Max Searl: Montserrat
Montserrat, literally meaning ‘serrated', is a mountain range roughly thirty miles from Barcelona, in the Catalonian region of Spain. The abbey Santa Maria de Montserrat is home to the Order of Saint Benedictine, where there has been a monastery since the 11th century, being rebuilt between the 19th and 20th Century. Home to over 70 Monks, the mountains are laced with Christian iconography, from ceramic works, statues and graffiti. ‘Montserrat’ looks at religious iconography and how it is situated within the landscape, sometimes juxtaposing, sometimes harmonising.
During the Second World War, the abbey was used as a sanctuary by scholars, artists and politicians. Since the 1940’d the abbey and the mountains have been seen as a symbol of Catalan nationalism, with a mass in 1947 attended by 100,000 people delivered in the Catalan language, defying the Spanish government's language policy.
