There is something of Occitan resonance in that sonorous name, Puig de l'Áliga or Cerro del Águila, with what used to be called the highest peak of that mountain range of Collserola, whose current name, Tibidabo, remembers - or so many believe - , to that other place in the Holy Land where the Devil - possibly the same fatigued and melancholic with long taciturn hours described by Apollinaire, and possibly also inspired by Goethe's Mephistopheles - failed in his pretensions to tempt Christ.
Of course the comparison, far from being free, comes to the hair to a place that, like that ‘sacromonte tentationis’, unfolds an immeasurable vision at its feet.
Perhaps for that reason, to ward off evil spirits, or perhaps, not to allow the volatile gods of the ancient cults to resurface again by threatening the Catholic, apostolic and Roman Lent, it was decided to raise at its peak, early of the twentieth century, another temple of modernist affiliation - his father was Enric Sagnier i Villavecchia - that on a smaller scale, but undoubtedly influenced by the nearby sketches of the not in vain qualified as an architect of God, Antoni Gaudí, and possibly looking sideways at the Heart of the anguish of the Parisian Montmartre, intended to affect also, in the remission of man through another Expiatory Temple: that of the Sacred Heart.
An expiatory temple that, like the expiatory temple par excellence, the Holy Family -possibly, in terms of annual visits and admiration, even more popular even if it is possible that of the Apostle- reminds us again, with all the luxury of symbols -the that has eyes, that observes the main cover - a great truth that the builders already knew throughout the History: of the cavern to the cathedral.
And as in many other high places on Jupiter, one at least significant presence: the Black Madonna. Of course, in this case, it could not be other than the Queen of Catalonia: Nª Sª de Montserrat.
Related movie:
NOTICE: originally posted on my blog MEMORIES OF A PILGRIM. Both the text, as the photographs, and the video (with the exception of music, reproduced under the license of YouTube), are my exclusive property. The original link can be found at the following address: https://jc347.blogspot.com/2015/04/tibidabo-el-sagrado-corazon.html
