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A personal weblog with photographs and comments. Quiet ramblings, quite rambling...
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Spain
Spain
Or, more appropriately in this case, ¡Adiós!.
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A short video that I put together from my last trip to Barcelona.
Link: Barcelona Timelapse from bigbluemeanie on Vimeo.
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I thought I would post this picture of Torre Agbar to show how it looks quite different in different light, and when not lit up.
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At Barcalona last weekend. You can get a ferry from here to Tangier in Northern Morrocco. The journey time is over 24 hours.
Wikipedia informs me that Tangier was an “English town” from 1662,
when it was given to Charles II of England as part of the dowry from the Portuguese Infanta Catherine of Braganza, becoming English Tangier. The English gave the city a garrison and a charter which made it equal to English towns. The English planned to improve the harbour by building a mole. With an improved harbour the town would have played the same role that Gibraltar later played in British naval strategy. The mole cost £340,000 and reached 1,436 feet long, before being blown up during the evacuation.
The term “mole” in this context refers to a breakwater, such as that in the foreground of my photograph of Barcelona, above.
I find the uncritical (almost comically positive) account of English colonialism in Wikipedia somewhat disturbing. It is done by focus on “facts”, in which England was given the colony, and therefore doesn’t examine the context and what England was doing in the Meditteranean (or elsewhere) at that time. It mentions “planned improvements” without examining what the purpose was, or what would have been “improved”, or for whom. It claims that the occupying garrison and charter made it “equal” to English towns, but “equal” in what repect? What were the contents of this charter and whom did it benefit: the local population, or the English settlers and traders, and of course their king? Who were the Tangierines and what was English rule really like for them? You won’t find any of the answers on Wiki.
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The Mediterranean Sea at Barcelona on Sunday.
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And then the sun set on Torre Agbar, and it was covered in blue and red light.
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The view from my “bedroom” this evening.
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This building might not have been apparent in some of my earlier photos of Torre Agbal, so I thought I would post this one taken with my zoom lens. It shows more clearly the Basilica and Expiatory Church of the Holy Family in Barcelona, at sunset. According to Wikipedia this building is a:
Roman Catholic church in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, designed by Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí (1852–1926). Although incomplete, the church is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and in November 2010 was consecrated and proclaimed a minor basilica by Pope Benedict XVI.
Though construction of Sagrada Família had commenced in 1882, Gaudí became involved in 1883, taking over the project and transforming the project with his architectural and engineering style—combining Gothic and curvilinear, Art Nouveau forms with ambitious structural columns and arches.
Gaudí devoted his last years to the project and at the time of his death in 1926, less than a quarter of the project was complete. Sagrada Família’s construction progressed slowly as it relied on private donations and was interrupted by the Spanish Civil War—only to resume intermittent progress in the 1950s. Construction passed the mid-point in 2010 with some of the project’s greatest challenges remaining and an anticipated completion date of 2026—the centennial of Gaudí‘s death.
The basílica has a long history of dividing the citizens of Barcelona—over the initial possibility it might compete with Barcelona’s cathedral, over Gaudí‘s design itself, over the possibility that work after Gaudí‘s death disregarded his design, and the recent possibility that an underground tunnel of Spain’s high-speed train could disturb its stability.
My other photos of the Torre Agbar, where you can make out the Basilica in the background are: