It is not only one of the most amazing and mediatic places of the monumental historical-artistic complex of an extraordinary city, such as Barcelona, but also of a place of the Spirit of the first order.
Its extraordinary disposition, its incipient tellurism, and the detail that nothing is left to chance, but, on the contrary, in its design was taken into account one of the most perfect connections with the natural environment on which it sits - part fundamental in Gaudí's thinking- make this immeasurable work of the brilliant Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí i Cornet, one of the most attractive and spiritual places not only of Catalonia and the Iberian Peninsula in particular, but of the world in general.
It is not surprising, in this sense, that there are authors who, even exposing their theories in works of fiction (1), observe certain similarities with the ancient oriental architectural arts, used mostly by Chinese and Japanese millennia ago, where the fundamental concept of Harmony - remember, that this concept was also part of the fundamental foundations of the Romanesque and Gothic architecture of the Western Middle Ages - balanced the fragile scales between two very unique phenomena that should not be, in any way, antagonistic: Architecture and Environment .
The remarkable thing is that, with or without knowledge of these ancient techniques and arts, Gaudí, however daring, proposed, in the arrangement and characteristics of this immeasurable place, a symbolically rebellious break, if not revolutionary, that attacked with his philosophy of return to nature and respect for the environment - outside commissioned by the wealthy classes of the time, but laying, after all, the pillars, at least, of environmentalism - the frameworks of a world that was struggling in the wounds opened by an industrial revolution that caused on Earth the same heartbreaking wounds that the medieval romances of the Grail cycle attributed to Amfortas, the Fisher King.
Sensations of a Walker
Park Güell, Barcelona: August 2014
Notes:
(1) Esteban Martín and Andreu Carranza: 'La clave Gaudí', Editorial Plaza & Janés, S.A., Barcelona, 2007.
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NOTICE: originally posted on my blog MEMORIES OF A PILGRIM. Both the text, as the photographs, and the video (except music, reproduced under a YouTube license), are my exclusive intellectual property. The original entry can be found at the following address: https://jc347.blogspot.com/2015/03/el-park-guell_13.html
