Category: Barcelona

Parc del Laberint d’Horta

Exactly two years ago, staying with Team Catalonia, I took myself off to Parc del Labirint d’Horta in the outskirts of Barcelona, and wrote about it here. I remember a balmy day, even though it was November, with tree-lined avenues casting shadows before me as I walked.

Oh, and there was a maze too. But I wrote about it in that post I’ve just mentioned.

For Becky’s NovemberShadows.

PS. I’ve just had a birthday card from WordPress. I’ve been blogging for sixteen years! Apparently. Thanks to all of you who’ve been ‘blogging pals’ for much of that time. You’re the ones who make it all such fun.

Tick-Tock

This week, it’s my turn to host Leanne’s Monochrome Madness. I decided on Clocks and Timepieces. Easy, I thought. Well, up to a point. There are plenty of clocks in towns, in stations, on churches and on public buildings. But too often they’re bit samey-samey. So I’m starting with one that we came upon by chance on our last day in Alsace, in Munster’s Catholic Church. It’s a modern Horloge de la Création, installed at the behest of André Voegele from Strasbourg, who has made it his ambition to install unusual timepieces. This one is interesting alright. It tells the time: hour by hour, minute by minute. But it also counts the years down, month by month; the days of the week; and the phases of the moon. It’s topped by a splendid cockerel, whom I chopped off a bit in my header photo. So here he is. I’m sure he’s a reliable alarm clock. Cocks usually are.

As to the rest. I have an indifferent photo of a clock that hasn’t functioned since 2007 – the Swiss Glockenspiel Clock in London; a clock outside St. Pancras Station; one from a station waiting room in Keighley; an intriguing one spotted outside an apartment block in Barcelona; the centrepiece of Thirsk’s Market Square; and a clock which is not a clock, but helps to govern the workings of the one high up outside Masham’s Parish Church. Now. Can you tell which is which?

And finally. A clock which is a shadow of its former self. This alarm clock sat in a hedge on a country road which I often passed during Daily Exercise in Lockdown. It stayed there for months after Normal Sevice had been resumed. It was always 8 o’clock. Then one day it disappeared. Life has not been the same since. I offer it to Becky for NovemberShadows.

The lonely alarm clock of Musterfield. Tells the correct time twice daily, but the alarm never rings.

Street lights in Spain

For this week’s Monochrome Madness, This week’s host Brian of Bushboy’s World has asked us to consider Street lights. I assembled a clutch of them, and realised that they all come from Spain.

The featured photo was taken one evening near our hotel in Seville. This next batch all come from Cádiz.

… and one of them is merely a shadow of a streetlight.

Off to Málaga now, just after Christmas.

Another one from Seville …

And the city I know best, Barcelona? Well, not a single night time shot. Instead, here are two taken in broad daylight.

Near the Arc de Triomf
Near the Cosmo Caixa Museum.

I’m away for a few days, so this post, and the next few are scheduled. So – sorry – I may be slow in commenting, and even slower at reading your posts.

Chairs in the Service of Art

Chairs. That’s what Brian of Bushboy’s World fame, and host this week of Leanne’s Monochrome Madness wants us to get our cameras out for. And I’ve decided to show Chairs in the Service of Art

My first clutch of photos all come from Spain. A day out in Logroño, la Rioja, yielded some street sculpture featuring chairs and those who sit in them, whether alive or sculpted.

More recently, in Barcelona, I visited of of its newer museums, Museu de l’Art Prohibit – the Musem of Censored Art. It covers political, religious and sexual themes, and is not for the faint-hearted, but I found it fascinating and enlightening.

The first image here was exhibited at the Pamplona Festival in 1972 – a brave thing to do, as Spain was still in the grip of Franco’s dictatorship. This depicts one of Franco’s secret policemen.

The second is by the South Korean artists Kim Eun-Sung & Kim Seo-Kyung, and shows a Girl of Peace. It was exhibited as part of the Aichi Triennale 2019 in Japan, and received threats of attack for being anti-Japanese propaganda. The exhibition was closed but reactions against its censorship forced it to be reopened. This artwork has caused various diplomatic incidents between Japan and South Korea. For its creators, it is an icon of peace. There’s another view of it as my featured photo.

My final Spanish shot is of a chair (and the kitchen stove?) painted on a garage door in a back street in Seville.

Back in the UK, to visit Harewood House near Leeds, and show an image of a chair constructed by the Galvin Brothers specifically for the house’s Yellow Drawing Room – a place to sit, talk, reflect, share, remember. Created at the time of the death of Elizabeth II, this chair was intended as a sober reflection on her reign. Its design, featuring maturing crops as part of the backrest, references the transient and intangible.

Lastly, I’ll take you to Edinburgh, to the National Museum of Scotland. This is where we saw this chair. An astonishing chair. It began its life as a simple willow tree, but was obliged to convolute itself as it grew into the form of a chair by Gavin Munro. Do have a look at his website.

Well, this hasty tour has turned up quite a few different chairs. It’s perhaps the simplest ones that convey the most potent messages.

