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What was Antoni Gaudí like?

What was Antoni Gaudí like?

* The author is part of the community of readers of La Vanguardia.

…. And there were many voices that fervently spoke out against the completion of the work on the Cathedral of the Poor, like Dalí or Picasso himself, who said: "An unfinished work remains alive, dangerous ; a work, finished by posteriority, is a dead, murdered work".

On December 29, 1939, a few months after the end of that terrible fratricidal war, a group of architects met in the crypt of the Sagrada Família.

Their objective: to find out if the coffin still kept the body of the great architect in the tomb of the great Antoni Gaudí, or if the excesses of the war would have made it disappear. His countenances showed the tension of the moment and the priest's prayers resounded in the empty space.

The doors of the sacristy seemed mutilated, the images that framed them torn away, and the walls opened their skeleton, cracked by the flames that had blackened arches and ceilings.

Everything that was not reduced to ashes covered the floors, although at that time, anonymous hands were already beginning to rebuild the damage and some altars presented timid attempts to recover them.

They decide that one of them should go to the door and watch for the arrival of possible onlookers, because remembering Gaudí and his wishes for privacy, memory demands that, in such delicate moments, privacy be maximum.

They approach the edge of the niche to check if the body that appears behind the glass of the coffin is that of the teacher who 13 years earlier had accompanied him to his last resting place.

A bricklayer rubs the window with a cloth until it becomes transparent, and before those eyes a face appears. The remains of a beard, some hands.

The bust is recognizable, when illuminated by the bare bulb that hangs from a cord, although the visual examination misses the rosaries that wrapped the architect's hands after his death, when one of those present discovers a part of it, under the phalanges of a hand. A breath of relief.

It is evident that Gaudí has ​​rested in peace for the past 13 years, since his departure for the stars he knew so well"

The members of the group decide to validate the recognition, without opening the coffin, and they sign the legal documents, authenticating that it is really the architect who rests for eternity in the Carme chapel of the Sagrada Família crypt.

Reus or Riudoms?

On June 25, 1852, a man came into the world, the son of Francisco Gaudí and his wife Antonia Cornet, residing in Reus. His christening took place with unusual haste. It was the fifth child, as Antonia had previously lost 5-year-old María and 2-year-old Francisco in the space of 3 months.

The pregnancy had been difficult and to save the soul of the creature, she was taken in a hurry and with only a few hours to live, to the church of San Pedro Apóstolo.

Antoni Gaudí's baptismal documents leave no doubt as to where and when he was born. However, later, Gaudí maliciously left the doors open to doubt, implying that, in fact, he could have been born in his father's workshop, just beyond the limit of the municipality of Riudoms.

Since he was little, Antoni would visit the churches of Sant Pere and Sant Jaume, and surely he would hear the legends of Montserrat, although the little town Montroig also had its black Madonna, but nothing in Catalan life was as important as Montserrat, and ambition of every devout Catholic child was to undertake that ultimate pilgrimage.

Looking up from the Maspujols stream, the young Gaudí saw himself surrounded by church spiers and mountains; there, the light is of extraordinary clarity that brings distances closer and flattens the view, and that light, magical throughout the peninsula, would become the leitmotif of Gaudí's life.

In Reus, little Antoni attends school, but it is his father's workshop that is the place to marvel, as the young man is impressed by his father's ability to transform flat sheets of copper into shiny vessels, and it is in this workshop where he first learns to understand space, and to imagine in three dimensions.

As an architect, already mature, he would always recognize the importance of his father's creativity"

The school

In the academic year 1863-64, it appears for the first time in the records officers of the Instituto Colegio de las Escuelas Pias, as the Gaudí family had moved to Reus.

Antoni was not a precocious student and the only subject in which he excelled was geometry; he hated rote learning and nothing bored him as much as singing the ditty. Also, Reus was full of distractions.

The famous Monday market controlled virtually all of Spain's hazelnut trade, half of the Peninsula's almond production, and the flourishing sales of the textile and alcohol industries.

In 1862, the Banco de Reus was founded to help finance economic expansion and benefit from growth, and through the nearby ports of Salou and Tarragona, the city was in direct contact with the rest of Europe and the Americas.

What was Antoni Gaudí like?

Reus seemed like a microcosm of a larger world outside, and what Gaudí and his inseparables would remember most fondly were their adventures beyond the city limits. At the school they published an internal magazine -El Arlequín- of which Gaudí was the artistic editor and main illustrator.

The three inseparable friends

The Toda-Gaudí-Ribera trio had a multitude of Catalan heroes, and they imagined themselves aboard the 13th-century flagship of Jaume the Conqueror, setting out to conquer Mallorca to secure maritime routes to Catalonia.

The most exciting visit for the three friends was to Tarragona, full of Roman ruins, the amphitheatre, the covered market, the thermal baths, a circus, numerous temples and the only forum in Catalonia.

Gaudí must have understood, even then, what he was saying after many successful years: "Architecture reigns, moreover, in absolute silence".

