Park Güell: Laia looks for the long bench (A1)
Laia wants to sit on the bench at Park Güell and see the sea. A clear Spanish story about Gaudí, the trencadís dragon, and the hollow columns.
Park Güell en Barcelona
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About this article
What you'll learn
Present tense, the verb querer, and park words: banco, columna, fuente, cerámica, colina.
Laia climbs to Park Güell in Barcelona because she wants to sit on the long bench and see the sea. Antoni Gaudí designed the park for Eusebi Güell. On the stairway there is a figure many people call el drac, covered in trencadís, and visitors may not touch it. Under the square are eighty-six hollow columns: rainwater runs down inside them to a cistern. Only two houses were built, and Gaudí lived in one. Today the park is public and is a World Heritage site.
After reading
Article learning block
Phrases, words, grammar, and quick practice from this text.
Phrases for training
Add useful phrases to SRS or mark them as already known.
El Park Güell es un parque muy especial de Barcelona
newPark Güell is a very special park in Barcelona
Ser is the verb for what something is: X es un/una Y muy Z. Note the Spanish word order, with the adjective after the noun: un parque muy especial, not un muy especial parque.
One pattern that describes any place you visit: El mercado es un sitio muy ruidoso.
Lo diseñó el arquitecto Antoni Gaudí
newThe architect Antoni Gaudí designed it
Lo stands for el parque and goes in front of the verb: lo diseñó, never diseñó lo. Spanish also allows the subject after the verb, so the sentence ends with who did it: lo diseñó el arquitecto.
Object pronouns come before the verb in Spanish, which is the opposite of the English order.
Mucha gente lo llama «el drac»
newA lot of people call it el drac
Llamar with a direct object takes lo, la, los or las: la gente lo llama el drac. Drac is the Catalan word for dragon, and other people say the animal is really a salamander.
Names the most photographed thing in the park, and shows the right object pronoun with llamar.
Mucha gente lo visita cada día
newA lot of people visit it every day
Gente is singular in Spanish even though it means many people, so the verb stays singular: mucha gente visita, never mucha gente visitan.
Every learner writes mucha gente visitan at least once. Gente is one word for a whole group.
el proyecto no tuvo éxito
newThe project was not a success
Spanish says tener éxito, to have success, where English uses one verb: el proyecto no tuvo éxito. Tuvo is the preterite of tener.
Éxito is a false friend: it looks like exit and means success.
Cuando llueve, el agua baja por dentro de las columnas
newWhen it rains, the water runs down inside the columns
Weather verbs have no subject in Spanish: llueve, nieva, hace frío. Cuando plus the present tense states a rule, something that happens every time.
It carries the best fact in the article: the eighty-six columns are hollow and drain the plaza above them.
Key words
Vocabulary that carries the school-day topic.
Trencadís
trencadís
mosaic of broken tiles
Trencadís is a Catalan word, from trencar, to break. Gaudí covered walls, benches and the drac with small pieces of broken ceramic, so no two surfaces come out the same.
The one technique you see everywhere in Gaudí's Barcelona, and the word is Catalan, not Spanish.
El banco
banco
the bench
El banco is both a bench and a bank; only the sentence tells you which. The one in Park Güell curves like a snake around the whole plaza.
A word you meet daily in Spain carrying two completely different meanings.
La colina
colina
the hill
Una colina is a hill, smaller than una montaña. Park Güell sits on one, which is why the whole city and the sea are visible from the plaza.
A basic landscape word, and it explains the view the park is famous for.
Patrimonio de la humanidad
patrimonio de la humanidad
world heritage
The Spanish name for a place Unesco protects for its cultural value. Spanish uses the whole phrase; there is no single word for it.
It is on the sign in front of most of the monuments worth visiting in Spain.
Modernismo catalán
modernismo catalán
Catalan modernisme
The art and architecture movement of Barcelona around 1900, of which Gaudí is the best known name. Its marks are curves, colour and shapes borrowed from nature.
It is the label on almost everything worth seeing in Barcelona.
Una ciudad jardín
una ciudad jardín
a garden city
A garden city is a planned neighbourhood with the houses standing among trees and parks, an English idea from around 1900. Güell wanted one here, and that is why the name is spelled the English way, Park, and not Parc as in Catalan.
It is the reason the park exists at all, and it explains the wide empty plaza and the two lonely houses.
Grammar in context
Patterns from the text worth noticing after reading.
Hay: there is, there are
hay una plaza grande y abierta
there is a big open square
Hay says that something exists in a place, and it never changes form: hay una plaza, hay dos casas, hay ochenta y seis columnas. For something already named you use es or está instead.
Hay carries every there is and there are in Spanish, in one unchanging form.
Llamó a Gaudí: the personal a
Güell llamó a Gaudí para diseñar el parque
Güell called Gaudí in to design the park
Llamó is the he form of the past tense of the regular -ar verb llamar: llamé, llamaste, llamó. And when the object of the verb is a person, Spanish puts a in front of it: llamó a Gaudí, vio a su madre.
The personal a has no equivalent in English, and leaving it out marks a beginner immediately.
Impersonal se: se ve
Desde allí se ve toda Barcelona y el mar
from up there you can see the whole of Barcelona and the sea
Se ve says that something can be seen, without naming who sees it. This se is everywhere in Spanish: aquí se habla español, desde aquí se ve el mar.
It is how Spanish makes a general statement where English needs you or one.
Adjectives agree: casas pequeñas, formas redondas
dos casas pequeñas con formas redondas
two small houses with round shapes
Both adjectives copy their noun: casas is feminine plural, so pequeñas; formas is feminine plural, so redondas. In the masculine it would be dos bancos pequeños.
A Spanish adjective changes its ending twice over, for gender and for number, every single time.
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