Time July 8, 2019C
CLiPPeD TO THe eND OF A GiANT ReD
crane, the 25-ton panel—a marvel of
stone and steel—begins its slow ascent.
For the tourists gawking from the Barce-
lona street below, it’s an astonishing sight,
this massive, chiseled slab dangling from
a cord as it rises up the side of one of the
world’s best known monuments. But it’s
even more amazing for Jaume Oromí. As
one of the heads of construction for the
Sagrada Familia, Oromí has watched for
months as, piece by piece, the towers that
will one day remake the Barcelona sky-
line gradually rise into the heavens. “This
is always the moment of maximum ten-
sion,” he says, gesturing to the panel as it
sways 100 ft. above his head. “Intellectu-
ally, you know how it works, but there’s
still something about getting that many
tons in the air that seems miraculous.”
The same could be said for the Sagrada
Familia as a whole. More than 130 years
after the first stone was laid—and with
the proper building permits finally in
place—the end is in sight for the Bar-
celona basilica. Thanks to an influx of
funding, some striking innovations and
a lot of old-fashioned craftsmanship, the
famously unfinished church is now on
schedule to be completed in 2026, the
100th anniversary of the death of its ar-
chitect, Antoni Gaudí. Today, more than
two dozen architects are working on the
project—most of them local Catalans—
and 200 workers in total are involved in
construction. But making the deadline
will mean overcoming technical compli-
cations, theological doubts and several
blocks’ worth of outraged residents.
At a time when Barcelona is
grappling with an unprecedented tourist
influx that is challenging the idea of
what the city should be, the plans for
the church risk deepening social and
political divisions. And just like the
reconstruction of Notre Dame in Paris,
the project to finish the Sagrada Familia
has triggered impassioned debates
over the proper role of iconic historical
buildings in a modern city.
But perhaps the greatest test will be
determining its visionary creator’s inten-
tions. “Gaudí left us the path,” says Jordi
Faulí, the head architect now charged
with the formidable task of completing
a church that will have taken more than
seven times as long to build as the great
pyramid at Giza. “Sometimes, though,
we’ve had to work hard to find it.”When GaudÍ died suddenly at the age
of 73, struck down by a tram on a busy
Barcelona street in 1926, the architect had
been working on the Templo Expiatorio
de la Sagrada Familia for 43 years. A re-
ligious organization hired the diocesan
architect, Francisco de Paula del Villar,
to build what was originally planned as
a typical neo-Gothic church. But when
Villar resigned a year after construction
began, the project passed to Gaudí. Al-
though he would go on to build several
of Barcelona’s most iconic structures, in-
cluding La Pedrera and Parc Güell, at the
time, he had little more than a few lamp-
posts and a shrine to his name.
It didn’t take him long, however, to
transform the Sagrada Familia’s original
plans into an extraordinarily ambitious
undertaking: a structure that would com-
bine natural forms and Christian symbol-
ism into a temple that, as Faulí puts it,
“expressed meaning not only through
the sculpture and other decorations but
through the architecture itself.” Gaudí
was not a practicing Catholic when he
received the assignment. But he became
increasingly devout as he worked on it,
eventually coming to see the very struc-
ture as a vehicle for Christian evangelism.
“My client,” Gaudí reportedly said,
“is not in a hurry.” Aware that the Sa-
grada Familia would never be finished
in his lifetime, he left extensive draw-
ings and models for a building that,
when complete, would fill an entire city
block. He insisted on completing the Na-
tivity entrance—even though there was
not yet a nave to enter into—because he
knew it would serve as a kind of inspira-
tional advert for what was to come. He
did not quite achieve the goal: that facade
would not be finished until 1936. Other-
wise, only the crypt, the apse’s facade and
a single tower were complete at the time
of his death. Everything else, includingthe remaining 17 towers and the central
nave, remained undone.
For a long time, it stayed that way.
During Spain’s 1936–39 civil war, con-
struction stopped, and much of Gaudí’s
preparatory work was destroyed. Even
once it resumed, there were long stretches
from the 1940s through the 1990s when
insufficient funds— construction de-
pended entirely on private donations—
slowed or halted altogether the work.
When Faulí joined the team as a juniorWorld