TOMÀS GARCÉS I MIRAVET, THE CATALAN POET OF SONG

Today, The Grandma has been visiting one of her favourite places in Barcelona, Santa Maria del Mar. It is always a great pleasure to let yourself be enveloped by its majesty and spirituality. Centuries of history speak to us of a prosperous Barcelona, ​​open to the sea, where guilds and merchants brought renown to El Born -the neighbourhood where this unique building, so beloved by the people of Barcelona,​​ stands.

 

While visiting this fascinating place, he recalled the verses that Tomàs Garcés dedicated to it in the last century. 

 

Tomàs Garcés i Miravet was one of the most refined voices of twentieth-century Catalan poetry. Born in Barcelona in 1901, he was not only a poet but also a lawyer, literary critic, translator, editor, and journalist. Throughout a literary career spanning more than six decades, he became renowned for his musical language, emotional restraint, and deep attachment to the Mediterranean landscape and spirit.

 

Often referred to as the Catalan poet of song, Garcés developed a distinctive style built upon short, melodious verses and carefully balanced stanzas. His poetry combines the apparent simplicity of traditional folk songs with remarkable artistic sophistication. Rather than relying on dramatic gestures, his poems invite readers into a world of quiet beauty, memory, contemplation, and hope.

Although his early work shares certain features with the Noucentisme movement, Garcés gradually embraced a more symbolic and spiritual voice. His recurring themes include the passing of time, childhood, love, the sea, death, and the search for transcendence. Nature is never merely decorative in his poetry: it becomes a language through which human emotions and spiritual longings are expressed.

The Spanish Civil War profoundly affected his life. Forced into exile in France, he taught Spanish at the University of Toulouse before eventually returning to Catalonia. Despite the political and cultural difficulties of the post-war years, he continued to write, publish, and contribute significantly to Catalan literary life as both a poet and a critic.

 

Garcés maintained close friendships with major Catalan writers such as Joan Salvat-Papasseit and Josep Sebastià Pons, and he helped shape Catalan literary culture through journals, publishing projects, and literary criticism. His first collection, Vint cançons (Twenty Songs, 1922), established his reputation, while later works such as El caçador, La nit de Sant Joan, Escrit a terra, and his memoir El temps que fuig confirmed his place among the leading figures of modern Catalan literature.

Today, Tomàs Garcés is remembered as a poet whose work celebrates harmony rather than excess, silence rather than noise. His poetry reminds us that profound emotions often emerge through simplicity, and that beauty can be found in everyday landscapes, in memory, and in the quiet journey of the human spirit. His verses continue to stand as one of the finest expressions of Catalonia's lyrical tradition.

 

Tomàs Garcés reminds us that poetry does not always need grand gestures. Sometimes, a few quiet verses are enough to carry us across the sea, because in Garcés' poetry, the Mediterranean is more than a landscape: it is a way of understanding beauty, memory, and the human soul. 

 

More information: Associació d'Escriptors en Llengua Catalana

 

En quin vaixell, Santa Maria, aneu?

en quin vaixell de pedra blanca?
Les columnes s'ajunten; una proa es tanca
i les enlaira cap al cel.

Picapedrers el calafatejaren,
fa tant de temps i encara solca el mar.
Un dia amarg, i no ho sabien,
destral i teia descobrien
la màgica nuesa de la nau.

Hi vull pujar, Santa Maria.
Per quina escala haurà de ser?
A la fi del viatge ¿trobaré
la platja oberta on mai no mor el dia?

 

On what ship, Santa Maria, do you sail?

On what ship of gleaming white stone?
The columns draw together; a prow is formed,
and lifts them heavenward.

Stonecutters caulked her timbers,
so long ago, and still she ploughs the sea.
One bitter day, though they did not know,
their axe and torch unveiled
the vessel's magical nakedness.

I long to board her, Santa Maria.
By which stairway shall I ascend?
At journey's end, shall I find
the open shore where daylight never dies?

Tomàs Garcés i Miravet

More information: Santa Maria del Mar

 

Under the shadow and protection 

of the Star of the Sea, 
the people of Barcelona 

always found refuge.

Anonymous

FREDERIC MARÈS: SCULPTOR, PATRON AND COLLECTOR

Frederic Marès and his work Nu ajagut

Today, The Grandma has visited one of the most amazing museums of Barcelona: el Museu Frederic Marès. 

The Museum is located next to the old Cathedral and offers the possibility of travel around History thanks to thousands and thousands of sculptures, objects, paintings and maps which belonged to Frederic Marès, one of the most important Catalan artists during the last century.

More information: Museu Frederic Marès

Frederic Marès i Deulovol arrived with his family to Barcelona in 1903. He went to l’Escola de Belles Arts, Escola de la Llotja where he was formed as a sculptor and where he was a teacher until 1964. Marès started to work with Eusebi Arnau in his workshop. In 1913, he travelled to Paris thanks to the Barcelona City Hall.

The Grandma visiting the Frederic Marès Museum

He started to work in portraits and funerary sculpts and continued with commemorative ones. 

