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| Garden of the Font de la Magnèsia | In 1902, Gaudí visited the works of the Xalet del Catllaràs, which he was constructing for the technical personnel of the coal mines who were serving to the factory Asland of Clot del Moro, near la Pobla de Lillet. Being in the chalet of Clot del Moro, there appeared a worker of the textile factory of la Pobla de Lillet, the first one of the course of the river Llobregat, requesting if he could receive to its owner, Joan Artigas i Alart. Joan Artigas had very good relation with Eusebi Güell and was admiring what Gaudí was doing in the Park Güell. In this way, he asked him for ideas for the gardening of the area of behind the factory, side and side of the river Llobregat. And the architect promised it to him.
In the spring of the following year, 1903, Gaudí travelled again to la Pobla de Lillet, to re-tackle the works of the Xalet del Catllaràs, interrupted during the winter for the climate, and to fulfill the promise done to Joan Artigas. This one sent the tartan of the factory to gather him to Ripoll's railway station and lodged him in his house, during the couple of days that Gaudí was in that Pyrenees population.
Gaudí, the architect of the Nature, who was using its forms with Franciscan humility, which was not trying to be a creator, but a simple interpreter of the Creation, a modest continuer with the same laws, was in front of a beautiful and wild landscape of High Mountain, where the water of the Llobregat jumps noisily among rocks and trees. He, who from very child had learned to contemplate the Nature without prejudices or previous studies, its forms and colors, knew that the Nature is functional and that searching as it the functionality would come to the beauty, whereas looking only for the beauty could fall down in the aestheticism. His gardens, the biggest of which it was the Park Güell, then in construction, were not Renaissance, Baroque, English or of any other historical style, but naturals. And if the Park Güell was a dry garden, this of the Font de la Magnèsia would be a humid garden marked by the Llobregat that torrentially crosses it.
Clairvoyant and ingenuous, he draw the sketches of a cave and two rustic bridges that ford the river and complete the architectural composition that already had made the "Great Architect", the poetry, almost the musicality, of such a charming place. These sketches were destroyed, with great part of the factory Artigas, by the Republican Army during their retreat in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939).
To put in act the ideas expressed in his drawings, Gaudí, on having returned to Barcelona, he gave the orders to raise a few experienced bricklayers of the Park Güell, who initiated the works and trained the bricklayers of the factory Artigas in his constructive methods.
They were a couple of months and, after approximately six months, it could finished, with local stones without refining, an artificial cave as those of the Park Güell to protect the Font de la Magnèsia, the spring of medicinal water that gives name to the garden. The cave measures 6 x 2 m. And it has banks to sit down and two windows to contemplate the Llobregat. Gaudí also sent plants of the Park Güell in order that they were acclimated to the high mountain: a palm, yuccas, etc. It is the only part of the gardens that there saw his owner, Joan Artigas i Alart, which expired in December, 1903.
His inheritor, Joan Artigas i Casas, continued the construction of the garden, which remained finished enough in the autumn of 1906.
Following Gaudí's sketches, on having gone out of the cave of the Font de la Magnèsia there was done a rustic pergola, at the back of which it is the fountain of the Lleó. The way continues for a zone of lawn that comes to a balustrade on the river. In another side, a copse of pines shelters the fountain of the Bou. Beyond, the bridge of the Magnèsia crosses the river and a stairs allows to the sculpture of the Eagle. A new stairs accedes to a pavilion of circular floor and conical cover, the Summer-house, from where there is an excellent sight of the river, of the garden and of thewhole landscape. The itinerary continues up to crossing again the river for the bridge of the Arcs, in whose entry there raise two garden boxes, one in the shape of man and other one in the shape of woman, for that one returns to the back door of the factory. All the rails, walls, arches, columns, etc., are made of rustic local stone supported on Portland assembled by iron. Also the three sculptures are made with rustic stones: the Ox, the Lyon and the Eagle with the unfolded wings. It never managed to put the fourth one, the Angel, which in Gaudí's sketch was placing in the center of the waterfall and was completing the symbolism of that garden of High Mountain where the Nature shows all its vigor: four Christian gospels.
Spent the years, Gaudí would comment to his disciples, to justify the structure of the temple of the Sagrada Família, different from the registered ones in the books of Architecture and of History of the Art, that "The great opened book that is convenient to strain in reading is of the Nature. Other books come from this one and contain in addition the human mistakes and interpretations." And he was adding: "There are two revelations: the doctrinaire one of the Morality and of the Religion, and other one whom guides with the facts, which it is the great book of the Nature ".
It seems to be that the works got longer until 1910 and that the architect visited them someone again that raised la Pobla de Lillet.
| Josep Maria Tarragona, September 18, 2008
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