By Divina Beas |
Barcelona (EFE) bronze doors with their vegetation and animals and the letters of the Gospels of the Passion façade.
Organized by ONCE in Catalonia on the occasion of today’s commemoration of the International Day for Deafblind People, the visit to the popular temple designed by Antoni Gaudí was generally liked by the group of deafblind people, some of whom had already enjoyed it. previously.
Surrounded by hundreds of tourists who visit the Sagrada Família daily, some of whom insisted on touching the guide dogs of one of the deafblind people, the visit was divided into two: those who still hear and see a little, who were more autonomous, and those who are blind and deaf are deeper and need a guide to explain to them with sign language in their hands everything they are seeing.
Enjoy the details of the Sagrada Familia
Angelina and Antonio, profoundly deafblind siblings, had already visited the basilica before but today they have concentrated with great interest in the sea turtle that supports one of the columns of the Nativity façade and they have enjoyed it, as their guides have explained to EFE .
The guides of these brothers wore headphones through which they received the description made in real time by the official guides of the Sagrada Família and, in turn, transmitted it in braille with their hands to those of Angelina and Antonio.
Montse, who is from Lleida but lives in Tarragona, from where she has come to visit, is not completely deaf and has been able to tell EFE that she has made the visit “with a great desire to experience” all parts of the temple.
His companion, also blind but not deaf, explained: “We are having a good time, you find out things that if you come alone you may not understand them.”
Hands as a guide
For their part, Naty and Esther, with a certain degree of hearing, have run their hands through all the small animals that are on the bronze doors of the Nativity façade, such as ladybugs, bees or worms, in a sea of leaves of vegetation .
These doors, placed in 2014, are made of bronze and have a height of more than seven meters by three meters wide, and were designed by the Japanese sculptor Etsuro Sotoo.
Afterwards, the two groups have enjoyed the interior of the basilica, where they have been able to recover a bit from the extreme heat that it is in Barcelona today, which has forced them to shorten the time they have spent walking through parts of the temple with their hands.
On the Passion façade, at the other end of the building and completed in 2018, Montse has verified that this part “is harder, as if bare, as if the figures had bones” to the touch, a description that is in splendid harmony with the history and symbolism of the sculptures created by the sculptor, painter and artist Josep Maria Subirachs.
This façade represents the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the sculptures are committed to conveying the fear and cruelty of Jesus’ sacrifice, a name that Montse has been able to read with her fingers on one of the bronze doors in this part of the basilica.