Art and Mystery of Barcelona: Casa Batlló

'We are going to flee from the so-called realities that are nothing but smoke, dust and ash, going to look for the dream wherever we can find it'.
[Mario Roso de Luna]

Dreamy, although brief that happiness is ephemeral and dreams after all, dreams are, as our immortal Calderón said, a visit could be qualified to that magical, living and functional architecture that defines the work and thought of a of the most brilliant and lucid minds in History: that of the brilliant Catalan architect, Don Antoni Gaudí i Cornet.

Possibly, both this and Mario Roso de Luna -evidently, everyone in their respective sphere of influence- understood the dream -and for the moment, we will leave Castaneda and his teachings of Don Juan aside- as that beautiful chrysalis that remains hidden within its shell, completely alien to that other mirage -recurring to Buddhist philosophy- which, considered as reality, would not cease to be, after all, similar to the myth of Plato's cavern, a mere manifestation of Maya or World of Illusion.

That is why, located in front of her, it is difficult not to be carried away by the certain sensation, that Casa Batlló or House of Bones -as her contemporaries called her- is an example of that chrysalis to which reference was made, and that in the same way that the parables that after all do not cease to be subliminal messages that underlie the innermost recesses of traditional fairy tales, it holds a formidable sleeping beauty.

A beauty that lies, dreams and perhaps even bears a certain resemblance to that weary melancholic with long taciturn hours - as Apollinaire defined the devil, as romantic writers also conceived - that languishes at the mercy of the Encantat Dragon, which, paradoxically, may seem the Passeig de Gràcia where it is located. A dragon - understood from a purely dreaming point of view - whose imaginary scales bear griálicos names of abundance - Armani, Löewe, Louis Vouitton, Bulgari or Burberry - and later, at the height of the Plaza de Catalunya and its fearsome maw , the treasure: the Borsa of Barcelona.

Perhaps it is not coincidence, either, that the addition of his number -43- results in the magical digit par excellence: the 7. A number that has marked the destinies of man since he discovered the sacred liturgy of counting, making bowls on the walls of the caves.

Organic par excellence, the Casa Batlló is an artificial Golem that looks with nostalgia towards the Gothic Quarter and the Sagrada Familia, perhaps wondering where that Creator is that endowed the mud with life, using materials such as the sandstone of Montjuic; the trencadís that he obtained from the waste of colored crystals from the Pelegrí window; glazed ceramics, made in the form of scales in the workshops Sebastia Ribó, which together in head, torso and extremities recalled the waves of the Mediterranean Sea or the sinuous, unrivaled forms of the sacred mountain of Montserrat.

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NOTICE: published for the first time, in my blog MEMORIES OF A PILGRIM, although nevertheless, the photographs that are shown are unpublished. Both the text, as the photographs, and the video (except music, reproduced under a YouTube license), are my exclusive intellectual property. The original entry can be found at the following address: https://jc347.blogspot.com.es/2015/01/arte-y-misterio-de-barcelona-la-casa.html