7-8 ¿Yo Soy Español?

Location: The apartment sala (living room)

Listening to: A Spanish telenovela (soap opera, more or less) called Gran Reserva

Wow, what a week (so far)! Montserrat was a great way to start it off. For some reason I really can't remember what I did on Monday. I think it was an uneventful day. Tuesday, I went to La Pedrera, Gaudi's last completed work. I think I would have been much impressed if I hadn't already spent so much time at Sagrada Familia – many of the exhibits cover similar material. Seeing the recreated apartment was interesting after reading Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, because the curators use the same term (emerging bourgeoisie) to paint a very different picture. To Orwell, these were the people economically oppressing their comrades. I especially remember his apparent disgust for those among this wealthy class who spoke and dressed like the common men to hide their economic superiority. To those who have made remembering Gaudi their profession, these tyrants were those enabling Catalonia's greatest architect to almost literally reinvent the wheel. Additionally, you have patrons like the Güell family – clearly innovative, entrepreneurial, politically active, wealthy investors and executives with a mind for the common people they employed. The “Güell Colony” was a village they constructed so the workers at one of their factories away from the city would never want for good housing or other necessities and included one of Gaudi's unfinished but very important churches, from which he drew much of his inspiration for La Sagrada Familia. So...are they bourgeoisie? Both sides say so. Are they wealthy? Clearly – one of them constructed Park Güell as a (mostly) private retreat. Are they oppressive or supportive? Were they focused on maintaining to their perennial family power or empowering the people of this historically poor country to call a city of their own one of the cultural and artistic epicenters of Europe, or even of the world? In the word(s) of Rob Bell, “yep.” *

Ok, getting off the philosophical high horse. La Pedrera is a magnificent piece of architecture and the exhibitions were very good. I'm glad I went. The roof (see the pictures) is the highlight of the building, though I was probably most impressed by the practical solutions Gaudi came up with for the building as a functional living space. It's ventilated and illuminated by two “light shafts” near the center of the building. You can walk around in some refurbished reproductions of the apartments as they would have been in the early twentieth century, and while artificial light had just recently become common in the city they hardly needed it here. Every room on the whole floor is very well lit by natural sunlight, with the exception of those meant only for sleeping, and the size of the windows is adjusted from the bottom floors to the top to compensate for their proximity to the open sky. In another interesting innovation, he moved the load of the floors and roof toward the center of the structure rather than the outer walls. This allowed him to turn the outer facades into beautiful works of art, but it also allowed the owners of each flat to knock down or construct walls within their apartments as they pleased. Gaudi designed everything from the tiles in the children's bedrooms to the incredible rooftop to the door handles, and it's impossible to distinguish the functionally necessary from the aesthetically brilliant. I think this fusion was exactly Gaudi's intention, and he was an absolute master.

After La Pedrera, I came back to the apartment to eat and watch the Holland – Uruguay match. It was fun – we went to a bar right outside for the second half and the waitress refused to believe I was an American. Apparently my accent is more German than Mexican at this point.

And then...yesterday. Oh, yesterday. After class I planned out my trip to Paris and the area around London at the end of next week with Emily via Skype. I'm very excited to travel again, and to meet my mom's host parents. Afterward I ran home, changed, and tried to find a spot at Ryan's. There were a lot of German fans and I thought they were going to run away with that game, but I stuck with the two Spaniards and the Irishman and pulled for Spain the whole night. It was a BLAST. Learned a few new words, spoke in Spanish the whole time, and danced around like an idiot when it was all said and done. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera, but Alexis brought hers. Oh, I haven't introduced her yet. She goes to Kingsbrook (my school) and she's from a Chicago suburb – she and some friends just came to town this week and didn't know where to go for the game, so I recommended good old Ryan's. Anyway, we took a bunch of pictures with the Spaniards and then tried to walk back to La Rambla. We made it, but only after jumping, screaming, and dancing our way through a huge mob. It was so much fun – people throwing what I assume was water on us by the bucket from the balconies, yelling songs I'd learned about 30 minutes beforehand, and making a lot of new (though temporary) friends. After one of the many rounds of “Olé”, when everybody was relatively quiet, I launched into “Yo Soy Español” (roughly “I'm a Spaniard”) at the top of my lungs. A few guys joined me, then whoever had the drum saw us and started playing the beat, and soon it was total euphoria. Moment of my life. I think Alexis may have gotten a few pictures, but I'll have to wait until she gets them up on facebook.

