Sagrada Familia

Probably the most famous attraction in Barcelona is the Sagrada Familia, the unfinished modern cathedral designed by Antoni Gaudí, the architect whose name is practically synonymous with Barcelona. Even though I had read about the site, and seen pictures, I was not prepared for the experience of walking through this building.

For me, the fact that it is still under construction is one of its most interesting aspects. Sagrada Familia was begun in 1882 and has a projected finish date of 2030. Gaudí became associated with the site in 1883 and continued work on it until his death in 1926.
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We spent an entire morning at Sagrada Familia. We walked through the construction site, which covers most of the interior of the cathedral. Since it was a weekday, we observed some of the 300 workmen who are engaged in the construction going about their business. I have seen many old cathedrals in Europe--all of them "finished" or in various stages of reconstruction-- and nothing made me appreciate how large they are until I saw this one with huge building apparatus site in its interior.





We also toured a small but informative exhibit showing how plans and designs of Gaudí were influenced by nature. Finally we road an elevator up about 500 feet to the towers, heard the clock strike 11:00, and then walked down and around and down some more, observing glorious views of the building and the surrounding city area.



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Credit for these and most of the photographs in Sundays in Spain goes to my constant companion, Johannes Bjørner.

All Saints Day in Barcelona

It seems as though every day is associated with a saint in Spain, but November 1 is All Saints Day, Todos los Santos. Indeed, Halloween, increasingly celebrated here on October 31 with costumes and trick-or-treating for children, started as the hallowed evening before the day of all saints. As in the U.S. for most people, now there is a disconnect between Halloween and any religious observance.

But El Día de Todos los Santos is an important holiday. One of the first signs is in the sales promotions on memorial flower arrangements in the week leading up to the festival. People do remember those in their family who have passed on. Another sign is the number of red prayer candles lit in church alcoves in honor of the dead.

I do not normally go to church on All Saints Day, but that just happened to be the day that I was able to see the Cathedral in Barcelona's Gothic Quarter. The Cathedral, officially known as Cathedral de la Santa Creu i Santa Eulalia (after the patron saint of Barcelona) and also known as La Seu, dates from 1298. Like many churches in Spain, it replaced an earlier Roman temple and a mosque, which had both been built on the same site. Many people were streaming in to visit during the early Sunday afternoon, and so many were coming out from a mass that we didn't even venture into the cathedral proper--we just wandered through the large cloister area between the street and the cathedral.

Immediately to my right upon entering the cloister was an alcove for St.Rita; of all the alcoves with their lighted prayer candles, this one had the most. The saints' stations surrounded a large tropical courtyard entirely within the cloister, and in the middle of the courtyard was a large pond with geese swimming nonchalantly, seemingly unaware of the significance of the day. But I've done some homework since returning home, and now I've learned that there probably were thirteen geese in the cloister, each representing one year in the life of Santa Eulalia, a young martyr to Christianity during Roman times.

How to Avoid the Pickpockets in Barcelona

Photo: © 2009 Johannes Bjørner

Whenever we told people that we were going to Barcelona, the second--if not the first--thing they said was, "Be careful of the pickpockets." We even read a newspaper article (source now lost) that said that Barcelona had more pickpockets than any other place in the world. (How does one measure that?)

Sunday morning, tired of being extra careful of where we carried money, cards and papers, we found the perfect solution not far from our hotel in the plaza in front of the old cathedral. We were there at the right time, for a brass orchestra had assembled and lots of people were milling about on this sunny and warm first day of November. At some signal that I missed, the music began and several women standing in front of us suddenly dropped their bags in one pile on the pavement, formed a circle with joined raised hands, and started dancing. They were dancing the sardana, a traditional folk dance of Catalonia, more properly called Catalunya.

The dancing went on for a long time--whenever it seemed as though it was coming to a close, the music would take another turn, and dancing would recommence. The sardana is a slow dance, with deceptively simple toe steps. We watched an older woman who could barely move, feeling out the steps as she stood with her daughter, perhaps, on the outer rim of the circle. Her daughter and several other women and men joined the circle, simply by ducking under the upheld hands, depositing their bags in the center, and then clasping the upheld hand of each of their two neighbors in the circle.

