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When
I was in my mid-teens I lived in Barcelona, on Avenida de la Victoria. It was a peculiar street, a mixture of the brand new, the old and the derelict, a microcosm of the city itself in the mid to late 1970s. Just down the road from our building was this
gate, designed by Antoni Gaudí in the 1880s, the first commission for
his main patron Eusebi Güell. Made of wrought iron, it was the entrance
to the Pavellons Güell and depicts a wonderfully reptilian and
outrageously sinuous dragon. In some ways I suppose that it could be
seen as an avant garde forerunner of steampunk. The master smith Joan Oñós was credited with its manufacture, and between the design and the execution, it is absolutely perfect. I was in love with it and on a visit to Barcelona many years after we had left, my parents bought me the above picture of it, by architect Joan Guardiola. I have just moved this
picture from one room to another, and as I stood looking at it in its
new location it brought back so many memories.
In his creation of the Pavellons Güell, Antoni Gaudí was heavily influenced by the Mudèjar Moorish architecture of southern Spain but be brought his own style to all his creations and is very difficult to pigeon hole. He has overlaps with Art Nouveau and Art Deco but his own work has a much freer organic feel to it that owes more to surrealism and a close observation of natural forms than to the far more formal styles with which it is usually associated. Gaudí was run over by a tram and died in 1926, just before his 74th birthday. A massive loss of a richness and imagination of the sort that innovators like Kandinsky and Paolozzi produced. It was a million miles from the Barcelona that I found myself in in 1977.
The Barcelona that we moved to in the 1970s was redefining itself following the recent death of the Fascist leader Generalisimo Francisco Franco and the resurrection of democracy. It was disjointed and fragmented, but intensely beautiful in the same way that something broken but ancient never quite loses its allure. It was rediscovering itself and finding its feet in a new world where Catalan autonomy seemed like a real possibility for the first time since long before the Spanish Civil War. I adored the place, probably because as a teenage expat I was just as fragmented and disjointed as the city itself, and fitted right in with the sense fearful optimism that permeated the place. As one of many teenage expats faced with a panoply of strange cultural symbols and unfamiliar visual and linguistic concepts, I had the knack of picking out anchors in unfamiliar environments. Gaudi was one of mine, not because he was a famous architect but because I fell in love with that gate the first day we moved into Avenida de La Victoria.
I only returned to Barcelona once after we left Spain, and that was shortly after the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. It was no longer the chaos of a city that was plunging into the future with no real sense of direction, pulling and pushing in all possible directions at once whilst bearing the visible signs of decades of political repression. Road names that had been given Francoesque labels were now changed back to their original names and everything was now labeled in Catalan. Avenida de la Victoria (Avenue of the Victory - of Spanish Fascism) had been Avenida Pedralbes before the Spanish Civil War, and was now Avinguda Pedralbes. Barcelona was smart, glossy and in charge of itself. In the 70s it had been the ultimate chiaroscuro, with darkness and light dominating and competing, with a simultaneous myriad of cultural colours and shapes shifting constantly along a fluctuating, pulsing continuum between the bright optimism for a new future and a dark history of imposed constraint. In 1994 it had found its feet, with new and explosive political experiments under way, it had developed a tourist industry, it sparkled with commercial and cultural confidence, and had eliminated its grubbier and down-trodden beach-front neighbourhoods, replacing them with the smart, the shiny and the expensive. As a family in the late 70s we had eaten in many of the restaurants on those rather battered beaches, little more than shacks serving stunning seafood, and we had loved them. In 1994 I understood why the change was necessary and I was so pleased for the people who were living in that thriving and positive city, for their achievements and their prosperity, but at the same time I am glad that I lived there when Barcelona was still full of ghosts, still finding its way after Franco had been and gone, and the recently established democracy was a brave new world.
Gaudi still dominates Barcelona, with the Sagrada Familia still under construction and his other buildings protected by the state. Joan Guardiola, who created the above picture of the wonderful Pavellons Güell gate was also an architect, producing stunning Art Deco creations that complement Gaudi's marvellous buildings and adding a richness to Barcelona that continue to draw visitors and to attract massive critical acclaim.
In his creation of the Pavellons Güell, Antoni Gaudí was heavily influenced by the Mudèjar Moorish architecture of southern Spain but be brought his own style to all his creations and is very difficult to pigeon hole. He has overlaps with Art Nouveau and Art Deco but his own work has a much freer organic feel to it that owes more to surrealism and a close observation of natural forms than to the far more formal styles with which it is usually associated. Gaudí was run over by a tram and died in 1926, just before his 74th birthday. A massive loss of a richness and imagination of the sort that innovators like Kandinsky and Paolozzi produced. It was a million miles from the Barcelona that I found myself in in 1977.
The Barcelona that we moved to in the 1970s was redefining itself following the recent death of the Fascist leader Generalisimo Francisco Franco and the resurrection of democracy. It was disjointed and fragmented, but intensely beautiful in the same way that something broken but ancient never quite loses its allure. It was rediscovering itself and finding its feet in a new world where Catalan autonomy seemed like a real possibility for the first time since long before the Spanish Civil War. I adored the place, probably because as a teenage expat I was just as fragmented and disjointed as the city itself, and fitted right in with the sense fearful optimism that permeated the place. As one of many teenage expats faced with a panoply of strange cultural symbols and unfamiliar visual and linguistic concepts, I had the knack of picking out anchors in unfamiliar environments. Gaudi was one of mine, not because he was a famous architect but because I fell in love with that gate the first day we moved into Avenida de La Victoria.
I only returned to Barcelona once after we left Spain, and that was shortly after the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. It was no longer the chaos of a city that was plunging into the future with no real sense of direction, pulling and pushing in all possible directions at once whilst bearing the visible signs of decades of political repression. Road names that had been given Francoesque labels were now changed back to their original names and everything was now labeled in Catalan. Avenida de la Victoria (Avenue of the Victory - of Spanish Fascism) had been Avenida Pedralbes before the Spanish Civil War, and was now Avinguda Pedralbes. Barcelona was smart, glossy and in charge of itself. In the 70s it had been the ultimate chiaroscuro, with darkness and light dominating and competing, with a simultaneous myriad of cultural colours and shapes shifting constantly along a fluctuating, pulsing continuum between the bright optimism for a new future and a dark history of imposed constraint. In 1994 it had found its feet, with new and explosive political experiments under way, it had developed a tourist industry, it sparkled with commercial and cultural confidence, and had eliminated its grubbier and down-trodden beach-front neighbourhoods, replacing them with the smart, the shiny and the expensive. As a family in the late 70s we had eaten in many of the restaurants on those rather battered beaches, little more than shacks serving stunning seafood, and we had loved them. In 1994 I understood why the change was necessary and I was so pleased for the people who were living in that thriving and positive city, for their achievements and their prosperity, but at the same time I am glad that I lived there when Barcelona was still full of ghosts, still finding its way after Franco had been and gone, and the recently established democracy was a brave new world.
Gaudi still dominates Barcelona, with the Sagrada Familia still under construction and his other buildings protected by the state. Joan Guardiola, who created the above picture of the wonderful Pavellons Güell gate was also an architect, producing stunning Art Deco creations that complement Gaudi's marvellous buildings and adding a richness to Barcelona that continue to draw visitors and to attract massive critical acclaim.
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