Parabola

The last time I was in Barcelona was to celebrate Franco’s death nine months previously. The Catalan language had been banned for 35 years and I neither read nor knowingly heard it. So seeing signs in Catalan first and, optionally, Spanish second has been a revelation. Although I can understand a fair bit of slow Spanish, my spoken Spanish is about 50% Italian, 20% French, 10% Spanish and 20% guesswork so it’s been fun to throw Catalan into the mix.
 
Now my sister is here we’ve started on Gaudi. La Pedrera first then Casa Batlló. It’s all been photographed a million times and more and my words are not worth adding but it’s a treat to wander around so much zany exuberance and, in the loft of La Pedrera, to see some of the science behind his designs. I was fascinated by the hanging chains inverted in a mirror then, not long after, to find them made plaster here.
 
After a lot of street-pounding, this evening was a perfect time for the Arab baths (organised as a Christmas present for us all by my generous son). We’d thought they might revive us enough to enable us to walk back to the flat but instead we were relaxed into a torpor and barely had the strength to hail a taxi.