The last year in Reus

1867-68 was Gaudí's last year in Reus. The young man spent a lot of time in his father's workshop from which he learned all the rudimentary techniques such as working with fire, beating copper and bending iron, that is, the grammar of crafts.

The future architect only completed three of the five required subjects, as he studied mathematics, Christian doctrine and the History of Reus, leaving Natural History and Elementary Physics for the Jaume Balmes Institute in Barcelona.

Later on, Gaudí would boast considerably about having been a bad student. Did that attitude hide an arrogant disdain, or was he truly below average? We know he was a mediocre student, but he gradually improved as his application improved, highlighting a key element of his personality: tenacity.

His first executed project (1877-1882) was a monumental fountain with cascades in the old park of Ciutadella in Barcelona"

Gaudí had grown up in a pious family environment, received a good religious education in the school of the Padres Esculapios, but, when he began to practice as an architect, earning a comfortable living, full of energy and dynamic, Gaudí allowed himself to be swayed by the joy of living and, dressed with impeccable elegance, loved comfort, delighted in horse riding , car rides, is a regular at the pleasant gatherings at the Lyceum, and is carefree in religious matters.

At the age of 31, in November 1883, Gaudí was put in contact with a deeply religious man, the devout bookseller from Calle Princesa and founder of the Associació Espiritual de Devots de Sant Josep, José Mª Bocabella i Verdaguer, whose The idea of ​​erecting a temple to the Sagrada Família in Barcelona had struck him on a trip to Rome.

He entrusted the project to the architect of the diocese, Francisco del Villar, but discrepancies soon arose and Villar withdrew from the commission that should have passed into the hands of Martorell, who, in turn, recommended his young assistant Gaudí.

He was delighted to discover that Bocabella was one of the few people left who wrote his private correspondence entirely in Catalan.

The Sagrada Família

Work on the crypt of the future Sagrada Família had already begun, but none of the columns had been placed, so that, for the moment, the young architect, with his appearance sporty and stylish, hat and gray coat, from his carriage, he took a look at the plans.

Aesthetically, Gaudí was in complete disagreement with what was projected by Villar, so Elías Rogent was appointed as arbitrator to pacify the controversy, in agreement with the new works director. Undoubtedly, having received such a commission made an impact on the young architect, and in the last years of his life he would say: "What more could an architect want than the commission to build a great temple?"

He considered his entry into that project as something providential"

And there was a profound change in his way of being, since his usual skepticism gradually turned into a deep faith, also influenced by devotion of Boca-bella.

It was a gradual change that was accentuated, since the majestic church that he initially planned to build, was increasingly influenced by his growing passion for faith, to gradually become the Cathedral of the Poor, as it is known, how many times the artist himself collected alms to cover the growing costs of his work.

Art and religion began to collaborate in him, towards a grandiose conception that would give him worldwide fame.

Gaudí and the women

Gaudí and the love that came... and left forever. His passionate temperament was not without the manifestations of a physical love, for in the optimistic illusions of his youth he dreamed of raising a family, though later these worldly illusions were discarded and sublimated by a love of virtue.

His love affairs did not last long, and not only did he not have romantic relationships, but he gradually acquired a firm reputation, among women, for being a misogynist.

According to the poet Joan Maragall, the architect explained to him that on a trip of his, made to visit cathedrals, he met a young woman he already knew from a friend's house; she was a foreigner, about to marry a young man who had to return from America; She was beautiful and very intelligent and he fell in love with her, but, of course, she was engaged and her boyfriend was far away... It would have been an act of little manliness.

She liked to chat with Gaudí, and one day they were about to talk about marriage, but her mother intervened and the next day they left forever. He knew it, but he didn't have the courage to go and say goodbye to her, even though he couldn't forget her for two or three years.

One day he decided to go see her in the city where she lived, but he did not dare to visit her, even knowing her family address; she just glimpsed from the window of her train car a female figure, dressed in white, so white that she made the sun pale and she leaned back on her seat, weeping bitterly.

Sunday lunch

César Martinell, a close collaborator of Gaudí, explains that one Sunday in December 1915, he visited him and found him eating at a small table, full of plans and papers, very clean and of great simplicity. He was eating raw vegetables, perhaps endive, made into a porridge that was more like a kind of gazpacho; he protected his shirt with a safety-pinned napkin, drank milk with lemon slices, and for dessert a baked apple and half an orange.

He himself helped himself to what little was on the table and that was the meal of the great architect on a Sunday.

He was talking about the days of his childhood and then he asked Martinell to accompany him on his way to the Church and began to comment on the ethnic differences between the people of the east and the interior of the Peninsula, and the influence that the sea for a hand, and the earth on the other, usually have about this phenomenon.

Those qualities, he said, were reflected in the architecture and the prayers, both so different in character.

It is possible to suspect that Gaudí's diet arose directly from the Jewish tradition, according to which it was convenient to have a half-empty stomach to make room for the Lord.

