Monthly Archives: February 2007

Constructing a national myth: architecture in Barcelona

sant_pau_pavilion.jpgRobert Hughes in The Guardian Review writes a very interesting history of the development of the Catalan national myth through art and architecture. He writes a great deal about Antoni Gaudí but also manages to mention Ildefons Cerdà (creator of the Eixample) and Lluis Domènech i Montaner who designed the Hospital de Sant Pau and the Palau de la Música Catalana. He also draws attention to bourgeois Catalans’ apparent love for famed anti-Semite, Richard Wagner. His mythological dialogue of the Bavarian/German nation was apparently very attractive to Catalan nationalists for whom the only way to create the new Catalan nation was to root it in the misty glories of medieval times.