Word: barcelona
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...critic in the early 1950s described his famous façades as "tortures of the imagination, fetuses in stone, bulbous obscenities." But today, many hail him as a genius, some are calling on the Pope to make him a saint, and more than two million people come to Barcelona each year to stare at his buildings, love them or hate them. With the 150th anniversary of his birth on June 25, the city of Barcelona and the Catalan and Spanish governments have proclaimed 2002 International Gaudí Year. More than 100 events are planned in homage. Already the Spanish press...
Born in 1852 and run over by a Barcelona tram 74 years later in 1926, Gaudí would probably be embarrassed by so much fuss. A vegetarian bachelor who washed in cold water and wore tattered suits, Gaudí avoided publicity. He left few personal papers, most of his architectural records were destroyed during the Civil War, and there are only a handful of black-and-white photos of him, which can't show the intense blue of his eyes. When not at building sites Gaudí spent much of his time kneeling in prayer. But he would probably have...
...coordinator of International Gaudí Year, Daniel Giralt-Miracle, says Catalans have had an uneasy relationship with the man they are now celebrating. "I think Barcelona has finally decided to have an entente cordiale with him," says Giralt-Miracle, who is director of the Gaudí Space, an area dedicated to the architect's works located in the vast attic of one of the best-known of them, the Casa Milà, in Barcelona's elegant Passeig de Gràcia. An example of this relationship is that Catalans unflatteringly dubbed the Casa Milà La Pedrera "the quarry...
International reaction to Gaudí has also been ambivalent. Architecture critic Nikolaus Pevsner ignored him altogether in the 1936 edition of his seminal Pioneers of Modern Design. It was only after 1962 that Gaudí was admitted to its pages. George Orwell, in Barcelona during the Civil War, was more explicit, calling the Sagrada Família "one of the most hideous buildings in the world...
Jamal grew up in Nablus, the son of a shopkeeper, but left after the 1967 war to study medicine in England. Not yet 18, he changed his mind - to his parents' displeasure - and headed for Barcelona. Survival and paying for his medical studies meant all sorts of jobs: distributing leaflets, playing semi-pro soccer, being a mafioso extra in a film about boxing. "One Christmas I was employed as one of the Three Kings, the black one," laughs Jamal over a coffee in the Ateneo, Barcelona's leading cultural forum. Jamal is now 50 and married to a Catalan...