In 1998 I went to Spain, the birthplace of my grandfather Manuel Santalla. The first city I visited was Barcelona. I immediately fell in love with this city of grand boulevards nestled between the ocean and the mountains.

Through my architectural history courses I was well acquainted with the work of Antoni Gaudí, the city’s architect poster child. Initially his work made me and my classmates giggle and considered the buildings bizarre, unattractive and quite frankly, ugly. Soon, however, we understood that in reality Gaudí was a genius, whose mastery of space, form, structure, surface and light rightfully earned him a rightful place in the architectural Pantheon.

The Casa Batlló and the Casa Milà were located within steps of my hotel on the Passeig de Gràcia. They are exquisitely preserved. Casa Battló is a private building, so I snuck in and got to see the courtyard, adorned with ceramic tiles creating a gradation from white to the deepest of blues as it rises to meet the sky. Parts of the Casa Milà are open to the public, including a roof terrace where all the flues and otherwise visual nuisances are architecturally integrated to become a magical landscape.

Here are some images, courtesy of Wikipedia and various other internet sources, of the Casa Milà.