Barcelona

at Christmas

By David Luttrell

January 3^rd, 2016

It’s been 10 years since my globe-trotting wife convinced the family that the traditional Christmas at home needed to be abandoned for a more adventurous Holiday. It was the perfect time with the youngest of 3 in his last year of high school and jobs secure. No presents this year just a great trip. Plans were charted out, an apartment a block off the Ramblas was rented for a week, pre Air BnB, and transport was secured. We arrived a bit tired and a bit disoriented, enough so that we were easy prey for Barcelona’s talented pickpockets. With help from friends at home and new ones made at an Irish pub, that initial hurdle was overcome and we settled into the unique city.

Food of all kinds can be found a couple of blocks away at La Boqueria Market. Anything you can think of for the carnivore and fresh produce that had traveled less of a distance than what we were used to at this time of year.

Views from our top floor apartment’s rooftop garden, five floors above Placa de Joaquim Xirau and Flaherty’s Irish Pub.

The weather was pleasant for December. Seasonal but not too cold.

We came to relax, recharge, explore and reconnect with each other. Very unstructured to a point and it was an easy enough of a city to get around in that the 5 of us could stick together or go our separate ways and explore.

Write your story here. (Optional)

Antoni Gaudi

A must stop is at Antoni Gaudi’s Casa Batllo. Arguably Barcelona’s most famous architect, Gaudi’s work most are familiar with is his famous unfinished church, Sagrada Familia. Textile industrialist Batllo commissioned Gaudi to design a residence that would rival any of his relatives’ abodes. Construction was complete on Gaudi’s daring plan in 1906 after 2 years of construction. The Batllo’s lived on the Noble floor until the mid-1950’s.

Write your story here. (Optional)

Sagrada Familia

The Expiatory Church of the Holy Family is without a doubt one of the most ambitious projects an architect could undertake in a lifetime even if that life was cut while traveling to said project. Gaudi began work on the church in 1883. Complex cannot even begin to describe his vision. Its final concept was to include “the construction of a church with 5 naves, a transept, an apse, an exterior ambulatory, 3 facades and 18 towers.” In 1926 after spending 43 years on the Sagrada Familia he was struck by a tram on the way to the project. Unconscious and without any identity papers, the architect died a few days later at the Santa Cruz Hospital. Ironically the Priest of the Sagrada Familia recognized Gaudi before his passing and Gaudi was buried in the church that was so much a part of his life.

The church is expected to be completed in 2026, 100 years after his death.

From the Arc de Triomf to the Port of Barcelona’s Maritime Club there are dozens of small shops, narrow streets and alleyways to explore.

Write your story here. (Optional)

Basilica at Montserrat

An hour or so by train is Montserrat. Home to a Gothic Basilica, a Monastery and a repository for the statue of the Black Madonna. The Church dates to the 16th century but was heavily damaged during Napolean‘s war and was not reconstructed until the end of the 19th century. Even though the mountain has been of religious significance before the time of Christ, by the Romans worshiping Venus, it did not become a monastery until 1025. The Black Madonna was believed to be carved in Jerusalem in the early days of the Church. It was moved to Montserrat in 718 and the Benedictine monks built the monastery abound the statue. The Virgin of Montserrat was declared the Patron Saint of the Diocese of Catalonia by Leo XIII. The statue has always been one of the most celebrated images in Spain. A historian wrote: “In all ages the sinful, the suffering, the sorrowful, have laid their woes at the feet of Our Lady of Montserrat, and none have ever gone away unheard or unaided.”