Oliver Hutton, reading Law and Spanish at Oxford
During my year abroad in Barcelona I have lived next to the Basílica de Santa María del Mar. The fascinating story of this grand church, which I cannot help but glance at every time I walk past, was popularised by the lawyer and author barcelonés, Ildefonso Falcones, in his 2006 bestseller La catedral del mar. And I think it is a story that bears knowing.
Santa María stands in the neighbourhood of La Ribera, which began life beyond the city walls as a humble barrio for fishermen. In the early days of Christianity, the inhabitants built a small chapel reportedly on the site where Eulalia, co-patron saint of Barcelona, was martyred in the year 303. La Ribera, of course, means ‘the shore’, and that was where it lay. What is now the seafront neighbourhood, Barceloneta, remained underwater until centuries later.
By the 13th century, Barcelona’s burgeoning merchant class was growing too big for the original Roman precinct. La Ribera’s enviable position between the port and the old city made it an attractive candidate for expansion. The explosion of commercial activity in the neighbourhood is reflected in the street names which today still refer to money changers, mirror-makers, silversmiths and other craftsmen who built Barcelona’s medieval prosperity on the back of Mediterranean trade.
La Ribera’s maritime success soon caught the attention of the nobility, who lined carrer de montcada with grand mansions that stand to this day. La Ribera now needed a church that could match its material wealth, and thus began in 1329 the construction of Santa María del Mar.
What is distinctive about Santa María, Falcones tells us, is that it was built by and for the common people of La Ribera, not the elites. Its creation owed to the vecinos’ desire for a spiritual monument of their own which, unlike the city’s cathedral whose construction began in 1298, did not depend on the nobility’s backing. This truth was chiselled onto the very first stone, laid beneath the main altar, which bore only the shield of the parish of La Ribera, to whom Santa María would exclusively belong.
With the help of Bernat Llull, the canon who would become Santa María del Mar’s first archdeacon, permission to build was swiftly obtained from the church authorities. At the same time, wealthy merchants in the neighbourhood were quick to offer financing. All parishioners helped in the building process, while stone was obtained from the quarries on the mountain of Montjuïc, almost three miles away. The arduous task of transporting the giant stones was assumed by the bastaixos, the city’s stevedores. They did so on their backs, and for free – not as slaves but out of devotion to the Virgin Mary, wishing to do what they could to honour her. Thus the people of La Ribera built Santa María, with either their money or their labour.
Construction finished in what was then a record time of 54 years, halted only once by the arrival of the Black Death in 1348. Barcelona cathedral, financed by the king and the church, took twice as long to materialise. And it is because of Santa Maria’s short construction period, avoiding changes in architectural style, that it is the only surviving church built in the pure Catalan Gothic style. Berenguer de Montagut and Ramón Despuig were the architects from beginning to end, masterminding the distinctive features that continue to mesmerise visitors: the two octagonal towers; the equal height of the three naves, making the interior seem larger from the inside than from without; the countless stained glass windows, flooding the interior with natural light; the vast rose window, in the middle of which Mary is being crowned; and, above all, the exquisite harmony of its proportions.
Besides the plague, Santa María has endured many challenges since its construction. An earthquake killed over thirty worshippers in 1428 and caused the rose window to be replaced. Further damage was inflicted by the War of the Spanish Succession, when in 1714 La Ribera was the last neighbourhood to fall to the forces of Philip V. Just beside Santa María, the memorial of the Fossar de les Morreres and its flame that never stops burning commemorate those who died defending the city. Later on, during the Civil War, a fire destroyed the interior furnishings. Various restorations were necessary in the following years, including in the 1960s when funds were raised from various entities including FC Barcelona, explaining the presence of the football club’s crest on one of the restored stained glass windows.
Santa María’s resilience is complemented by its capacity to inspire. It is said to be here, after all, that Antoni Gaudí was moved to create the Sagrada Familia. And as well as the work of Falcones, Santa María has also appeared in Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s bestsellers La sombra del viento and El juego del ángel. It even has its own Netflix series.
Set against the other themes of La catedral del mar, the construction of Santa María takes on added meaning. Falcones’ novel lays bare the horrors of feudalism, opening with a harrowing illustration of the medieval lord’s droit du seigneur. The novel’s protagonist, Arnau Estanyol, escapes with his father from serfdom in the Catalan countryside only to become servants of the nobility in Barcelona. Many die as pawns of war or at the hands of the plague. The city’s Jewish population, housed in the call, is attacked and stigmatised.
Yet alongside this, the construction of Santa María embodies the best of human nature – a story of one neighbourhood’s industriousness and devotion, of what the common people could achieve with a vocation of their own, of their selflessness to donate and sweat for the beauty we now admire. For the art critic Robert Hughes – and doubtless many barceloneses and visitors alike over the centuries – Santa María del Mar is the most magnificent and solemn place in all of Spain. Despite its beauty, however, one is perhaps moved more by the simple figures of two bastaixos carved on the door of the main entrance, straining under their colossal loads.
Bulletin of Advanced Spanish 