Braving Barcelona

Once upon a time there was a little girl who hated to wear clothing, feeling it was one of life's great injustices that little boys should be allowed to play football shirtless and little girls, who by all observable standards were completely equal from the waist up, should be made to scorch in insufferable heat.

There was a World Cup, 1982.

There was an older brother, who urged her to escape, though their only words in the language were: "dos coca-colas por favor".

There was a father who made the mistake of playing hide and seek among the pillars of the Parque Güell...

And then there was history.



Sometimes things look so different from our memories that we are unable to draw a direct line from what they were in our mind's eye, to what they are. Gaudí, it seems, suffers no such transformation. This little girl hid behind the very same rock, trying to escape from the ghosts of past errors. She found that perhaps there are some things that we simply cannot escape.

Barcelona will always have a mystery, I think, a pain of liberty that palpitates beneath our skin. There are some pictures, that might express this better than words.