33 things you might not have known about the Sagrada Familia

BarcelonaOf the Sagrada Família, which these days is the protagonist because the Pope will commemorate on the 10th the centenary of the death of Antoni Gaudí, many books have been written. Almost everything is known or has been studied, but there are some curiosities that perhaps not everyone knows about the great temple that has now become the most emblematic image of Barcelona. We have selected 33, a symbolic number that appears in the magic square of the Passion facade, in which, by cheating a little, all the numbers in the grid, in any row, column, and diagonal, add up to 33, which is the supposed age of Christ when he died.

Throughout the 19th century, in a context of both liberal and workers' revolutions, and a rise in anticlericalism and scientific positivism, the Catholic Church promoted the cult of Saint Joseph as a model for Christian working families. In 1870, Pope Pius IX declared Saint Joseph patriarch of the Church, and in 1955 another pope, Pius XII, decided that May 1st would be celebrated as the feast of Saint Joseph the Worker to counteract socialist Labour Day. In Catalonia, from the outset, the cult had great devotion and at the initiative of the Spiritual Association of Devotees of Saint Joseph, created in 1866 by, among others, the bookseller Josep Maria Bocabella, a plot of land was purchased in 1881, for 172,000 pesetas of the time, in the municipality of Sant Martí de Provençals to build an expiatory temple for the sins of men, which would be paid for with alms and donations. It would be dedicated, however, to the entire Holy Family, as had already been requested years earlier by Father Josep Manyanet i Vives, whom John Paul II made a saint in 2004.

The first stone of the temple was laid on March 19, 1882, Saint Joseph's Day, with the blessing of Bishop José María de Urquinaona of Barcelona (the one in the square). The architect at that time was Francesc de Paula del Villar, who since 1877 had made several versions of the project, the last of which included a bell tower of about one hundred meters. He resigned in 1883, partly because he was lacking materials to reinforce the columns of the crypt, but above all due to disagreements with Bocabella's advisor, Joan Martorell, architect of the Palau de Pedralbes, who recommended Antoni Gaudí to continue the works, his disciple and collaborator with whom he had made a failed project for the facade of the cathedral.

In 1883, at 31 years old, Gaudí became the architect of the Sagrada Família, to which he dedicated 43 years of his life, the last twelve exclusively to the works of the temple. When he took over the work, only the crypt had been started, in which he immediately made changes. He dug a trench to let in natural light and changed the access from the center to two spiral side staircases.

The Sagrada Família has always been under construction, but it has also almost always been in use for worship. Even with the crypt half-finished, in 1885 Gaudí completed and enclosed a chapel, that of Saint Joseph, so that masses could be held there from the very beginning.

In 1890, a large anonymous donation was received for the temple, which encouraged Gaudí to change the project and dedicate the money to the construction of the Nativity facade. According to the writer Julià Bretos, author of the novel La dama sense rostre, who made the donation of more than half a million pesetas was Isabel Bolet, the widow of a merchant from the Sants neighborhood. 

The temple has 7.5 meters as its base module, which is the separation between the columns of the side naves and a twelfth part of the 90 meters of the interior length. All the main dimensions of the temple are multiples of this base module. And this is also the case with the height of the central towers, such as that of Jesus, which is 172.5 meters (23x7.5) or those of the evangelists, which is 135 (18x7.5).

Traditionally, churches are built with the apse facing east, which is where the sun rises and also the direction of Jerusalem. In the Sagrada Família, something that did not please Gaudí, the apse faces north, but he made the most of it by having the east facade, the Nativity, receive the first light of the day and the Passion facade, to the west, the last. Thus, the sun illuminates the various parts of the temple symbolically as well. The stained glass windows inside emphasize this symbolism.

