Bristol Gastropub
Carrer de Roger de Flor, Barcelona
The great Cathedral of Cologne was left with the crane still standing upon the top of the uncompleted tower. For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity.
Moby-Dick, Chapter 32: Cetology
Boulevarding through the lattice grid of Dreta de l’Eixample, from Gran via de les Corts Catalanes and across Avinguda Diagonal, our rambles take us past Plaça de Mossèn Jacint de Verdaguer, the great Catalan poet, and through all the babel of Barcelona before the brute Anglo-Saxon of the Bristol Gastropub brings us to rest.
I read to my daughter from the guidebook about our destination, the extraordinary unfinished cathedral of La Sagrada Familia. Tell her some history. Ask her some questions. Translate the menu and encourage her to order. (How do you say matcha chai latte in Catalan?) Laugh at her jokes. See mine fall flat.
I look at her there, scaffolding braces still in place. Gaudà spent the span of her years raising just one facade of his temple, wrestling with foundations, head down in his cloistered dreams. It rises now by its own strengthening will, drawing on people and talents he never imagined, and soars above all fretted expectation.