Eventually a woman came with a collections tin; she explained that this was the sardana dance, we dropped a few coins in the can, and she gave us a sticker so we would not be disturbed again. But we continued watching for a long time, then went on to visit the cathedral. And when we returned an hour or so later, they were still dancing, and the old woman who had been moving hesitantly had joined the dancing. Bags were still safely piled in the center of the circle.

Other people have captured short clips of the sounds and sights of the sardana on YouTube, though it's not quite as magical as being there and seeing it begin spontaneously.

A World in Barcelona

As I rode comfortably in the Renfe EuroMed train from Alicante north toward Barcelona last Wednesday morning, I had a sudden moment of panic that I had forgotten to bring my passport. I was off to a meeting of the Mediterranean Editors and Translators (MET), which brought together about one hundred skilled language professionals from many countries around the Mediterranean Sea and further inland in Europe, so I was naturally thinking of international travel. Then, too, usually when I travel professionally, I am going abroad. This would be the first professional conference that I have attended in Spain.

And then I remembered that Barcelona was indeed in Spain and I didn't need a passport. Until I got to the meeting, that is, and started talking with the other attendees. "Ah, so you also live in Spain," I remarked to one with whom I had struck up a conversation. "No," she answered, "I live in Barcelona."

Barcelona is the capital of Catalonia, one of the 17 autonomous regions that comprise modern Spain. Catalonia has special historic status within Spain's 1978 Constitution. Both Catalan and Spanish are official languages. Signs and public announcements appear most often in Catalan first, then Spanish, and then English, though the cosmopolitan city of Barcelona usually defaults to English as the first language of speaking to tourists and unknown persons--the gentleman who received us in our hotel declined to speak Spanish with us, preferring English.

We had a delightful four days mixed with sight-seeing, professional presentations, delicious food, and fascinating conversations, and returned from the big city by train late Sunday evening full of impressions. I did indeed feel as though I had traveled the world in Barcelona.

Discovery Day Redux

When I wrote about October 12 and Christopher Columbus, or Cristóbal Colón, as he is known in Spanish, I blithely recited the conventional wisdom that he sailed for Spain's Queen Isabella even though he himself was Italian. That was before the Euro Weekly News told me that "experts have confirmed that Christopher Columbus's writings prove he was neither Italian nor Portuguese but Spanish--as the Spanish themselves have always claimed."

Oh? Well, apparently so. An article in La Vanguardia explains that for decades there have been claims that Columbus originated either from the Spanish region of Catalunya or the Balearic Islands. With the exception of a sole Peruvian voice (Luis Ulloa), those claims have come from Catalans. Now a new book, El ADN de los escritos de Cristóbal Colón (The DNA of Columbus's Writings), by linguist Estelle Irizarry of Georgetown University, shows that the vocabulary and syntax, and specifically the use of the virgule (a / sign) in Columbus's written work, is typical of Catalan speakers of the fifteenth century.

Catalan remains today one of the four official languages of Spain and is spoken in the northeastern part of the Iberian peninsula (between France and Valencia), and in the Balearics. Also, according to Wikipedia, in the country of Andorra and the Italian town of Alghero on the island of Sardinia. But not in Genoa, where the conventional wisdom placed Columbus's origins for decades. A post in the Medieval News blog tells more about Irizarry's book.

This is (Still) Spain

As I mentioned in a belated "happy birthday" greeting to a friend a week or so ago, I don't pay much attention to celebrating birthdays and the dates on which they fall. That's why it wasn't until I returned from a "This is Spain" home show and expat exposition this afternoon, and remembered that I had written about my first "This is Spain" show a year ago, that I realized that the Sundays in Spain blog has slid quietly and unceremoniously into its second year.

Looking back, I find that I first posted on October 12, 2008. I've pretty much kept to the goals and schedule I originally promised, and I have no intention of stopping soon. Thanks to all my family and friends, and the occasional stranger, who let me know from time to time that they are reading and enjoying. You probably don't know how helpful that is to me.

