As you know, I enjoy traveling abroad each summer. This year I came across the most beautiful failure I have ever seen in Barcelona, Spain called Park Guell. In the early 1900’s, Eusebi Guell hired the renowned modernism architect Antoni Gaudi to create a garden and public green spaces for a new housing development on a hill just outside of Barcelona. This housing development wasn’t a successful one, as the park at that time was far from town and only 2 houses of the proposed 60 were ever sold. However, it was here where Gaudi honed his skills as an architect/engineer and learned how to curve walls and bring the color and tile into his work that we see in his masterpiece La Sagrada Familia Church.

Although it was a failure as a real estate development, it is a monumental tourist success. When there was free admission, an estimated 9 million tourists per year would visit the park. In 2013, they established an entrance fee of 9 euros per person so they could maintain the site. Last year they had 3 million tourists visit the park for an annual budget of 27 million euros per year. You can’t call this project a failure now. Time has a way of giving us all perspective about what success and failure looks like.