Coming home to a sea of family and friends filled with questions about my six weeks in Spain, the number one question that would always come up was, “what was your favorite part of Spain?”, and for a while I kept saying the culture and the ambiance of Spain. But in reality that wasn’t good enough, they wanted to know and I couldn’t give a direct answer until now.
My favorite part of Spain was when a few friends and I took a train to Barcelona for the weekend and got to see La Sagrada Familia. After years of taking Spanish classes and learning about Spain, Barcelona, and the famous Gaudí, I was finally able to see the masterpiece myself. Never in a million years when I was in high school, let alone college think I was going to see one of Gaudí’s yet to be finished masterpieces, La Sagrada Familia. What I found most interesting from this work is that Gaudí believed that no man-made object he built higher that gods creation, therefore when it is finished, supposedly in 9 years on the eve of Gaudí’s death 100 years ago, it will be one meter less than Barcelona’s highest point, Montjuïc Hill. Another interesting fact that I learned on my guided tour inside La Sagrada Familia was that the holy place was built to be seen from all points of the city, and while I cannot personally say whether or not it is true, I have a hunch Gaudí made sure it would be.
But I cannot say that I simply loved La Sagrada Familia because it was more than that, it was a feeling of awe and wanderlust being in front of such an incredible man-made structure. I am not usually into architecture but this cathedral truly took my breath away and I will say to anybody who is heading to Spain, that this is one sight they don’t want to miss.
