Architecture in Spain

I am made uneasy by Gaudi and it´s mostly not an aesthetic uneasiness, although the times when I am aesthetically impressed by Gaudi are also kind of few, with the exception of La Sagrada Familia. People always tell me how great Gaudi is, but how great can he be, as an ARCHITECT, if none of his creations (that I have seen) are actually in use, or even POTENTIALLY USEFUL for the people of Barcelona. People seem to like him, and other people seem to think his buildings, although not quite beautiful, are artistic, maybe, or important, perhaps, because part of the modernist movement-style. To me they mostly just seem badly designed and impractical, and why should I care about a guy who made buildings for rich people and organised religion? Park Guell, which we visited today, was okay aesthetically, in a sort of adventure playground kind of way, but Gaudi had designed all of these spectacular pathways that didn´t at all follow people´s desirelines, and hence nobody was actually using AS PATHWAYS. Tourists obviously find a use for Park Guell, but it´s not the kind of park (like the ones all over Paris for instance) that people actually go to sit and be. There are too many tourists to start with, but also it is not located anywhere most people (I would reckon) would want to go, and all the places to potentially sit and be are a good walk from the entrance. e.g. we ate our lunch soon after arriving and had it sitting on v. uncomfortable ¨mosaiced rocks¨. Some picnic. Overall, the place was kitsch.

Which brings me to La Sagrada Familia, which, well beyond kitsch, is like a farcical joke played on Spain by modernism via the old church. It's beautiful in its execution, but the whole concept of building a cathedral of this scale, a physical monument to religious worship, NOW, I find quite repellent. I can go to the Cathedral of Notre Dame and appreciate it physically with an awareness of feudalism and societies that were structured in ways that allowed buildings like these to be created in spite of widespread poverty, possibly over centuries. But then I am supposed to go and see a building being made now, and I am supposed to admire the ambitiousness of the project and its religious symbolism and its inspiration by natural forms, and I can take some nice photos and go away and not think about where it is coming from.

But I want to know, what were his politics, what are the politics? Has Gaudi become a symbol of nationalist pride or just a historical symbol of international art nouveau style? WAS HE SERIOUS? Will La Sagrada Familia ever be used as a cathedral? Should it be? All things the tri lingual museums don´t bother to explain. Art/architecture is never without politics here (if not everywhere) and I feel it should be discussed. In the civil war La Sagrada Familia was vandalised - by who and why?

I may be being unfair, I do recognise Gaudi´s approach to architecture is more artistic, more creative, and less functional than most architects, but I still think even if architecture is beautiful it should also be functional, and by that I do mean as more than just a tourist attraction. And I do think there are other architects, such as Hundertwasser, who achieve this with greater success than Gaudi.

Some pretty photographs, augmented by construction dust, are soon to follow.