When I was in the sixth grade, I had a wonderful Spanish teacher who one day showed us photographs of various places in Spain. I don't remember much; we were young, and of course much more interested in running around and holding hands with girls. A photo of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona still stands out in my head, and I don't know why. Our minds were simple, but you never know when things will come back around again.
That was over ten years ago and at the time the church had been in construction for around 120. This is an incredible length of time for a modern day project in a world where skyscrapers and Pizza Huts are built in a day. Its original architect, Antoni Gaudi, has buildings dispersed like seeds in Barcelona, and they all feel modern before the time of modernity. He died in 1926 when the Sagrada Familia was only 25% finished and left designs and original drawings for the many architects to come. They still follow those drawings today -- sometimes exact and sometimes interpreted -- as if Gaudi himself is still looking over everyone's shoulder.
I am older now, but still have this memory, and on a saturday afternoon I left tour groups behind and took a cab alone to Barcelona's most visited site. At some point I made a left turn and saw for the first time the distinct towers stretch above other buildings in the city, and then cranes jutting out above all that. Between this point, and another point three hours later, I wandered around one of the best things I have ever seen men make.
Gaudi's life work is a big marble forest. The towers are the trees, budding at the top and bursting forth with color. Every piece of rock and every design follows contour lines evident in nature: the honeycomb of a beehive; he falling pattern of a leaf; the crystallization of a mineral. At openings in the canopy light illuminates everything inside, and unlike most gaudy dark places Catholicism has built up over the centuries, the Sagrada Familia feels open and alive and accepting.
Buildings in Spain are very old, and completed sometime long ago, and we probably do not remember the date and if we do it isn't important. The rest of the time it's all about restoration so it looks as fresh as it did while it was finished, and in this way there is something lovely about being "in progress" because it will never look this good again. I do not mind the cranes or the sounds of construction, because one day it will also be timeless and old.
At the top of one of the towers a construction worker told another construction worker to be careful as he walked along a wooden plank and all of it goes to show things have not changed much. A century ago carved pieces of rock were lifted up by rope and by hand and today cranes lift the same piece of rock to the same place it was always supposed to fit. The main tower -- which will make the Sagrada Familia the tallest church in the world -- doesn't exist yet after 120 years of construction and no technological advancement will make it exist for ten years more. That is the neatest thing about this little place.
Antoni Gaudi is buried somewhere beneath the Sagrada Familia in a cavern. There are candles lit and it says something I could not read because it was too far away. The whole thing will all be done soon, the final tower topped with a cross. Gaudi dedicated 43 years of his life to his final project, and if it is like he intended, one great celebration of nature, I think it's fitting he rests at the roots.
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