 

When Gaudí died on June 10, 1926, only one of the four towers of the Nativity facade, that of Saint Barnabas, had been completed. He had left plans for the entire work and, above all, many models of different parts that served to explain how he intended to continue the temple, even though he was making modifications on the go. In 1936, an anarchist squad vandalized the temple and Gaudí's workshop, burning documents and destroying models. Thanks to the intervention of Companys' weakened government, the temple was saved in extremis from demolition, a fact that George Orwell lamented in his Homage to Catalonia. 

How has the work continued? Thanks to the remains of the models that were saved and the photographs that had been taken of them before. From the beginning, the plans, drawings, and photographs of the work were published both in the press and, above all, in the magazine El propagador de la Devoción de San José, which in 1948 was renamed Temple and is still published and has a web version in the form of a blog. Gaudí's disciples and friends also published, during his lifetime and after his death, the transcripts of his conversations, since he had only published one article – a critique of an exhibition, in 1881 – and no direct interviews are known either.

The Sagrada Família. Cathedral of light,

Although the number varies, according to the chief architect, around 150 people work on the temple complex, of which about fifty are in the architecture department and the rest in construction and management. According to Chiara Curti in the book La Sagrada Família. Catedral de la llum, while the crypt was being built, 200 workers were employed, but between 1914 and 1917, due to a lack of income, only 27 people were on the payroll. The workers involved in one way or another, however, are hundreds. Nevertheless, if we count those who work indirectly through external companies, such as cleaning and security services, the number reaches 1,600 workers.

Although more than twenty sculptors have been documented as having worked on the Sagrada Família in one way or another, among the most notable are Llorenç Matamala, a collaborator of Gaudí on the Nativity facade; Etsuro Sotoo, the Japanese sculptor who has worked on the doors and other elements of the same facade and in other parts of the cloister, with more than 500 interventions; Josep Maria Subirachs, who created the Passion facade and also the Glory doors and the interior Saint George; and Xavier Medina Campeny, who has created the representation of the four evangelists that have been installed on their towers.

Joan Vila-Grau spent almost twenty years creating the stained glass windows of the Sagrada Família, using the technique of trichromy and leaded glass, based on what his disciples had collected that Gaudí wanted. Thus, in the lower part there are stained glass windows with more vivid colors and in the upper part they have no color to allow sunlight to pass through. In the Nativity section, they are blue and green to capture the morning light and in the Passion section, yellow and red to capture the sunset light. The designs for the stained glass windows of the Nativity facade, still to be made, were also designed by him before his death in 2022 and are stored awaiting installation. 

Gaudí imagined the Sagrada Família also as a great musical instrument, both on the exterior – the towers would have tubular bells, about eighty, which would play like a great carillon that would be heard throughout the city – and on the interior, where he designed the layout of the organ and the choir that surrounds the entire nave to ensure the best acoustics. There is only one bell, it is not known if it was a test, on the tower of Sant Bernabé. But the sound that is heard now is a recording. The bells are planned to be placed once the work is finished. Inside, the acoustics have been tested in various celebrations and on June 10th it will be played again in the Pope's mass with the participation of 600 singers.

Gaudí foresaw, as he explained to his followers, that the temple should also be a kind of great lighthouse. Thus, there would be two spotlights on the four towers of the evangelists, one that would go towards the ground and the other towards the tower of Jesus, which would also illuminate and send rays of light to the entire city on great occasions. At the same time, the star crowning the tower of the Virgin Mary, more humble, has already been illuminated on special occasions.

In some cases, the temple workers are family. This was the case for sculptors Llorenç and Joan Matamala, and also for architects Lluís Bonet and Josep Bonet, in both cases father and son; but also for sculptor Mercè Riba, whose great-grandfather was a sculptor on the Nativity facade, or for Laia Vinaixa, head of the temple's documentation center, who is a direct descendant of Josep Maria Bocabella, who was the father of her great-great-grandmother.

