de Barcelona, segura que ens veiem de nou algun dia. Només vull que no sigui molt temps!! Gràcies per a tot!

Flamenco in...Barcelona?! C'est la Feria d'Abril!

{{Yo nunca olvidaré el último vals}}

La Feria d'Abril is put on by the Federación de Entidades Culturales Andaluzas en Catalunya (Federacion of Andalusian Cultural Entities in Catalunya) to celebrate the annual Ferias that are held throughout Andalucia, the most famous being in Sevilla. In Andalucia, the ferias completely shut down the cities and turn everything in festivities, music, food, and good sherry, but here the Southern-style merriment was carried out only in the Parc del Fòrum by the Mediterranean shore.

The event was amazingly fun, even though it rained the entire evening I was there. The entire fairgrounds of the Fòrum is covered in small tents selling traditional Andalusian cheeses, sausages, succulent Pernil ham, fresh-distilled olive oils, sherry, and beautiful red wines. Some even gave away samples! (I had quite a bit at one cheese sellers' stall....but it was too good to just have one little piece!). There were also stalls selling traditional flamenco outfits, churro carts (though none will ever have a place in my heart like churro man in Urubamba!), mini-restaurants with absolutely amazing cheap food (octopus! paella! patatas bravas! ham! calamaris! roasted sausages!), and a memorable tent filled with herbs and spices to cure different ailments and make you feel better (I saw at least 5 different products advertising how to stop you from smoking, which are desperately needed here in Spain).

But the most important stalls were the larger tents with wooden floors that were specifically set up for flamenco dancers. In some, everyone sat back and enjoyed Andalusian specialty dishes while groups of professional flamenco dancers performed for them; in others, everyone, from smiling grandmas to energetic little kids excited to be up past bedtime, danced together in the middle, stopping every once and a while to refresh themselves with tapas or a glass of wine. The excited, festive spirit was contagious and I couldn't help but smile as I watched all the different couples dancing, celebrating their native heritage here in Catalunya. The dance is instilled into them from when they are young; it is so much a part of their culture that it is not a thing to be forgotten, but something that a moment inspires, gathering people together in a circle as they clap for a couple in the center, strangers before made compatriots by the rhythm and their dance.

If I couldn't be in Sevilla this year to celebrate the biggest Feria in Andalucia, I'm glad I got to enjoy a taste of the South here in my city! And soon I'll get to see just what Andalucia is like when Mom and I depart Barcelona for our Spain vacation next Friday.

Inside an Obra Maestra

Karen came and visited me last weekend and, with her urging, I finally entered one of my favorite—and most well-known—landmarks of Barcelona: la Sagrada Família. I had always been told that, because it’s currently a “work in progress” until we don’t really know when (current prediction is 15 years, but it looks like it will take longer, just like all architecture projects…), it wasn’t worth the 10 euros to enter. I even had heard a few “It’s just like any other church”-es. But I can definitely say, without a doubt, that all of those people are quite wrong

La Sagrada Família is an absolutely astounding architectural marvel inside, even though it is under construction, and you learn all about the historical and physical process of creating this obra maestra when you go inside. Yes, the fact that there is scaffolding everywhere inside and the noise and dust of construction is bothersome, but, a) I have yet to see a church in Europe that’s not currently en obras, and b) that in no way detracts from the masterful architecture that is to be seen inside the church. In fact, seeing what has already been done, what parts of Gaudí’s dream temple have already been completed, almost made me excited to see the scaffolding because I cannot wait to see what will come in the future years as they continue the work.

The thing I find the most interesting about the continual construction of la Sagrada Família is that now any architect who takes up the mantle of continuing to direct the project must be brave enough to attempt to insert himself or herself in Gaudí’s mind and try and understand the way this architectural genius worked. It is, in part, because of this that the project is continuing at such a slow rate, even though we do have so many more advanced architecture techniques than during Gaudí’s time. Many of Gaudí’s plans and maquetas for la Sagrada Família were burned or destroyed during the Spanish Civil War when the anarchists broke into his study on the grounds of la Sagrada Família. Fortunately they didn’t attempt to destroy la Sagrada Família itself because, as the story goes, one of them realized that Gaudí had died poor like them and therefore his church shouldn’t be destroyed. Because Gaudí was such an experimentalist with his architecture, he tried every technique that he used in la Sagrada Família in smaller forms in his other works. He often said he never would have dared to do the things he did in la Sagrada Família on such a large scale if he hadn’t first attempted them in various aspects of his buildings. We don’t know what other experiments he may have done if he hadn’t been struck down by a streetcar. La Sagrada Família could have a very different structure than the one we know today. It could be exactly the same. He could have completely new ideas for how to construct the remaining façades. Since la Sagrada Família was his grand masterpiece, the culmination of all of his work, he used his best and most inventive techniques in it. But, no architect today can say that he or she has the mind and exact thinking pattern as Gaudí to be able to recreate his ideas and extrapolate from there to form new ones to reshape the plans for today’s Sagrada Família. No one dares put their name and stamp on Gaudí’s masterpiece, and I doubt that if I were an architect I would have the guts to do it either! Working on the temple so changed one master sculptor that he became an extremely devout Catholic, just as Gaudí was.

When we went inside la Sagrada Família we got to not only see a little bit about the process of the construction and walk inside the spectacular forest-like congregation, but were able to go up the main towers to look out over Barcelona. Because of the construction, you can only go up the towers in elevator (and pay 2 euros more, but oh well, it means that I’ll get to see the finished Sagrada Família 2 euros faster!), but we were able to descend them by foot, exploring the connecting spiral towers along the way. It was absolutely magnificent, looking out over Barcelona from the birds’-eye view behind the dove-studded tree on the old façade. Knowing that I was inside one of those iconic towers and seeing how high I was, comparing that to how much even higher the central tower will be, looking down upon the continuing construction project, examining up close and personal the parts of the church that I had only ever seen from the ground, far away with my neck craned and eyes squinted to focus it better, was all astounding. In total we spent almost 4 spectacular hours exploring all the nooks and crannies we could of la Sagrada Família, and I would call them four very well spent hours with 12 well-spent euros to attempt to get inside the head of this masterful architect and come to a more personal understanding of his most personally valued project.