of Trencadissos and Trencadisses

Every morning, on my way up the Pg. de Gràcia going to work, I pass by some of the streetlights Gaudí designed, which are located on a narrow sidewalk between a secondary lane and the main roadway. Apart from the twisted iron work with crosses and leaves, common motifs among Gaudí's work, these lampposts have a basement shaped as an undulating stony bench with a particular coat of broken tiles, which tourists keep detaching as if they were a souvenir.

This irregular mosaic is usually called trencadís, from the Catalan word "trencar", to break. Despite it is normally attributed to Gaudí, it was in fact Jujol, his collaborator, who came up with the idea of using broken tiles to cover the capricious and irregular surfaces they used in their buildings. Jujol, unlike Gaudí, used to build very cheaply, recycling materials and trying to adapt the budgets to his client's resources.

Both Gaudí and Jujol were from el Camp de Tarragona, though Jujol moved to Gràcia when he was young. None of them ever cut their mutual relationship, nor the ties with their terroir. As it is well known, "gent del Camp, gent del llamp!" (countryside people, lightning people), which meaning is a mixture of being brilliant and presenting an uncontrolled strong character. In Catalan language, the word genius has both meanings, and a lightning (llamp) is flashy metaphor of this peculiar temperament.

Unlike Gaudí, who accidentally died earlier, Jujol lived through the Spanish Civil War and had to managed with the new fascist authorities to keep working somehow. He certainly did it in a very uncommon way, that of designer of fascist victory monuments, Virgin Mary's pedestals, and commemorative fountains, like the one in the middle of la Plaça d'Espanya. I was totally surprised when I discovered that fact of his life, but knowing how tough those years were, I can't blame him. Amazing was also getting to know that one of the connoisseurs of Jujol's work is John Malkovich, that stumbled upon him while strolling in Barcelona, a thing that apparently he usually does due to his nearby residence in the south of France.

I've seen many copies of Park Güell's trencadissos around the world, and it makes me feel a bit sillily proud observing how such a minute idea can have spread so widely while sharing the same origin with its author. How can a trencadissa (a wreck, a crash, a failure) be so productive? Ironic, isn't it?