As befits the invocation of Saint Joseph, whose symbol is a saw (which, together with Mary's mantle and Jesus' cross, forms the symbols of the Sagrada Família), the temple pays homage to trades in various parts. Even Jesus' cradle on the Nativity facade is a stonemason's basket. There have been many anonymous artisans, and others who in recent times have played an important role in some aspects, such as Jordi Barbany, for the stone treatment, Toni and Guillem Cumella, for the interior mosaics of the nave and towers, or Enric Pla Montferrer, for the wrought iron elements. 

On February 20 of this year, the Sagrada Família officially became the tallest religious building in Europe, reaching a height of 172.5 meters. This is if, as its special master plan does, the zero level of the temple is considered to be the interior pavement of the nave. As explained on X @efemarq (Architecture Ephemerides), if street level, which is how most buildings are calculated, were taken into account, the height would be 175.5 meters because the nave is on a three-meter platform. And if sea level were taken into account, the height would be 207.5 meters because the level of the area where it is located is approximately 32 meters above sea level. That is to say, in relation to sea level, the Sagrada Família is taller than Montjuïc, which is 177.7 meters high.

Many writers have been inspired by the Sagrada Família, but perhaps the closest are two Joans. The first, Joan Maragall, a friend of Gaudí and one of the main defenders of the temple. In his Oda nova a Barcelona, from 1909, he writes: "On the east side, a mystical example / like a giant flower a temple blooms / amazed to have been born here. Amidst such a grumpy and mean people / who laugh and mock and fight and boast / against all that is human and divine. / But, amidst the misery and rage and smoke, / the temple (it doesn't matter!) rises and prospers / waiting for faithful followers who are yet to come". The other Joan is the poet Joan Margarit, who, as an architect specializing in structures, calculated its foundations and directly participated in the construction of the main nave of the temple; in some of his poems his professional experience is very present.

Gaudí was the first guide of the Sagrada Família. There is evidence that he enjoyed showing it very much to both children and distinguished visitors, such as the papal nuncio Francesco Ragonesi. However, it was difficult for him to switch languages. To King Alfonso XIII in 1904, as well as to Miguel de Unamuno in 1906, he spoke only in Catalan. The meeting with the Basque writer, both with strong but divergent religiosity, was tense, according to chronicles. One saying “I don’t like it, I don’t like it”, the other responding to him “No Spaniard likes it”.

On June 7, 2026, Gaudí was run over by a tram on Gran Via, near Bailèn street, when, having finished work at the temple, he was walking, as he did every day, to the church of Sant Felip Neri. In this church in the Gothic Quarter, he had his confessor and his religious community, the Oratorians. His friend Lluís Millet was the director of the chapel where Gregorian chant was sung. The devotion to this Italian saint, who is also present in the Sagrada Família, was reflected in two paintings by Joan Llimona in which Gaudí modeled for the representation of the saint.

Just as Gaudí used local people or his workers as models for the sculptures on the Nativity facade, Subirachs was inspired by Gaudí's photograph at the Corpus procession – one of the best known of a man not at all fond of photographs: there are only about thirty of them – to represent him on the Nativity facade, in the sculptural group of Veronica.

The protest against the continuation of the Sagrada Família, always latent, had a peak moment in July 1990, when the magazine

The famous figure of the young man with an Orsini bomb, the one that exploded in the Liceu attack, is well known, represented on the Roser portal, the interior facade that faces the cloister from the Nativity. On the other hand, there is another representation of temptations: a young woman with a bag of money. Anarchism and prostitution, two of the evils that were to be atoned for in the temple. In 1936, the Roser portal was among the most vandalized by the anarchists.

After the Civil War, the works of the Sagrada Família were paralyzed, at a minimum. In March 1955, however, the first collection was made, a fundraising campaign to contribute to the construction of the temple, which later became an annual event, usually coinciding with March 19, Saint Joseph's Day, when there was also usually an open house to show what had been done and when donations were encouraged. In a diffuse way, at the end of the 90s, due to the increase in visitors driven by the Olympic Games, the collection as such disappeared. Today, collections are no longer made, but tickets continue to be constant as contributions to the works. And the open houses are now usually held coinciding with La Mercè, with tickets that are raffled among Barcelonians.

