How Madrid lost its Christianity and now promotes paganism
Julia, a sculpture in Madrid. Photo Wikimedia Commons
Southern Europe
Art in the public space sometimes has a hidden meaning. Read here the story behind a famous sculpture in Madrid. What is interesting: It shows that Europe is in dire need of Christian revival.
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Since 2018, a giant head has been displayed on top of the Cultural Centre Fernán Gómez Centro Cultural de la Villa in Madrid. Anyone who walks or drives near the Plaza de Colón (Columbus Square) cannot avoid noticing this rather imposing sculpture named Julia.
Initially, this enormous head with closed eyes was supposed to be exposed there for a period of five years. But last week, for the second year in a row, an agreement was passed to lengthen its exposition for yet another year. And there are talks to have it there even until December 2027.
Closing eyes
Why such a decision? According to the City Council of Madrid, the sculpture has gained much acceptance among the citizens.
The project was funded by the non-profit organisation Fundación María Cristina Masaveu Peterson. Its author, Jaume Plensa (1955), is one of the world’s most famous sculptors. His typical faces with closed eyes, such as that of Julia, have been exposed all around the world.
At first glance, one can quickly find similarities with Buddhism. And indeed, Jaume Plensa’s comments seem to confirm it: “They [i.e. the sculptures] always have their eyes closed because what interests me is what is inside this head. As if the spectator, in front of my work, could think that it is a mirror and he could reflect himself, also closing his eyes, trying to understand all the beauty that we keep hidden within us.”
Moreover, Plensa’s forty years of career were celebrated in Barcelona – his native city – through an exposition named Poesía del Silencio (Poetry of Silence) in 2023.
Silence
Introspection, silence: All of this seems to indicate that Jaume Plensa heavily draws his inspiration from Buddhism. Yet, he would not call his work religious.
An interview that Plensa gave to the Spanish national newspaper El País helps us understand better his spiritual background:
“It is clear that there have been many mistakes when it comes to interpreting spirituality because it has been confused with religion, and they have nothing to do with each other. I don’t know who said, ‘I’m an atheist thanks to God’, but I agree with it.
I have always tried to escape from schools, systems and closed religious groups, but the spiritual seems key to me; it is not possible that we only think that we are a bunch of bones and muscles. I like to think that we stay upright by something more than the body and that something is the soul.”
Confusion
There is much to unpack in what Jaume Plensa says. He affirms that spirituality and religion have often been confused. In fact, he says that both have nothing to do with each other.
Yet, his definitions of religion and spirituality remain unclear, let alone his claim that they would have nothing to do with each other.
Plensa may probably not see it that way, but religion is a set of beliefs, a worldview or a pair of glasses through which one looks at all reality. From that perspective, his claim that religion and spirituality have nothing to do with each other is quite confusing. From an epistemological perspective, religion informs everything, including spirituality, whatever that means for Plensa.
Moreover, Jaume Plensa claims to be an atheist. In other words, atheism is his outlook on reality. But atheism is not a non-religion. It is a religious worldview that rejects God as the ultimate reference point.
Perspective
However, this rejection does not mean that the atheist has no reference point from which he guides his life. Plensa’s ultimate reference point is to be found within himself. There we can find beauty, there we can find meaning.
The problem is that, from his perspective, there is no way to find out whether there is beauty within man or not. Why would man have a soul, as he claims? Why would he not be more than just bones and muscles?
As it turns out, Plensa’s claims are purely arbitrary and religious. Thus, Julia is a religious work of art, just as the magnificent Almuneda cathedral is. The only difference between the two is that while the latter was informed by Christianity, the former represents the atheistic humanism of which Jaume Plensa is a prominent ambassador.
Enlightenment
The sculpture of Julia is located at the very end of Madrid’s most famous boulevards: The Paseo del Prado and Paseo de Recoletos. If we were to walk from Atocha station, at the other end of the boulevard, towards the Plaza de Colón, we would discover several fountains representing ancient Roman gods, such as Apollo, Neptune or Cybele.
These works of art were commissioned by King Carlos III at the end of the eighteenth century. These marked the clear will to break with the Roman Catholicism that had dominated the city for the past seven centuries.
Carlos III’s attempt to bring back pagan gods at the forefront of Madrid’s landscape was a step that led to the liberal revolution of the nineteenth century. The revolution was grounded in the confident humanistic religion of the Enlightenment, the belief that man was the measure of all things.
But what has this confidence in man led to? Today, two centuries later, we find ourselves at the end of the boulevard, where we can contemplate the closed eyes of Jaume Plensa’s sculpture. Madrid, just like the rest of Europe, is in dire need of a Christian revival. Only such a revival will free man from the humanistic jail in which he is caught.
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