Spain: New Momentum for “Sagrada Família” Basilica

November 12, 2023, was an autumn evening unlike others in Barcelona (Spain)—and for good reason: that evening, four towers 132 meters tall rose above the Sagrada Família Basilica.

They symbolize the Tetramorph, the prophetic vision revealed by the Holy Ghost to the prophet Ezekiel, and which consists in the representation of the four Evangelists under their allegorical forms (the man for St. Matthew, the ox for St. Luke, the lion for St. Mark, and the eagle for St. John).

Now 13 of the 18 planned towers are completed. Four other towers will be consecrated to the apostles and a last one to Our Lord, that one rising to a height of 172.5 meters—one meter shorter than Montjuïc hill, which dominates Barcelona: so the architect Antoni Gaudi decided, in order to highlight the fact that the work of the creature cannot surpass that of God, the Creator.

With the completion of the Tetramorph, the construction of the Sagrada Família reached a decisive stage: slowed by COVID, the construction of the basilica explicitly designed as an expiatory temple finally enters its last phase.  

This is a phase which must all the same go on until 2034, the year anticipated for the definitive completion of a building whose first stone was blessed in 1882.

A Basilica with the Flavor of a Medieval Cathedral

This is not the only tour de force for this basilica solely financed by private donations since the beginning. The first architect of the Sagrada Família—Francisco de Villar—would be replaced in 1883 by Antoni Gaudí: it is his name posterity will remember.

Designing all the plans for a building whose gigantism plunges us back to the time of cathedrals—some would say to that of the pyramids!—Gaudí dedicated himself night and day to his work before his death in 1926, hit by a streetcar.

And yet, nothing would discourage the builders, whether it be political crises or even the civil war which particularly devastated Spain.

With a unique history and an equally unique style that the art historians of the Iberian Peninsula call “Catalan Modernisme” or “Catalan Art Nouvea”: the Sagrada Família mixes certain neo-Gothic elements with dizzying asymmetrical forms, where everything has symbolic value.

All that remains is to find an end point for this work: “within ten years,” assures Esteve Camps, president of the building’s board of directors, as long as construction does not encounter any “major problem.”