The tallest (and the ugliest)

One of the best attributes of our Barcelona, perhaps its first trait of modern civility, is its condition as a petit lady, manageable and modestly flirtatious. With the exception of Yankee cities, overflowing with testosterone-fueled skyscrapers, majestic despite their elephantiasis, most cities we love have no height and don't boast about their chests; they live at ground level, on a human scale, without wanting to get close to the gods as do the horrifying new megalopolises of the Islamic deserts. All this comes to mind because, this very week, we learned that the Sagrada Família is already the tallest building in Barcelona's urban core, as its dreadful Jesus tower (the tallest of that Easter cake) has already reached 155.58 meters, thus surpassing two aberrations that the Mediterranean must contemplate daily upon rising; the Mapfre Tower and the Hotel Arts. The news portends new worse ones, because the tower in question will reach 172.5 meters.

It seems that the Sagrada Família will lose sight of its tower cranes (who knows if the most beautiful aspect of this architectural pastiche) in 2027 when, thanks to the handouts from half the world and the help of the devil, almost one hundred and fifty years of uninterrupted construction will finally be completed. We owe it to our Sant Antoni Gaudí that the blunder in question, not attributable to the architect but to the bastard children who have turned the temple into an unbearable salad of vulgarity, does not end up growing even more, because if it were up to the apologists of tourism, they would still raise it higher, surpassing the height of Montjuïc. With the conclusion of all this, the Sagrada Família will become the tallest temple on the planet, so Barcelona will not only be able to break a record for ugliness, but will also finally become the ideal destination for all those tourists wishing to admire phallic visions; I predict, Almighty God, many more visits still.

Let the residents of the temple's namesake neighborhood prepare, because if until now they have become accustomed to living surrounded by Japanese people with a photographic compulsion beyond all measure and to crowds that overcrowd their metro stops, forcing them to leave home early to go to work, when the consecration (monumental, not papal) is finished, things can reach true delirium. In fact, now that besides having the best store in the world, we will be a city with this well-erected turd, I would advise the good people of Sagrada Família to start looking for a house elsewhere. Let them not be intimidated; given the planetary anguish of staying overnight near subhuman enclaves, they will be able to sell their apartments with views of the temple for all the gold in the world and thus leave for other neighborhoods of the city where there are no visitable traps hidden. Being expelled from home is very fucked up, but living in the middle of a theme park as such will be a sure cause of death.

Now that the Sagrada Família is about to be finished, it is not the time to look back, but it should be remembered how ---in January 1965--- some of the best architects in the world and our best artists (from Le Corbusier to Oriol Bohigas, from Antoni Tàpies to Josep Maria Subirachs himself, may the Almighty have forgiven him) advised against finishing a project that our Gaudí had only barely sketched. From here, despite the initial opposition of the Col·legi d'Arquitectes de Catalunya, we did that very Spanish thing of disobeying experts and going straight ahead, thinking only about how we could make the stones profitable. Well, the result is almost ready, and only the bow on the highest tower is missing. Today, far from focusing on the squared sumptuousness of the Eixample, most photographs of our city must be stained by this lump in the middle of the city. It doesn't matter where you put the camera and how you focus the landscape, the sculptural turd ends up appearing in the photo, like the funny brother-in-law.

But that doesn't seem to worry my fellow citizens, who will surely share the global enthusiasm when the politician in office praises the Sagrada Família as a collective effort of the Catalans or some similar sentimental nonsense. Now we can say that we have the tallest (and ugliest) temple on the entire planet. Fortunately, and against his own beliefs, Gaudí will not be able to see it from a non-existent heaven. When we look at Barcelona, in its modest beauty, the invention will be truly expiatory; it will remind us that, even in the most blessed places, a den of ugliness can still reign.