The visit that Pope Leo XIV will make to Barcelona to bless the great central tower of Jesus Christ, coinciding with the centenary of Gaudí’s death, on June 10, once again places the building at the center of international attention, a temple that receives between 14,000 and 15,000 people every day.
Sixteen years ago, in 2010, it was consecrated by Benedict XVI, and with that, the building ceased to be merely an artistic work under construction, becoming also a liturgical and active temple. Now, the visit of his successor, Leo XIV, to bless the central tower of Jesus Christ, marks another historic moment.
The ceremony – on June 10 – coinciding with the centenary of Gaudí’s death, culminates one of the most important stages of a construction that began 144 years ago and that cannot yet be considered completely finished.
It is not the final conclusion of the building, but it is the culmination of one of the most ambitious ideas conceived by Gaudí: to raise an artificial mountain of stone, light and geometry in the heart of Barcelona.
Few modern constructions have generated such a complex relationship between architecture, religion, technique and time as the Basilica of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.
It is not just a temple; it is a long-term constructive experiment, a geometric investigation turned into stone, and a reflection on nature taken to the limit of architectural possibilities.
Begun in 1882 and still under construction more than a century later, Gaudí’s most famous work is a virtually unique case in the history of Western architecture: a building conceived by a single creator, executed by several subsequent generations and developed over three different centuries.
The project that Gaudí inherited and transformed
The Sagrada Familia was not originally conceived by Gaudí. The project began under the direction of the architect Francisco de Paula del Villar, who had designed a relatively conventional Neo-Gothic temple. However, after disagreements with the developers, Villar abandoned the project in 1883, and the young Antoni Gaudí took over. That change forever altered the course of architectural history.
Gaudí initially retained some elements of the original idea, but soon completely redesigned the project. What was intended to be a Neo-Gothic church became a radically different work. The Catalan architect understood that historical styles had exhausted their possibilities. His intention was not to copy medieval architecture, but rather “to discover the geometric laws present in nature and translate them into construction.”
For over forty years he worked obsessively on the temple. In the last stage of his life, he practically abandoned all other commissions to concentrate exclusively on the basilica. He lived on the premises, within the workshop, and transformed the building into the synthesis of all his structural, symbolic, and religious research.
Inspired by nature
The apparent strangeness of the Sagrada Familia does not stem from a desire for extravagance. On the contrary, Gaudí rejected arbitrary decoration. His aim was to build according to the same laws that govern the growth of trees, mountains, bones, or mineral crystals.
The interior columns function like forking tree trunks. The ceilings evoke the structure of a forest. The hyperboloids, paraboloids, and ruled surfaces that appear throughout the building are not mere ornamental features, but mathematical solutions designed to better distribute loads.
Gaudí asserted that the straight line belongs to man and the curve to God, a phrase that encapsulates a significant part of his thinking. For him, nature represented the perfect work of the creator, and architecture should learn from it rather than impose artificial forms upon it.
That’s why the Sagrada Familia seems so different from traditional cathedrals. It doesn’t follow the logic of the heavy wall with a classic Gothic vault. Rather, it functions as an organism where each element has a structural, symbolic, and spatial function simultaneously.
What Gaudí saw built
When Gaudí was killed by a tram in June 1926, he barely saw a small part of his project completed—less than a quarter of the building. However, that part was crucial.
The crypt, the apse, and a large part of the main or Nativity façade, with its four towers—the façade considered most faithful to the architect’s vision—were completed. Indeed, the Nativity façade is probably the best direct testimony to Gaudí’s vision. Its extraordinary sculptural density, the abundance of plant and animal motifs, and the complex integration of architecture and religious symbolism clearly reveal his creative universe.
Gaudí knew he would not see the work finished.
That is why he dedicated years to developing mock-ups, drawings and three-dimensional models intended to guide future generations.
The destruction of the plans
One of the defining events in the temple’s history occurred after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. Following the outbreak in July 1936, anti-clerical groups set fire to the Sagrada Familia and raided the workshop where Antoni Gaudí had worked for decades. The fire destroyed a large part of the plans, drawings, photographs, documents, and plaster models that contained the keys to completing the temple.
