Sagrada Familia

What?s such fun about living in Barna is that the tourist sights are woven into our everyday lives. We don?t go to see them: we go past or through (or possibly under or over) them as we rush around leading our frenzied lives. 

Have you heard the Catalan expression ?anar de b?lit??  Barcelonans (and people from the other industrial towns like Terrassa, Sabadell, Matar? etc) love dashing around, being horribly busy, having lots of irons in the fire. It?s their life blood. Ask them how they are and they?ll say, breathless with pride: ?Vaig de b?lit!? literally, ?I?m going like a bullet.?  This zooming around all day (and much of the night) includes not only work, but also shopping, social life, voluntary work, cultural activities, hobbies, chauffering children, sports…  you name it.  This is what life in Barcelona is all about.

But one class of folks who are definitely not de b?lit are los funcionarios - government employees. (In Catalan, funcionaris.) And with so many administrative layers of bureaucracy - municipal, autonomic, provincial and state - there are an awful lot of them.

According to a recent survey, a whopping one third of young Spaniards aspire to being funcionarios. You can see why.  The pay is not wonderful, but the hours (and coffee breaks) are written in stone. Best of all, short of committing serial murder, it is virtually impossible to get fired or laid off.  This means that funcionarios tend to be very laid back and, often, well, less than helpful. (I am being exceedingly restrained here, by the way. But this blog will no doubt  include some bureaucracy rants in the future.)

The other Saturday we arrived just before 2 pm at the Punt Verd (Recycling Centre) de la  Sagrada Familia (Lepant/Proven?a) with a carload full of junk, only to have the door slammed in our faces. ?I have to have my lunch,? said the boilersuited funcionario in a voice that managed to be pathetic and surly at the same time.
?Can?t you just stay open for a few minutes to receive our half dozen jam jars of used cooking oil with sediment of blackened batter and fishy bits, carefully not poured down the sink... our cargo of dead deodorants and household sprays, fluorescent tubes, twisted bits of metal, rusting cake tins,  broken coat hangers, frankly disgusting unwinding raffia table mats...?
?I have to eat.?
And that was that.

My companion drove off with the junk still in the boot to meet people for lunch out of town. It was a lovely day and I decided to walk home, via, of course, the Sagrada Familia. Which was jammed with tourists and tour buses, as always. I am not actually sure if I?ve ever visited the interior: I simply cannot remember a time when there wasn?t a queue a mile long to get in. I first came to see the Sag Fam in 1974, before they started finishing it, long before Barcelona?s regeneration,  when the surrounding area was a vast derelict site. I didn?t know what to think then, and I still don?t.  As far as I?m concerned, it defies comment. Melting wax?  Organic forms?  Esoteric symbols? Was Gaud? a freemason?  Do the new bits fit in?   Should Gaud? be canonized?  If so, should he be declared patron saint of unfinished works? Make of it what you will.

I particularly love the colourful cornucopia fruit things at the top of the towers. You can see them peeping over the buildings as you approach the Sag Fam from any direction:  a reassuring landmark in the bewildering gridiron of the Eixample.

I fought my away along the pavement to look at the stalls. I LOVE browsing the tourist tat - the colours and the shapes, the twinkles and the sparkles of bracelets, scarves and mini Sag Fams and Park G?ell lizards. It?s so relaxing after staring at the PC monitor all day.

As I was walking along in the sun, I heard English voices behind me. ?Look at those spotlights.?  ?Yeah. It must look really pretty lit up at night.?  You bet. I suddenly remembered driving back from the country late one Sunday night when my sons Eduard and Robert were very small. As we cruised home along c Mallorca, past the floodlit Sagrada Familia with its towers soaring into the sky, Robert?s voice piped up from the backseat.  ??Mira! Rockets!?

(Oh - the junk. We forgot about it till the day we had to rush to Ikea for a missing packet of wardrobe hinges, by which time we had accumulated more dead radio alarms, lightbulbs and lumps of wood.  We dropped it all off at the Vila Ol?mpica Punt Verd, where it was welcomed with good cheer.)