He participated in some individual and collective expositions in different countries although his work was focused especially in Barcelona. 

During the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) he collaborated with the Generalitat de Catalunya, the Catalan Government, to save the artistic patrimony. 

He also helped in the reconstruction of Santa Maria del Mar one of the most important religious buildings of Barcelona.

The Spanish Civil War changed his life and he left working in civil projects until 1944 when he received the proposal of refurbishing the Royal Graves in the Poblet Monastery.

In 1944, he gave his collections to the city of Barcelona and in 1948 the Frederic Marès Museum was opened. The museum is located in the Royal Palace of the Counts of Barcelona, in the Gothic suburb.

He sculpted lots of monuments which are conserved today in cities like Barcelona, Terrassa, Figueres, Elx, Calaf, Maó, Palma, Mataró, Tossa de Mar and countries like Puerto Rico.

If you have the possibility of visiting this wonderful museum, don't doubt it. You will find incredible things and you will be able to walk into a Gothic palace and know a nice group of professional workers.

Download Museu Frederic Marès Brochure

Sculpture is the art of the hole and the lump. 

Auguste Rodin

LURDES HOLMES IN THE CATHEDRAL OF SEA: ACTION!

Lurdes Holmes in Santa Maria del Mar, Barcelona

Today, The Holmes have received news from Lurdes. 

She's working in a new project in Barcelona. She's a main character in a historic film, a beautiful story about the citizens of Barcelona during the XIV century and how they built one of the most incredible buildings of the city.

The Grandma, who is still in Belgrade, has received the news with emotion and happiness. She's very proud of Lurdes and very happy for her. In her youth, The Grandma worked as a tourist guide and she remembers clearly how people enjoyed when they discovered the secrets of the cathedral of sea: Santa Maria del Mar.

More information: Promotors de capelles i retaules a Barcelona (s. XIV)

It's a great honour for The Grandma sharing this information of one of the most important free guides nowadays, our Wiki:

Santa Maria del Mar (Saint Mary of the Sea) is an imposing church in the Ribera district of Barcelona, built between 1329 and 1383 at the height of Catalonia's maritime and mercantile preeminence. It is an outstanding example of Catalan Gothic, with a purity and unity of style that is very unusual in large medieval buildings.

Santa Maria del Mar, Barcelona

The first mention of a church of Santa Maria by the sea dates from 998. The construction of the present building was promoted by the canon Bernat Llull, who was appointed Archdean of Santa Maria in 1324. Construction work started on 25 March 1329, when the foundation stone was laid by king Alfons III of Catalonia, as commemorated by a tablet in Latin and Catalan on the façade that faces the Fossar de les Moreres.

The architects in charge were Berenguer de Montagut, designer of the building, and Ramon Despuig, and during the construction all the guilds of the Ribera quarter were involved. The walls, the side chapels and the façades were finished by 1350. In 1379 there was a fire that damaged important parts of the works. 

Finally, on 3 November 1383 the last stone was laid and on 15 August 1384 the church was consecrated. In 1428 an earthquake caused several casualties and destroyed the rose window in the west end. The new window, in the Flamboyant style, was finished by 1459  and one year later the glass was added. The images and the Baroque altar were destroyed in a fire in 1936. The chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, adjacent to the apse, was added in the 19th century.

More information: Santa Maria del Mar

From the outside, Santa Maria gives an impression of massive severity that belies the interior. It is hemmed in by the narrow streets of the Ribera, making it difficult to obtain an overall impression, except from the Fossar de les Moreres and the Plaça de Santa Maria, both of them former burial grounds. The latter is dominated by the west end of the church with its rose window. Images of Saint Peter and Saint Paul occupy niches on either side of the west door, and the tympanum shows the Saviour flanked by Our Lady and Saint John.

Details of iron workers on the main door

The north-west tower was completed in 1496, but its companion was not finished until 1902.

In contrast with the exterior, the interior gives an impression of light and spaciousness. It is of the basilica type, with its three aisles forming a single space with no transepts and no architectural boundary between nave and presbytery. The simple ribbed vault is supported on slender octagonal columns, and abundant daylight streams in through the tall clerestorey windows.

More information: Santa Maria del Mar, Museu d'Història de la Ciutat

The interior is almost devoid of imagery of the sort to be found in Barcelona's other large Gothic churches, the cathedral and Santa Maria del Pi, after the fire which occurred in 1936 during anticlerical disturbances. Amongst the most notable of the works destroyed at that time was the Baroque retable by Deodat Casanoves and Salvador Gurri.

According to the art historian Josep Bracons, the basic unit of measurement used in Santa Maria del Mar was the mediaeval foot of 33 centimetres. Measured in this way, the side chapels are 10 feet deep, the width of the side aisles is double this, while the central aisle is four times as wide, that is, 40 feet. The total width of the church is thus 100 mediaeval feet, which is also equal to the maximum height of the building.

I don't know if it will be the best temple in the world. 

I assure you that it will be unique. 

The Cathedral of Sea