The loss was especially serious because Gaudí developed many of his ideas using three-dimensional models rather than conventional plans. For years it was believed that the disappearance of that material could make it impossible to continue the work as the architect had conceived it.
That loss profoundly altered the future of the building. Subsequent architects had to piece together the available information from recovered remains and scattered documents.
This circumstance explains one of the great controversies that have accompanied the building for decades: to what extent the current Sagrada Familia really represents Gaudí’s will.
Those in charge of the works maintain that the preserved documentation allows one to follow the main lines of the project with sufficient fidelity; however, other historians consider that some contemporary decisions necessarily imply interpretations that Gaudí never fully developed.
The architects who continued the work
After Gaudí’s death, architects continued the project. Domènec Sugrañes was the first, followed by figures such as Francesc Quintana, Isidre Puig Boada, and Lluís Bonet i Garí. For decades, progress was slow and intermittent due to economic problems and the consequences of the Civil War, which left the entire country mired in poverty.
Decades after the destruction of the plans and models, reconstruction was based on the surviving fragments. A key figure was Jordi Bonet i Armengol, responsible for significant structural advancements and the construction of much of the interior. Between 1985 and 2012, he directed the crucial phase in which a large part of the basilica’s interior was built, culminating in its consecration in 2010.
In 2012, the management passed to Jordi Faulí, the current architect, and under his leadership the large central towers have been built and the construction process has been significantly accelerated thanks to the use of advanced digital technologies.
“The work is progressing slowly because my client is in no hurry,” Gaudí is said to have replied when questioned about the slow pace of construction. This quote was recorded by Gaudí’s disciples and collaborators and has been reproduced in numerous historical sources.
The delay in construction is due to a combination of historical, technical, and economic factors. First, the Sagrada Familia was conceived as an expiatory temple, meaning it was financed exclusively through private donations. For decades, resources were scarce and irregular.
Secondly, due to interruptions caused by political conflicts, especially the Civil War which destroyed essential documentation and forced the reconstruction of part of the project from scratch.
The enormous technical complexity of the design also played a role. Many of the solutions envisioned by Gaudí were difficult to implement with the technology available at the beginning of the 20th century, so some could only be fully developed using contemporary computer tools, three-dimensional modeling, and digital fabrication of structural elements.
And although it may not seem like it, in this case, tourism has been one of the main drivers of its construction. The millions of annual visitors have provided funding over the last few decades that allowed the work to be accelerated.
From the original idea to the current one
The complete project conceived by Gaudí includes eighteen towers. Twelve represent the apostles. Four correspond to the evangelists. One is dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and the tallest symbolizes Jesus Christ.
When Gaudí died, only the four towers of the Nativity façade were finished. Today, 14 of the 18 planned towers have been built, and the recently completed tower of Jesus Christ reaches 172.5 meters in height, making it the tallest religious building in the world.
Some smaller towers still need to be completed, and above all, the monumental Glory façade, considered the main entrance to the complex.
Is the current Sagrada Familia faithful to Gaudí’s original design?
This question remains open among architects and historians. The overall structure, spatial distribution, symbolic organization, and many of the geometric solutions clearly reflect Gaudí’s vision. However, subsequent interventions by later generations have introduced their own interpretations.
The Passion façade, sculpted by Josep Maria Subirachs in an expressionistic and angular style, is one of the most debated examples. For some critics, it represents a break with Gaudí’s aesthetic. For others, it adequately expresses the drama that Gaudí sought for that section of the temple.
The reality is that the Sagrada Familia has become a shared work between an original creator and those who have tried to materialize a vision that never comes to completion.
Its construction never stopped in time. Its building has survived wars, technological changes, generations of architects, and cultural transformations without losing the power of the question that originated it: how far can architecture go when it tries to reproduce the laws of nature and turn them into habitable space?
The Sagrada Familia remains an unfinished building… but perhaps that condition is already an inseparable part of its identity.
Amalia Gonzalez Manjavacas
(Art Historian)
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