Gaudi's unfinished work

[Sam Boskey]

Monday's Gazette

It will never be finished

Bar­celona's unfin­ished basilica hits new heights des­pite delays

• ROSA SULLEIRO

JOSEP LAGO / AFP

Bar­celona's Sagrada Familia, some 140 years in the mak­ing, has grown to become the world's tallest church.

• Bar­celona's etern­ally unfin­ished Sagrada Familia has grown to become the world's tallest church, but a con­flict with res­id­ents threatens to delay the fin­ish date for the monu­ment designed over 140 years ago.

Swathed in scaf­fold­ing on a plat­form 54 metres above the ground, an enorm­ous stone slab is being pre­pared to com­plete the cross of the cent­ral Jesus Christ tower.

A huge yel­low crane will bring it up to the sum­mit, which will stand at 172.5 metres and has snatched the record as the world's tallest church from Ger­many's Ulm Min­ster.

The basilica's peak will delib­er­ately fall short of the 177 metres of Bar­celona's Montjuic hill, in accord­ance with the devout Cath­olic faith of famed Catalan archi­tect Ant­oni Gaudi, who took charge of the project in 1883.

“Gaudi did not want to exceed that height” because the Montjuic hill was the work of God, accord­ing to Maur­i­cio Cor­tes, a senior archi­tect work­ing on the con­struc­tion site.

When the struc­ture is com­pleted and the scaf­fold­ing dis­mantled, the tower will be blessed on June 10 to coin­cide with the cen­ten­ary of the death of Gaudi, whose body lies in the crypt.

The Vat­ican has not yet con­firmed whether Pope Leo XIV will accept an invit­a­tion to the tower's inaug­ur­a­tion.

“Once the cross is installed, the project will be nearly 80-per-cent com­plete,” Jordi Fauli, the archi­tect who has led the work for more than a dec­ade, told AFP.

RESIDENTS IN UPROAR

The con­struc­tion board, a private canon­ical found­a­tion, had inten­ded to com­plete work on the Sagrada Familia, con­sidered the world's most fam­ous unfin­ished build­ing, this year.

But the COVID-19 pan­demic para­lyzed the tour­ism industry — and with it the key source of income of the most-vis­ited of Spain's monu­ments that charge an entrance fee.

Tour­ists from around the world are now flood­ing back: 4.8 mil­lion vis­it­ors arrived in 2024, boost­ing the cof­fers of the basilica, which relies on the tak­ings as well as private dona­tions.

Yet the board is reti­cent to set a new fin­ish date for the remain­ing work, includ­ing the divis­ive Glory Facade and its four bell towers.

The board's plan to pre­cede the front entrance by a large flight of steps and a square would entail des­troy­ing up to two blocks of homes. The res­id­ents have spent years fight­ing to halt the plan.

“Our houses are legal,” reads a sign hanging from one of the threatened build­ings.

“The Sagrada Familia owns a plot of land; it does not own the rest. So why should it reach my home?” said Sal­vador Bar­roso, pres­id­ent of an asso­ci­ation for res­id­ents affected by the con­struc­tion work.

Res­id­ents say their flats were pur­chased leg­ally, and no one warned them that the area could form part of the Sagrada Familia site.

Bar­roso acquired his home in the late 1980s and only star­ted hear­ing about the stair­way project from 1992, when the Bar­celona Olympics trans­formed the city's image as a tour­ist mag­net.

“What this is really about is busi­ness,” Bar­roso said of the expan­sion.

`FAITHFUL' TO GAUDI

The res­id­ents have also ques­tioned the stairs' place in Gaudi's ori­ginal plan.

Crit­ics fre­quently point out that the archi­tect's mod­els were mostly des­troyed dur­ing the Span­ish Civil War (1936-1939) and say the church has lost its cre­ator's essence.

Lead archi­tect Fauli, speak­ing to AFP next to vari­ous mod­els of the Sagrada Familia in a room away from the droves of tour­ists, insisted that “we are, in all parts of the project, faith­fully fol­low­ing what Gaudi wanted.”

Other doc­u­ments were saved, and a por­tion of the mod­els were recon­struc­ted after­wards by Gaudi's dis­ciples, he added.

“Gaudi was an extraordin­ary archi­tect, and it is worth fol­low­ing his project and fin­ish­ing it,” said Fauli, who hopes to find “a fair solu­tion” for the Glory Facade.

Bar­celona's town hall will medi­ate the con­flict and says any agree­ment must guar­an­tee a solu­tion for the res­id­ents, in a city already under­go­ing a severe hous­ing crisis.

But after years of dis­agree­ments, an end to almost a cen­tury and a half of work at the Sagrada Familia seems closer than ever.

“I hope the dis­pute is resolved. What I can­not say is whether it will be resolved in the courts or ... sat at a table,” said Bar­roso.