Jan and Len's Sojourn in Spain:
Barcelona's Sagrada Familia
September 2007

Originally Len and I planned a grand two-week sweep across northern Spain, visiting Santiago de
Compostela, the third most popular pilgrimage during the Middle Ages after Bethlehem and Rome, and
several other cathedrals and sights between there and Barcelona. However, we belatedly realized that we
would be driving frantically from high point to high point for all of our time there, as Spain is really quite
large. Friends recommended Barcelona as a very special place, and I had long longed to see The Temple
of the Sagrada Familia. We changed our reservations to Madrid to go on to Barcelona--NEVER change your
reservations on Iberia Airlines!!!---and spent a week touring the city. Then we rented a car for a week,
tootling around Catalonia, Andorra, France, and the Costa Brava. More about that later.

Although there's much to see and do, the main attraction for us was Sagrada Familia. It was begun by the
architect Francisco del Villar in 1882, who planned a typical Gothic structure and began work on the crypt.
But only a year later, the upstart 31-year-old Antonio Gaudi replaced him and changed the plans to create a
soaring spaceship like no other cathedral on Earth. And this was 1883, mind you! Unfortunately, Gaudi was
run over by a tram as he was leaving the building site forty-three years later, but his work goes on. (Maybe
someone REALLY didn't like his cathedral!)
First I want to show you the inside of the cathedral, as it is unparalleled in my
experience. It is weirdly beautiful, and very powerful. It is here that the
"spaceship" really gets otherworldly. Photos are mine except where indicated.
Below: Looking straight up at the vaulting (ceiling)
of the nave. The orange scaffold shows that it's
still a work in progress.
Sagrada Familia is unfinished. These strange columns
symbolize a forest, with the egg-like shapes being
knots in the trees, and the jagged edges of the
structures above representing the trees' canopies.
Photo above is from The Temple of the Sagrada Familia
by Josep Maria Carandell; photo by Pere Vivas.
Above: The cathedral at Amiens, France, is
characteristic of the Gothic style: tall columns
decorated with capitals and topped by pointed arches,
with vaulting (ceilings) that come to arched
intersections, and high windows that let in lots of light.
Photo is from a guidebook.
An 1883 forebear of Darth Vader.
Temple de la Sagrada Familia
Architect: Antonio Gaudi
Barcelona
The plan for Sagrada Familia's central nave, as
shown in The Temple of the Sagrada Familia by
Josep Maria Carandell.