Gaudí: Little Lies, Big Legacy with John Carlin – Annual Lecture with Instituto Cervantes

It is remarkable how little is known with certainty about Gaudí the man: the many famous yet dubious quotations attributed to him, the highly questionable skyscraper project he is said to have designed for New York, the credentials cited in support of his canonisation, and even the uncertainty surrounding his exact birthplace.

By contrast, his work reveals an undeniable truth. By liberating his imagination and breaking with the architectural orthodoxies of his time, Gaudí exerted a profound influence on the Catalan geniuses who followed him, including Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, and Ferran Adrià.

Gaudí’s arrival in Barcelona marked the beginning of the city’s transformation. Once considered one of the least liveable cities in Europe during the first half of the nineteenth century, Barcelona is today regarded as one of the most liveable.

Event in English.

John Carlin (London, 1956) is a British-Spanish journalist, author, and screenwriter specialising in international politics and sport. Born to a Scottish father and a Spanish mother, he spent part of his childhood in Argentina and studied English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford.

He began his career at the Buenos Aires Herald and later worked as a correspondent in Latin America, the United States, and South Africa for media outlets including The Independent, The Times, BBC, The New York Times, and El País. His coverage of the end of apartheid and South Africa’s democratic transition enabled him to develop a close professional relationship with Nelson Mandela.

His best-known work is Playing the Enemy (published in Spanish as El factor humano, 2008), which recounts how Mandela used the 1995 Rugby World Cup to promote national reconciliation in South Africa. The book inspired the film Invictus (2009), directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Morgan Freeman as Mandela.

His other books include:

• Heroica tierra cruel (2004)
• Los ángeles blancos (2004)
• La sonrisa de Mandela (2013)
• La sombra de la verdad
• Crónicas de Islandia. El mejor país del mundo (2016)

In 2000, Carlin received the Ortega y Gasset Journalism Award. After nearly two decades as a columnist for El País, he began contributing to La Vanguardia and Clarín. He lives in Barcelona, a city he has described as his favourite place to live.