Puebla Blanca I

The road inland from the Atlantic coast takes you up into hills and mountains that can be harrowing at times. The payoff is being able to visit ancient towns clinging to the mountains and the very heart of Andalucian culture. There are too many pueblas blancas to visit so we are stopping only at a few. First up; Arcos de la Frontera. First a Moorish stronghold and the a Christianized town, the city sits atop a rock outcrop- a perfect defensible location. Narrow streets and white-washed walls are the hallmark of these towns.









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Seville Images

Art in front of the Municipal Hall.

A Toreador (Bullfighter Shop) near the Bull Ring.

A tight street in the Barrio Santa Cruz.

In the Barrio Santa Cruz, also known as the Barrio Gotico.

All the street trees in Seville are orange trees.

Quiet corner of the Jewish ghetto.

W ine and water in the Jewish ghetto.

Alcázares Reales de Sevilla

A true gem in Seville is tucked discretely behind time-worn ramparts of the citadel known as an alcazar, the Spanish version of an arab term meaning citadel or castle. Within the complex is the palace built by Pedro I in the 14th century which features the most spectacular Mujedar decoration. Absolutely stunning and a precursor to the wonders of the Alhambra, which I will visit in a few days.
The balance of the buildings' simple forms and volumes and the shimmering effusion of surface treatments is a masterpiece of design: restraint and abandon in balance.

When Modernism wasn't a four-letter word

On a non-descript dirt plain below the majestic neo-classical Museum of Catalan Art on Montjuic, Spanish architects have recreated a seminal Modernist work originally built here 80 years ago. It is the Barcelona Pavilion, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe as the German Pavilion for the 1929 International Exposition. Structurally expressive, free from ornament and blurring the lines between outside and in, the building in its brief, one year life manifested the tenets of Modernism to the rest of the world.

Mies' ubiquitous Barcelona Chair.

Tapas Tapas Tapas

You cannot avoid tapas. I have now learned you really shouldn’t. I thought that these were simple hors d’ouevres, maybe chips, olives, a small salad etc. But here in Spain they can be miniature, manageable portions of fine entre dishes, Legend says that ‘tapas‘ refers to a ‘lid’; innkeepers feared that travellers would have too much to drink and would fall off their horses, so they put a lid over the last drinks of the patron with some food to help them sober up a bit.

Here in Andalucia, where tapas were born, it is actually difficult to find a traditional restaurant in old Seville because of all the tapas bars. In Barcelona, where tapas isn’t indigenous, it was nonetheless difficult o throw a rock in any direction and not hit a tapas place. Bars almost always have tapas and Spaniards make an evening of bar-hopping, having one drink and a tapas, before moving to another place not far away. It is an extremely social way of eating.

My personal take on a good tapas: tons of flavor on first taste, rich in texture since there are so few bites and it must complement a good cerveza or glass of a tannic Rioja. My tapas highlights so far:

Foie gras with onion marmalade and crostini (melt-in-the-mouth, hands-down my fave)

Roast lamb with an orange glaze

Shrimp in garlic oil

Ham and cheese croquettes

Fried camembert with raspberry sauce

Asparagus in a Romesco sauce

Thin-sliced cured Jabugo ham (pigs fed acorns only)

Fried potatoes in a creamy aioli

Catalan gazpacho (pureed form of the usual cold soup)

Almond soup

Tomato bread

Here is where Dave and I ate in Barcelona that was fantastic:

My View of La Sagrada Familia

A goal for me in finally visiting Barcelona was, of course, to see the work of Gaudi. The crowning glory of Gaudi’s oeuvre is the great Temple of La Sagrada Familia in the Eixample district north of the old City of Barcelona. I paid two visits to the site, easily reached by Metro from the hotel in the old center. The first visit was late morning on New Year’s Eve day and the crowds were thick and the line to get in far around thSo e corner. Tour buses jostled Tetris-like to disgorge hordes of tourists. This kept me at bay and I retreated to the park on the south flank of the great pile to sketch the facade. An enquiry at the information booth informed me that the building would be open on New Year’s Day and, of course, we should arrive early.

So at 8:30 a.m. Dave and I, showed up to a respectably diminished line but on a day so clear, but so blustery, that no one was allowed up into the towers. We paid and hastened inside the church.

The Temple of La Sagrada Familia is very much a construction site. Today, as it is a holiday, there is no work going on, but the piles of material, the ubiquitous scaffolding, the general absence of surface decoration and the use of placeholder elements like plain glass for stained, bear testament to the transitory sense of what we are seeing today. Almost 140 years into construction, this is not unlike the grand works of cathedral building of seven centuries before. Even the same issues have plagued the completion of this grand monument. The question of funding, the availability of craftsmen, the technical hurdles, the death of the original designer, have all been detriment to the progress. Two world wars and an especially debilitating Civil War also contributed. They are aiming to finish the Temple in 20 years. We shall see.

The basic parti is straightforward enough, a Latin Cross with nave, transepts, apse and side aisles. But the moment the plan is expressed upwards, it is like a florid burst of hyper-realized organic elements, seemingly duty-bound in adherence to natural laws of physics and mathematics while seemingly victimizing architectonic forms to bizarre whims of the architect’s fancy and, more cryptically, a foreboding sense of a Catalonian force-majeure.

Gaudi plays with us. He employs obvious pure Gothic motifs, such as fenestration patterns, but then contorts fundamental Gothic tectonics by directing the roof and upperstory forces to be borne on buttressing disengaged from the exterior walls (as to be expected), but then massively redirecting these forces back to the central aisle columns in the angled planes of a chunky choir loft some 50 meters up. Thus he frees the lower story of solid wall to bathe within with light and does so sans the eyesore of flying buttressing without.

He unapologetically works the columns throughout as literal trees, replete with upward width dimunition, stylized knotholes, tessellated compound branching and forces-balancing angular thrusts. Everything soars, everything rises: the eye is sent aloft.

The roof/ ceiling is an overhead miasma of ellipsoidal ocular forms intended to magnify the strong Mediterranean light from above; to combine with the light form the walls and galleries. It is all about light in the end. The only material that can even approximate the nature of God.

The entirety of what is built and what will be still sits with me. It seems I was able to briefly share in a singular vision of Gaudi’s belief in God, the essence of his spirituality and mysticism given form. This was the penance of the last decades of his life, his expiations in service to his beliefs. What I saw impressed me as an architect on those pragmatic qualities that frame the crux of my craft. But it also soared the essence of my spiritual being.

I will return in twenty years to hopefully see the church in its final flowering.