How many old photo albums lying around houses hold pictures taken on rooftops? Grandparents or parents would climb up there with those cameras that had limited technology (they were called "portrait machines"), searching for the light that was lacking in the apartment so the photo wouldn't come out dark, and a simple background that the street couldn't provide. I suppose they must have looked for their own horizon reference point in each location. In Barcelona, it was clear: the Sagrada Família, with those first four bare towers of the Nativity façade on Sardenya Street, which were the image of the city for almost forty years. The image was so fixed that for many Barcelonans, those four spires were enough.
In recent decades, the buildings have grown as fast as children, until now, when Gaudí's work has reached its peak. The architectural crowning achievement at over 172 meters high gives Barcelona a new reason for monumental singularity and reaffirms the role of the Sagrada Família as a universal Catalan stone landmark, in a world where, however many centuries pass, the fascination with skyscrapers continues. Now the construction must extend along Mallorca Street, a delicate matter because to build the staircase of the main façade, the temple will have to leave, for the first time, the block in the Eixample district where it has been built, soar above the street, and land where there are currently apartment buildings. Work has been underway for years to achieve this with agreement and compensation, but controversy will always accompany a church so unlike anything else, a church that will inevitably never leave anyone indifferent, neither critics nor admirers.
