Una obra maestra de construcci�n

Right, you bastards.

As has been pointed out in the comments of my last piece, I've started to stray not only beyond the boundaries of Barcelona but actually to universal European truths. And ones that you all know anyway. Thank you, my beloved audience, for reigning me in. I think it was Plato who summed it up best when he muttered "ingrates" and pissed off down the pub for a swift hemlock and coke.

So, while I still have you, my last remaining reader (who has almost certainly arrived here erroneously by typing 'TOM BERENGER' into Google), I shall play my trump card and present a Barcablog exclusive.

It turns out that a certain odd local architect and religious nut, to be identified only as AG, has previously been accused of Islamic influences. Worse still, detailed schematics have been uncovered in his papers relating to tall buildings on the site of the World Trade Center. He even has a criminal recording, having been arrested age 73, for shouting Catalan swearwords at a policeman who was stopping him going to mass (during one of those periods where the language was banned by Madrid for being too weird).

As a precaution, the US government seamlessly replaced AG's 80-year-old priest with an FBI agent called Johnny, in order to find out more. The following is taken from a taped conversation that took place in the confession box. It contains a really, really bad pun. Sorry about that, it’s been a long week.

(all facts have been shamelessly cribbed from Gijs Van Hensbergen's excellent book. Sorry Gijs.)

AG: Are you there God? It's me, Antoni.

Priest: I repeat, Gaud� has entered the box.

AG: I beg your pardon?

Priest: It's... a new Hail Mary from the Pope. Highly classified. For octogenarian priests only. But enough about religion - what's on your mind?

AG: Bless me Father, for I have sinned.

Priest: Tell me more.

AG: The others have been accusing me of being strange and I have had bad thoughts about them.

Priest: What do you mean?

AG: People mock me for being vegetarian. And for being celibate, ever since a young foreign sweetheart broke my heart.

Priest: That all sounds perfectly...

AG: And for only eating raisins or lettuce leaves dipped in milk. And for having underpants held together with safety pins. And for wearing home-made shoes made of grass.

Priest: I beg your pardon?

AG: I started doing all that after the fast I did that nearly killed me. I still say I could have made it through the whole 40 days if it wasn't for those meddling kids. I mean, yes, I was critically ill and hallucinating, but in a good way, you know?

And my designs... some people don't seem to like them. They find them a bit strange just because I make window frames look like bones and turn chimneys into enormous fat crucifixes. And then that man broke down in tears when he brought me the precious vase he had carefully carried halfway across the country.

Priest: That's not your fault, surely.

AG: Well, he wasn't crying until I thanked him and then smashed it to pieces with a hammer. I explained that it was for the tile fragments on a giant lizard I was building in a park, but he didn't seem to understand. That's probably because he wasn't Catalan.

Priest: You like the Catalans, then?

AG: Only to the point that I believe we're the greatest people on earth and we think in a way that the rest of the world can't comprehend. Oh and Jesus came here once. And our light is better than any other light anywhere. And we have the perfect climate. And the purest language. And the most inspiring literature. And...

Priest: I think I get the idea.

AG: People say that I haven't seen enough of the world to make a value judgement, but they're wrong. I even went abroad once. On a train. All the way to the south of France, to go and see some ruins.

Priest: And?

AG: It wasn't as good as Catalonia. I won't be making that mistake again. But now even people on my own building site think I'm a bit weird.

Priest: At that wacky new church you're working on?

AG: That's the one. I was just saying the other day to a doctor, as I watched him perform an autopsy on a dead pregnant woman, I said "what's so unusual about chloroforming a chicken, greasing it up and then casting it in plaster before it wakes up?" And yet some people accuse me of being odd. Still, at least that local goatherder likes me. I found him while I was hunting.

Priest: What do you hunt?

AG: People of course. I scour the countryside looking for them and then I take them to my room, x-ray them, photograph them and finally cover them totally in plaster. Not all of them lose consciousness but I understand it can get quite hot in there.

Priest: Are you getting this, boys?

AG: Pardon?

Priest: Just talking to the archangels. What do you do with them after that?

AG: I use them for my sculptures. I have to find the perfect Jesus, the perfect Pontius, the perfect donkey, Christmas tree, goose and so on for my work. The goatherder I made into Judas. Of course I can only find all of these in Catalonia. Did I mention that we're God's chosen people? Originality means going back to your origins, that's what I always say. In fact, I say it about twice a day - I'm hoping that one day someone will sell that on fake leather bookmarks and naff overpriced souvenirs.

Priest: I think that's a given.

AG: I'm very proud of how the church is going, though others don't seem to like it. I mean, I've always hated Picasso (and him me actually) so his words I can ignore but some foreign upstart called George Orwell has been unnecessarily vicious. He called my cathedral "one of the most hideous buildings in the world." He also said that "the anarchists showed bad taste in not blowing it up when they had the chance." If I catch up with that boy, I'll give him something to homage.

I'm also worried, Father. I mean, the whole of Barcelona right now views me as a joke. They laugh at my buildings, they call me over-rated and over-priced, the authorities hate me, I struggle to get commissions and I've become viewed more as a freak than an artist. Do you think that the city will forget me?

Priest: I wouldn't worry about that. After all, history tells us that all good tourist attractions are never appreciated in their lifetime. It's only when you're dead that a city can say that they loved you, start producing merchandise and milk you night and day like a jewel-filled udder.

AG: I suppose you're right. Still, I can't sit around here confessing all day. I've promised everyone that this cathedral will be ready in a year or two - shouldn't be a problem. Unfortunately, it's a half hour walk from here; I sometimes flag down one of Virgin M's taxis, but today I just can't be bothered to hail Mary.

Priest: Tell you what - just this once, why don't you take the tram?

I could go on. Don't worry, I won't. Van Hensbergen's book includes this paragraph (p.264):

"We should never try to finish the Sagrada Fam�lia, otherwise we undo the web of power that is elaborately woven into this mysterious religious spell. It is a monstrous vanity to attempt to complete the temple too soon. The timing is all. 'A finished work is a dead work, killed,' Picasso warned. If Gaud�'s Sagrada Fam�lia is for some reason finished before Judgement Day then somewhere someone will have to start all over again. It is a measure of our capacity for faith whether anyone will ever rise to Gaud�'s heritage."

There's certainly something cap-doffingly majestic about the dozens of artists who devote most of their lives to realising a vision they know they will never see (there's a section of the museum there dedicated to many). The towers so far finished are about half the height of the eventual central spire (170m). Begun in 1882, current estimates put the finishing date of Gaud�'s cathedral at around 2048. Yeah, right.

Posted by Andrew Losowsky at March 2, 2003 04:03 PM | TrackBack