Gaudí was, after all, a Franciscan at heart, and food was an unnecessary interruption in the efficient functioning of the bodily motor for a day, sitting at the drawing board. Nothing more than lettuce, a splash of milk or olive oil, walnuts, a smooth stew of beetroot stalks, and honeyed bread were necessary to keep the body agitated, accompanied by unlimited water.

Imagination and intelligence

Gaudi had a prodigious imagination that allowed him not only to retain shapes with ease but also to see space without effort and capture the whole of what he contemplated.

His intelligence, nothing vulgar, gave him the extraordinary ability to always focus all his attention on a single object, he never lost the thread of the subject. Enthusiasm and vehemence, directed by his mind, gave her great tenacity, but his self-critical work made her proceed calmly and even slowly.

He said: "Art is made by man for man, and therefore it has to be rational". And he cursed the artistic currents of cubism and its schools that dehumanized art and abhorred the first attempts at abstract art, for its lack of plasticity.

The arrest of Gaudí

On September 11, 1924, Gaudí was going to attend the mass in honor of Saints Justo and Pastor, in memory of those who died in the siege of Barcelona in 1714 .

And the word spread that Gaudí had been arrested by the police, for having wanted to go to Mass that day and, indeed, as he himself explained later, the police had arrested him, and he spent 4 hours at the police station, of which he could have gotten away, paying 10 duros.

But he was arrested arbitrarily and violently, they insulted him in the most rude way, and they did not know how to react to the peaceful attitude of the architect.

And all to express himself in Catalan"

He vehemently and decisively demanded his rights, but to no avail. In a cell, behind thick bars, that 72-year-old man listened as some people who had come, outraged, informed the police who it was, but they did not flinch.

In a few hours, all of Barcelona and Catalonia knew that the architect of the Sagrada Familia had been arrested.

The newsrooms of the newspapers mobilized their reporters who went to the Plaza del Regomir to capture the moment of his release, but no, to everyone's surprise, Gaudí appeared at the door with the other detainee, to be transferred to the central police station of the Lonja, where everything was finally resolved.

Love for virtue

Gaudí and the love that came and went forever. His passionate temperament was not without the manifestations of a physical love, for in the optimistic illusions of his youth he dreamed of raising a family, though later these worldly illusions were discarded and sublimated by a love of virtue.

In the three facades of the Sagrada Família he glorified the three theological virtues, always giving preference to Charity, over Faith and Hope.

A tragic accident

On June 7, 1926, following his methodical daily life, Gaudí was going to work on one of the alabaster and metal lamps for the crypt of the Temple, but before to go through the chapel of Sant Felip Neri, for his daily nocturnal meditation, and then used to dine and sleep in the office of the Temple.

When he had not returned at the usual time, Father Parés telephoned the architect Sugrañes, fearing that he had been involved in an altercation with the police or that he had suffered an accident.

When he had not returned at ten at night either, the two set out, beginning their search at the Ronda San Pedro dispensary, where they were told that they had treated an elderly man, whose description coincided with Gaudí, because he had a prayer book in his pocket, and his underwear was pinned up. There were no doubts, it was the architect.

Gaudí had been run over by the tram on Calle de las Cortes Catalanes, where it crosses Calle Bailén. Nobody recognized him"

The famous architect was nothing more than an anonymous old man, who was looked at indifferently by some passers-by, except for one who served him. Several taxi drivers refused help – and who were later fined by the mayor- except for one who accompanied him to the dispensary.

His supposed transfer to the Hospital Clínic did not turn out to be true, and they finally found him in the Hospital de la Santa Cruz, that hospital about which he had said "they care for the sick for the love of God, not out of obligations towards the family or in exchange for money".

He appeared registered as Antonio Sandí, and was found in a state of semi-unconsciousness in the Trauma Room; he was transferred to an immaculate section, for special patients, where he spent the last three days of his life, in a tiny room, on an iron bed, a night table, a chair and a pious painting on the wall .

And there he woke up: "Jesús, Déu meu", were the only words he was pronouncing sporadically, although he did not speak to anyone.

The next day, already conscious, he requested the last aid, which he received with religious fervor, and seemed to be lucid, until he was in agony, although at no time did he not speak.

The highest dignitaries of the Church, Architecture, Medicine, Politics and the Press, students, vicars, friends and enemies, all came, incredulous and dismayed. And thousands of voices sang David's psalms in a massive funeral procession that accompanied him on his last trip, from the Hospital de la Santa Cruz, throughout the city, to the Sagrada Família.

In the temple, the Orfeó Català raised their songs in the Cathedral of the Poor, paying the last tribute to the great architect who had gone forever.

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German, born after World War II in the German Democratic Republic. She has written the award-winning book about those years, the harder the peace will be. She has been a translator from Spanish and German. After retiring, he graduated in History at the University of Barcelona, ​​with an Extraordinary Degree Award. He currently lives in Sitges and writes for L'ECO de Sitges, as well as for the website wazawaza.info.

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