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Basílica de la Mercè

The day I visited the La Mercé in Barcelona (technically the Basílica de la Mare de Déu de la Mercè i Sant Miquel Arcàngel—but that’s a mouthful), I was a little blue. I'd just gotten Rick and Krista settled in their cab to the airport and was facing a couple of weeks by myself. I wasn't even sure I remembered how to behave around me. I can be pretty judgy.

 

Walking back to our apartment past the Basílica, something about it pulled me in, even though I’d seen enough churches in Mexico to develop something close to spiritual fatigue. It turned out to be the right call.

 

La Mercè isn’t Barcelona’s biggest or most famous church, but it might be its most meaningful. Our Lady of Mercy’s connection to the city goes way back. According to tradition, she appeared in separate visions in 1218 to three men—Peter Nolasco, a local nobleman; King James I of Aragon; and Raymond of Peñafort (in his pre-saint days). In a kind of divine group chat, she urged all three to establish a new religious order dedicated to rescuing Christians taken captive by the Moors during the Reconquista.

 

So Nolasco founded the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mercy, known as the Mercedarians, right here in Barcelona. They raised funds, negotiated ransoms, and even offered themselves up as collateral when needed. To be fair, Nolasco had already been doing this work, so the apparition mostly confirmed what he was already doing.

 

It took about 400 years, but Our Lady of Mercy—La Mare de Déu de la Mercè—eventually became Barcelona’s official patron saint in 1687, after the city was beset by a plague of locusts, perhaps the most biblically on-the-nose disaster imaginable. Crops failed, panic spread, and city leaders vowed to elevate her to patroness if she stepped in. When the insects finally cleared out, she got the credit. To this day, the city throws La Mercè Festival in her honor every September—complete with fireworks, concerts, and the kind of human tower-building that makes your palms sweat just watching it. (Castells, look it up. It’s frightening.)

 

The first church dedicated to her was built on this site in 1249. By the mid-1700s, the old church was too small and plain for a patron saint, though. So down it came. The version you see now dates to the mid-1700s and was designed by Josep Mas i Dordal, a local architect who blended Italianate Baroque flourishes with a classic, straightforward Latin cross layout.

 

In 1918, on the 700th anniversary of the Virgin’s vision to Nolasco, Pope Benedict XV designated the church a minor basilica—only the second in the city to receive the title after the cathedral. During the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, damage to the cathedral rendered it unusable, so La Mercè was declared the de facto seat of the diocese—basically the cathedral’s stunt double.

 

That doesn’t mean the church was spared the violence of the war. Its dome statue was destroyed, most of its artwork was damaged or lost, and the murals were blackened or scraped away. It took decades of painstaking restoration, but it was ultimately returned to its former glory. The dome’s interior was repainted by Victoriano Codina i Langlin, with later additions by Josep Obiols Palau, Francisco Folguera, and Pablo Macià. The current bronze sculpture of the Virgin Mary atop the dome was cast by the Oslé brothers in 1959. You can spot her from the harbor, facing the Mediterranean like she’s still standing guard.

 

Inside, the atmosphere is solemn but welcoming. Light filters in from the upper windows. Candles flicker in the side chapels. Beneath the main altar is a 14th-century carving of the Virgin, believed to be the work of Pere Moragues, a Gothic sculptor of some local renown. It’s one of the oldest and most important Mary figures in the city—less famous than the Black Madonna of Montserrat, maybe, but far more connected to the everyday rhythms of Barcelona life.

 

I didn’t actually stay long. Just enough to walk the aisles, stand under the dome, and light a candle before heading back out. In a city that always feels like it’s performing—Gaudí! Flamenco! Selfies!—it felt good to be in a place that wasn’t trying to impress anyone. Just doing what it’s always done.


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