The protest against the continuation of the Sagrada Família, always latent, had a peak moment in July 1990, when the magazine Artics, edited by Vicenç Altaió, convened a civic protest in front of the Passion facade in which a whole series of city personalities climbed to a tribune to insult or criticize the sculptures that Josep Maria Subirachs was making. Years before, in 1965, the same sculptor had been one of the signatories of the manifesto against the continuation of the works, published in La Vanguardia, which had also been signed by Tàpies, Bohigas, Le Corbusier and Joan Miró, among others. 

Despite the magnitude of the temple's construction, there is little public record of accidents during the work. The most serious occurred in 1994, when at the temple's museum a child touched a plaster mold of a capital, weighing about 200 kilos, and it fell on him, causing his death. Less serious, because it happened at night, was the fall of two enormous stones on a workshop while the central part was being built. In that case, in the year 2000, there were no injuries. In 2011 there was also an intentional fire in the crypt that did not cause serious injuries.

In 2002, the Year of Gaudí was celebrated on the occasion of the architect's 150th anniversary. It marked a turning point. In 2001, the board's budget was €10.2 million and the number of visits was 1.5 million people. By the end of 2002, visitors had increased by almost 30% and revenue also grew proportionally. In 2025, 4.8 million visitors were reached and revenue was €134.5 million. 

Since 2003, there has been a pair of peregrine falcons in one of the towers of the Sagrada Familia as part of the reintroduction project for this species that the Barcelona City Council, together with Galanthus Natura, launched in 1999. There is a camera through which you can follow live what happens inside the nest. Currently, eight pairs of falcons that breed here have been identified in the city of Barcelona. In fact, within the framework of the species reintroduction project in the city, 250 chicks have been born to date, 56 of which in the towers of the Sagrada Familia.

In 2005, seven Gaudí buildings were declared a UNESCO World Heritage site: Park Güell, La Pedrera, Casa Batlló, Palau Güell, Crypta Güell, Casa Vicens, and Sagrada Família. However, only the part built during Gaudí's lifetime was included in the temple, basically the crypt and the Nativity facade. The declaration implies controls that the construction board wanted to avoid. Since 2014, entities or those responsible for these buildings, and others not on the UNESCO list, have been integrated into the council for the promotion and dissemination of Gaudí's work, Consell Gaudí, an advisory body of the Department of Culture of the Generalitat de Catalunya, which has promoted the celebration of Gaudí Year 2026.

When the decision was made to run the AVE tunnel through Mallorca street, there was a lot of controversy because it was feared that it would shake the temple and, above all, that it would prevent the construction of the Glory facade. As a precaution, the foundations of the facade and the nave were already in place, but in addition, a physical barrier of 120 piles was made to separate the foundations from the area where the large tunnel boring machine would pass, which was located at almost 30 meters deep. The temple tried to stop Foment's tunnel in court, but lost and in 2013 it entered service without incidents.

Although it may seem strange, the Sagrada Família has gone 137 years without a building permit. It had been requested in 1885 from the now-defunct municipality of Sant Martí de Provençals, but it was never processed. After years of controversy, the situation was regularized in June 2019 when, after agreeing on a special plan for the temple, Ada Colau's government agreed to grant the license in exchange for 4.6 million euros. In addition, it had to compensate the City Council for urban and transport expenses with €36 million to be paid over 10 years.

In front of the Nativity facade, a circular square is being completed on Marina street, between Mallorca and Provença streets, which revives the idea of landscape architect Nicolau Rubió i Tudurí from 1977, also the author of the adjacent Gaudí square, which is landscaped. His uncle had been a collaborator of Gaudí at the Palma cathedral and accompanied him on a quick trip to Maó, where he was received by Marià, the landscape architect's father. The remodeling is part of the action plan for the Sagrada Família's High Traffic Area (EGA), which includes a set of municipal actions to decongest public space.