What is Love?

Dear Reader

What is love? Baby, don’t hurt me; don’t hurt me no more…That’s a pretty good song. That is a good question stated in the lyrics. Hopefully I can fully explain the insights I had while road-tripping to Barcelona and Tarragona this weekend with our International Studies group. We took time to see the Sacred Family in Barcelona, as well as a day at the beach in Tarragona. I have had some eye-opening thoughts and our group as a whole has learned a bit about communication and having fun. I will explain our trip with details while trying to explain the epiphany I had about love while in Zaragosa, Barcelona, Tarragona and Medinaceli. 

Barcelona, Spain

Welcome to Barcelona! After stopping in Zaragosa for a couple museums and food, we arrived in Barcelona on Wednesday evening. As a whole, Barcelona is pretty and there is lots of activity. It is a huge tourism city, which kind of takes away from the experience that we are having as we study. The other cities we have visited have a certain wonder and spirit about them while Barcelona is kind of just a big pile of people climbing over each other to get to where want to go. It is hard to explain what the difference is, but the bottom line is that I didn’t enjoy Barcelona as much as Segovia.  

La Sagrada Familia, Barcelona

The main attraction we visited in Barcelona was the Basilica of the Sacred Family. This building was started years ago, but was halted in construction for lots of reasons. The people of Barcelona are taking it up again and the finished product is estimated to be completed in 2026. I don’t really like the outside facades and towers. There is a lot of symbolism and depictions, but it seems very cluttered and messy. The inside is beautiful, but looks very similar to most other cathedrals here in Spain. It is a cool idea, because the architect wanted it to be “The Bible in Stone.” Apparently the bible has a lot more information than I thought.

 We took a long time to get to the Basilica because our tour guide decided to take a tour of the Park Guelle as well. It is a very nice park. Supposedly it was built with the intention of having about a dozen wealthy families buy homes around the park. However, at the time of construction, it was too far from the main part of the city, so only one of the houses was actually bought. Thus, it is a big park with several buildings around the outside that were turned into museums. The park was designed by Gaudi, one of the great architects. It was a long day with lots of sun and lots of humidity. Humidity and I don't get along so well. 

It was a lot of fun getting to know Barcelona by night. We went on an adventure climbing all the hills that make the city look kind of like San Francisco. Almost every hill had an escalator going up. However, there were none going down. Go figure. 

It was while we were wandering around Barcelona that first night (Wednesday) that I had my first little thought about love. We came across a fence in a park with a bunch of locks on it. They are called 'love locks.' There is a bridge in Paris that is the most famous place for them. As we looked at the locks, the thought came to mind that love is a two-way street. Actually, it is kind of like two cities that both have two streets; one to leave and one to arrive. This came to mind because I was thinking about a few people who I have loved deeply in my life. I realized that some of those relationships, while not one-sided, were not well-balanced. I am a person who gives love pretty easily, but doesn't accept love very well. After having this thought, I reflected about a lot of things from the past few years. The idea didn't stay long in my head because we were having fun trying to find Kaiser in the bushes. It was dark and he was trying to scare us, but I think he ended up scaring the girl walking by. We stopped to talk with her for awhile because she was obviously not Spanish. We found out that she is from Malaysia and travels for a newspaper there. 

 After leaving Barcelona on Friday morning, we ended up in Tarragona, the city of lots of Roman history. Pictured here is a Roman Amphitheater where they hosted huge events, most of which involved death of some sort. After hitting the amphitheater, we visited a museum of Roman architecture and watched a movie in Castello. Oh, by the way, they speak all kinds of different stuff in Barcelona and all over Catalunya (That name itself has like 4 different spellings). Walking around Barcelona and Tarragona, we heard French, Catalan, Spanish, English, and pretty much every other European language known to man. I was having a hard time because I was so used to hearing everything and making sarcastic remarks to those who weren't quite grasping everything going on. In this region, it was necessary to stay on my toes and do my best to guess what some people were saying. We got a couple of teenage girls cat-calling the boys. It was kind of funny. They didn't seem to notice, but it made me laugh.

We have BYU pride. Also, props to Jenn for getting in the water
fully clothed. Pictured at the left, Santi and Isabel. 

Yes, we also buried Kaiser in the sand. His face was so red. It's not a complete day at the beach without having someone completely covered in sand, right? We hit the beach after the museum, which was something our group enjoyed thoroughly. In Andrea's words, "I didn't realize how much I needed the beach today."

While at the beach, I had plenty of time to think and reflect. The idea of love being a couple of cities with a couple of cities each came back to me. Then something clicked in my head: those streets are love languages. That explains why different people don't get along very well and while others do.

 I won't list all of the examples that I thought about while we were on the beach (We were there for about 4 hours), but here are a couple. People who get along great are those whose streets line up perfectly. If one person's incoming street is receiving gifts and the other person's outgoing street is giving gifts, they get along great. The traffic flows smoothly. If their other streets are also compatible, there is a lot of give and take in the relationship, which causes love to grow quickly. A good economy need that traffic to flow smoothly.

The view from the Roman wall in Medinaceli. 

On the other hand, if two people have differing love languages, the traffic doesn't flow very smoothly. If you have your outgoing street as physical affection and your friend's incoming street to their city is words of affirmation, there is going to be a lot of traffic and slow-going on that street. Sometimes the traffic will be traveling the wrong way on the street, which is even worse. To develop a good relationship, it is necessary to build new roads and create road signs (communication) to create a better flow of love and reduce stress and aggravation. The economy doesn't need that.

I thought about love a lot during the trip this week. We ended by getting up this morning and traveling to Medinaceli, a small town (Pop. 800) at the top of a mountain just outside of Madrid. There were winding roads to get to the top, where a Roman archway was waiting for us. We explored the entire town in about 45 minutes. It has great views and a lovely air about it, though.

To finish off, I thought this would provide some good comedy. Yes, that is what you think it is. Yes, Santi is doing what you think he is doing. That picture was taken on the street corner right next to a big plaza. Welcome to Europe.