This probably should have been enough for one night, but another friend called me and said she could get me into a fun club near my school for free. I made it back to the apartment a little after four – enough said. Today, I planned my trip to Granada. I was going to head down for a long weekend, but after that game I couldn't bring myself to be anywhere but here for the final on Sunday. I'm going to take a few days off class next week and make them up when Emily, Capucine, Marcel, and I come back to Barcelona. I'm sure they'll do at least a few touristy things I'll have already seen, so it should work out well. I'll also be hitting the guitar festival in Cordoba – so excited!

After planning all of that stuff, I met up with a few friends (an American, a German, and a girl from England) and went to the top of Tibidabo. It's the only time I've really been able to see beyond the mountains that, along with the sea, define Barcelona's city limits. It was gorgeous – miles and miles of nearly unbroken green forest. That said, I was profoundly unmoved by the spectacle that is Tibidabo.

The chapel is beautiful, but it's nearly surrounded by a theme park complete with Ferris Wheel, overpriced concessions, and a roller coaster. The chapel itself is very pretty, especially on the inside. I snapped a few pictures. There was an adjoined, smaller chapel for silent prayer which smelled of incense. I walked in, put away the camera, and quietly walked around the room, admiring it and praying silently. As I walked toward the front, I heard someone snap at me (with their fingers). It was one of the fathers of the chapel, staring straight at me and loudly whispering that this was a place of prayer and that I had to leave.

The German Lutheran at my core almost came out with a vengeance. I was absolutely infuriated. The man had no way of knowing what I was doing, evidenced by the fact that I was participating in exactly what that room was meant to be. I wanted to tell him I was praying, that he was acting like a conceited and arrogant child claiming a sandbox, that it was impossible to maintain an attitude like this and wonder why the Christian faith is all but dead in his country. I wanted to, and I nearly exploded, but I couldn't speak a word of Spanish. Maybe I could have said them in English, but I knew that would just strengthen his false notion that I was some idiot tourist gaping at something I didn't actually care about. I've never had this happen to me, and it made me hurt even more. In the end, I just stared at him open-mouthed. I felt like a little boy slapped in the face for something I knew I hadn't done, and even now I'm finding it difficult to forgive him. I left the chapel, and I still have a very bitter taste in my mouth. He, along with the theme park, solidified for me the unfortunate superficiality of that majestic chapel, seen every day and every night by the people of this city as a symbol of Catholicism, Christianity, and eventually, to some degree, faith itself. It's so sad. So, so sad. My heart goes out to those trying to keep the concept of faithful living alive in this country.

Sorry to end on such a sad note, but that memory is burned into my brain like a scar. Since I'll be traveling next week and weekend, tomorrow's the beginning of what's more or less my last weekend here. It's completely surreal – everybody says “it's gone so fast”, but I don't even feel like it went. It's as if I blinked and suddenly had these memories – like vivid dreams that only pictures, friends, and blog posts can prove actually happened. I will miss this city, despite or maybe because of all the unexpected challenges I encountered. They don't claim to be hospitable here in Catalonia. They pride themselves on their work ethic, ethnic heritage, language, etc. The people may be more difficult to “get to know” (it's easier in Spanish, actually), but they say that once you make a friend in Catalonia, they're a friend forever. I hope that's true, but I think that sums up my relationship with this city quite well. It was a pain in the butt trying to understand its history, geography, and a number of its other facets, but now that I can find my way around and talk like I know many more natives than I actually do, I feel this is a city (and a summer) I'll never forget.

For those of you keeping track, I finished writing this while it was still Thursday your time! ¡Adios!

*From “Everything is Spiritual”. This quote probably looked like a joke, but it wasn't. You can find the whole thing in HQ segments on youtube, but plan an hour and a half – it's addicting and highly recommended by yours truly.