A Bold Building in Barcelona

Anyone and everyone who visits Barcelona has a trip to La Sagrada Familia as a ‘must see’. They come because for almost a hundred years, since he was first involved, Antoni Gaudí’s bold vision of a church has been in the news as a source of controversy. We’ve all heard of it.

For a start it wasn’t commissioned by the diocese, as was usual when a new church was required. Instead, an association founded by a local bookseller wanted it built, and Gaudí wasn’t even their original choice of achitect. Work on the church began in 1882, but Gaudí wasn’t officially involved until 1914. Gaudí himself died in 1926, when the project was barely a quarter complete, and since then, many architects have been involved. Is the building that may be finished next year even reflecting Gaudí’s original vision?

Funds to build it relied and rely on donations from the public. The Spanish Civil War got in the way. In July 1936, anarchists from the FAI set fire to the crypt and broke their way into the workshop, partially destroying Gaudí’s original plans. Later, Covid 19 got in the way. The foundation that manages the finances neither publishes accounts nor pays taxes.

You won’t have to go far in Barcelona to find citizens who are no friends of La Sagrada Familia. They speak of how over-tourism round the church has lowered the local quality of life, and impacted negatively on other tourist sites. They find it ugly, and moving ever further from Gaudí’s original vision. One of the later additions to the plan, to build a stairway which will involve the demolition of local housing has generated a row which I think still isn’t resolved.

One was or another, I think it’s fair to say that La Sagrada Familia, by its sheer size and complexity, is an audacious bit of planning. Its impact on the city skyline is definitely bold.

If you haven’t yet been, and want to do so, plan well beforehand. Book ahead. It’s a bold and undaunted tourist, or a foolish one, who turns up at the gates and expects to get straight in. Once in, you’ll be shepherded around a prescribed route, and not at your own pace.

Whatever you think of the church, I think these builders, scrambling up unfeasibly high walls and towers are pretty bold.

Look how high up some of them have to work.

Here’s a miscellany of shots from the interior of the building.

And the exterior.

The featured photo is my most recent, taken in January from the Mercat dels Encants, some distance away. As you can see, quite a lot of recent additions have been made since the exterior shots shown above were taken .

What to visit instead? Be intrepid! Make your way (and it’s not that easy) to Colonia Güell, outside town, and visit Gaudí’s incomplete (but bold) church there, the one he expected to make his Magnum Opus until the funding stopped, and the Sagrada Familia presented itself as an opportunity. You can read about it here. You mght be able to tell where my sympathies lie.

For Sofia’s Lens-Artists Challenge #337: Bold

Geometry in Museu Blau

Our last day in Catalonia. Malcolm and I took ourselves off to the Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona, commonly known as the Museu Blau. It’s in a really new part of town, Diagonal Mar. As the name suggests, it’s a thoughly geometric sort of area. Look.

And many of the museum’s contents are pretty geometric too. These fossils for instance …

… or shells …

… or butterflies & moths …

… or arachnids.

It’s a pretty fine museum. In an interesting area. And not on the tourist circuit. Yet. Recommended.

GeometricJanuary

Geometry at the Hospital Sant Pau

One of my favourite building complexes in the whole world is that of the original Hospital Sant Pau in Barcelona. It sits alongside its more modern successor, a centre of excellence for modern medicine. In its day, when it was first built in the early years of the twentieth century, before the days of the kind of universal health services we now take for granted, it was a wonder. It cared for all comers, and recognised that part of any treatment was access to beautiful spaces, to fresh air and access to nature. And it shows.

I’ve written about it here, and here. So let’s just look at some of its wonders as part of GeometricJanuary.

Geometry in a Sunset

I am looking for an excuse to share images of yesterday evening’s sunset, down on the beach at Premià. And I found it in the views of Barcelona, some 20 km away. Its skyline features suitably geometric buildings, so here’s my square for today.

And here are a few more – unsquared – views, so I can share them with Hammad, of Weekend Sky fame.

It’s not often that we’re down on the beach in January, as the sun is setting. We should do it more often.

GeometricJanuary

Geometry at Glòries 

Yesterday, returning from Ciutadella Park on the tram, we broke our journey at Glòries. This is an area that is being re-invented and opened up to the pedestrian in a big way, though it IS a work in progress. Here’s where you come for the huge flea market that is Mercat dels Encants (The Market of Charms), which is indeed an astonishing place to visit. Hundreds of stalls selling cheap clothing, fabrics, electrical goods, and the fag-end of a thousand house clearances and jumble sales have been re-homed into an astonishing building, the underside of whose roof has been plated with thousands of rectangular mirrors reflecting the teeming activity going on underneath.

Here’s the actual scene:

The roof also reflects the building and excavating and walkway-making going on below.

Or your eyes can look further, and see the distant Sagrada Familia …

… or the much nearer Torre Glòries, which we really need to climb one day to see the views.

An engaging way to spend an hour or two, and once the work on the area has been completed, it’ll be a wonderful addition to the Barcelona experience.

GeometricJanuary.