Armand Puig explains the meaning that Gaudí wanted to give to the façade of the Passion
Armand Puig, rector of the University Athaeneum Sant Pacià and full academician of the Royal European Academy of Doctors-Barcelona 1914 (RAED), participated in the 3rd Week of the Bible that was held between November 26 and December 2 in the Basilica of the Hoy Family in Barcelona, with the talk “Meditació bíblica sobre la façana de la Passió” (Biblical meditation on the Façade of Passion). The events were organized jointly by the Abbey of Montserrat, the Biblical Association of Catalonia, the Liturgical Pastoral Centre, the Claret publishing house and Radio Estel with the support of the Tarraconense Episcopal Conference. The sessions were chaired by the auxiliary bishop of Barcelona, Sergi Gordo.
In his speech, the academician recovered a phrase of Antoni Gaudí collected by his disciple Joan Bergós before his death: “In contrast to the façade of the Nativity, decorated and ornamented, the façade of Death is hard, bare, as if made of bones”.
“Hence, the architect already imagined the traditional façade of the Passion as the representation of the bones of Jesus, both his rib cage and the bones of the upper and lower extremities”, says Puig. This explains, continues the academician, the meaning of the six large columns of the door, the gallery that opens and the 33 medals of the pediment, which correspond to the 33 vertebrae of the dorsal column.
Puig’s reflection was the central act of this third edition of the Week of the Bible. His intervention was accompanied by various scores interpreted to the organ by Juan de la Rubia, organist of the basilica and professor of the Superior School of Music of Catalonia. The motto chosen for this edition was “La Paraula és molt a prop teu” (The word is very close to you), which on this occasion reached the majority of the Catalan dioceses thanks to an act presided over by its bishop and other activities promoted from the parishes and Christian schools.
