Joan Narciso i Porta (2-IX-1911 - 11-IX-2006)

Joan Narciso i Porta was born on September 2, 1911 in the suburb of Poblet -as then it was called the core of houses that was growing around the Sagrada Família-, in the street València square with Sardenya. He studied in the schools of the Temple and he was an acolyte in the Crypt. This way, he saw every day to lower Gaudí to hear mass and to receive communion. And that he was putting alms often in the moneybox of the stairs for the poor. Also he knew that, beside scratching the own pocket, he was asking for money the friendship and to persons that he was visiting. The children were playing to football in the field that existed where the front of the Passion raises, where an enormous eucalyptus was growing. Playing, they were observing as don Anton was accustomed to go out up to the lunchtime, about one o'clock. They had very much respect; always, when he was going out of the Temple, they were stopping the ball and were hoping that he was passing. Joan, at the age of eight, was a child of abundant and curled hair. One morning, Gaudí stopped and indicated him in order that he should approach. He put the hand in the head and asked him: -Would you like to be a model of the sculptor? Joan did not know what was and he asked it: -Model, I? Don Anton insisted him: -Yes, father Parés will explain it to you. Every Thursday evening, which had holiday in the college, they were sending him to Joan Matamala's workshop, in the street Mallorca square with Sicília. They were sitting him in a little chair on a dais and were giving him candies to spend the moment. They had to warn constant that not mover, but was not becoming to him heavy: he was amusing itself looking at the finished sculptures or to way to do: geese, hens, serpents, doves, many little animals. Joan Narciso is the child of the choir of infantile angels who surrounds the Birth, formed by eight angels girls and he. Gaudí wanted to show that the angel child was very bold and the first one wanted to touch Jesus of all, before that the angels girls. Because of it, he has the legs stretched towards the Birth, coming before that the angels girls. The sculptor Etsuro Sotoo ended the front of the Birth in the Christmas of the year 2000. He wanted to sculpt this figure with Joan's facial features, extracted of his photos of when he was eight years old, since he was the model chosen personally by Gaudí.