So, anyway, today (Saturday) was year two that I went to "This is Spain." It was held at a bigger and fancier hotel than last year, the four-star La Zenia, which is immediately south of Torrevieja in Orijuela Costa. But the financial crisis has taken its toll. Whereas my entry last year at this time says there were 150 exhibits, the showguide today lists only 59. I have come to admire those northern Europeans who move to Spain to work rather than to retire, because I know that running a business is hard work, and running one in a country new to you, with a language not your own, is very risky. I am sure that some of the businesses that exhibited last year are now gone, and others may still be alive, but find the promotional cost impossible at this time.

Another difference between last year and this: last year we were living temporarily in a rented house, knowing that we couldn't move to the Costa Blanca until we sold an apartment in Roquetas. This year we have sold the apartment and now have our own house. So all the stands with offers of various reformas were interesting to us today. We talked to several people about underfloor heating systems, magnetic insect screens, sun awnings, house and "underbuild" ventilation, and small interior construction projects to improve cosmetics and storage. In my never-ending quest to find English language satellite TV systems that offer American programs, I read the offerings from three different vendors, and found none. I picked up two 2010 calendars and a nice assortment of little guidebooks to restaurants, leisure and wellness centers, and other businesses in the region. I accepted at least three flyers about prepaid funerals and stuffed them in my bag--they are now in the wastebasket. I got another free blood pressure test: 123/69, a bit up since last year's free test. That may be because I spent more time at the XOCAI chocolate stand, where a very nice woman explained the health benefits of this particular type of dark chocolate, and I believed her. But at the cost of €30 for a one week supply--even though it tasted fabulous--I don't think that I can afford to eat those three chocolates a day, no matter how great it would make me feel! We spend far less than that each week on red wine for two people!

¡Sí, Voy a Hablar Español!

I know my family and friends are probably tired of hearing me say that I don't speak Spanish very well, and they may even be wondering whether I ever will, after living in Spain for about five years. The truth is that I have studied the language in formal classes for most of the months that I have been here. I understand a lot of the Spanish that I read in the newspapers and magazines, brochures, signs, and even some books. I can ask questions and usually understand the answer, at least well enough to phrase a follow-up question or confirmation sentence. I have written letters and essays in Spanish about various trips and visits, the production of maple syrup in New England, Google Book Search, and Hans Christian Andersen's nineteenth-century visit to Barcelona (translating from the Danish).

When it comes to speaking, however, I am very reticent. I am naturally shy, I can't think fast enough to find the proper words and phrases, I tend to get confused and frustrated if the slightest thing goes wrong, and I am now living in such a multinational (read that as English-speaking) area that I don't need to speak Spanish very often. But I am still determined to study the language and continue classes, and as soon as September approached, I was on the lookout for classes in my new neighborhood.

I haven't been very lucky. The municipal classes that were advertised as starting in October have yet to materialize. The teacher I accosted between two beginner classes in the neighboring town promised to call me about a more advanced class, but I have yet to hear from her. The Danish club arranged for beginner and intermediate classes for its members, but the last thing I thought I needed was to learn Spanish through Danish explanations and especially grammar--which I don't know anyway.

I have been successful, though, in arranging private classes with the Danish instructor of those group classes, and we had our first meeting this week. And I think I was wrong to think that it's always better to learn a language from a native speaker of that language. All my previous teachers (seven of them since I've been in Spain) have been native Spanish, and I've "learned," or at least been taught, just about everything--through a grammar-based approach. Now this teacher has become comfortable enough to speak and teach the language after living in Spain for a decade. The most important thing, she says, is to speak it! Almost immediately she gave me "permission" to ignore the differences between the two past tenses, and to forget about using the future tense--"use 'I am going to' to indicate future action," she says. After all, Spaniards speak fast, and if you stutter around trying to figure out which past tense to use (or whether you should use subjunctive or indicative, I add to myself) they will have walked away by the time you get the perfectly correct word out of your mouth!

I think she is on to something. I will continue my classes with her, and I am going to speak Spanish!