Dispatch: Back on the Grid!

Barcelona is the Iberian Manhattan. Its energy pops and sizzles off the page. It doesn’t sleep or even seem to slow down. With 1,600,000+ inhabitants and countless more visitors and tourists Barcelona surges and sways as the tide of humanity dictates. Like most modern cities Barcelona is on the grid. Roads run parallel and perpendicular to each other, providing order and restoring logic. Seville and Granada, like Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter, are out touch with the modern world. They have no logic or direction. They are reactive cities that do not possess the forethought of urban planning. Instead, these cities, or what we saw of them, have narrow roads that twist and turn as they wind their way from point A to point B, or is it point Q?  

Today, we walked and absorbed the energy of Barcelona before we visited the Picasso Museum, which exists off the grid in the Gothic Quarter and focuses upon the master’s youth. Picasso’s revolutionary vision becomes understandable when you realize that he had nailed the styles of the Spanish masters by the time he was 15-years old. Then he went off the grid and focused upon interpretations that veered away from reality as they explored new visions of artistic understanding. It was only years later when Picasso’s genius was acknowledged and much copied that he was allowed back onto the grid.

When I visited Barcelona in 1972, the great Catalan Architect Antonio Gaudi’s La Sagrada Familia (Holy Family) Church had already been under construction for 90 years.  Combining a unique vision of organic architecture with devout spirituality, Gaudi’s design was beyond anything previously envisioned. The roof was finally completed in 2000, yet it took another 10 years before La Sagrada Familia found its way onto the grid. That is when Pope Benedict visited and consecrated La Sagrada Familia as a minor basilica. When I look at pictures of the consecration I can see the Pontiff’s calculation, as the Church waited for more than 100 years, many millions of man hours and private funds before laying claim to this majestic masterpiece. I’ll bet that when the “minor basilica” is completed it will fast track into the hierarchy as one of Church’s outstanding modern achievements. Sometimes life just isn’t fair.

Then again on Saturday Jean Berlinghoff was found alive wandering the streets of San Francisco with her abductor Uncle Charlie. Charles Berlinghoff fell off the grid about a decade ago and ran up a rap sheet of sex crimes against children. When he came back onto the grid and insinuated himself back into family life, the Berlinghoff’s were unaware of his criminal past, so they did not have their guard up before he disappeared with his 15-year old niece. Without making any effort to disguise himself the fugitive predator and his victim were totally on the grid and the young girl was rescued safely, thereby proving that sometimes life is fair after all.