A "monument to Catalan identity" always under discussion

BarcelonaThat the Sagrada Família has a strong political charge in itself has been demonstrated this very week by the controversy over the use of Catalan in the blessing of the tower of Jesus Christ by Pope Leo XIV on June 10. The poet Joan Maragall already said in 1905 in an article in Diario de Barcelona: "The Sagrada Família is the monument of Catalan identity in Barcelona, it is the symbol of eternally ascending piety, it is the concretization in stone of the yearning for height, it is the image of the popular soul". The symbology of Antoni Gaudí's work had a political and social message from its beginnings, not just a religious one. It connects with the unique personality of the architect, a deeply Catalanist, conservative man involved in social Catholicism.

The expiatory temple arose from the initiative of the bookseller Joan Bocabella and the Association of Devotees of Saint Joseph to honor the saint, as well as the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ, the Nazareth family that the Church wanted to promote at that time as the example of the Christian worker. Its launch was in 1882, in full swing of Catalanism but also of revolutionary labor movements and positivist liberalism, and if at first it was managed by Bocabella's association, from 1895 the direction of the construction was in the hands of the diocese of Barcelona, which constituted the Construction Board, always presided over by the bishop or archbishop but with members and patrons from civil society.

Doctor in biblical sciences Armand Puig, advisor to the temple, comments that Gaudí shares the objectives of the Renaixença as a "cultural awakening of the Catalan people" following the triad of "faith, homeland, and love", but the basilica also has a social dimension. "Gaudí always worked to end the dangers of violence, the sin of the workers, and greed, the sin of the employers, and he captures this in the Roser portal of the Sagrada Família, where a worker is seen who wants to throw an Orsini bomb like the one at the Liceu [thrown in 1893] and looks towards the Virgin Mary for protection and not to throw it, while on the other side there is a person and a sack full of money with a devil".

In the political arena, Teresa Montserrat Sala, an art history professor at the University of Barcelona, asserts that the temple shares the same logic as the Sagrat Cor in Paris, an ultra-Catholic church that began construction in 1875 to "redeem the sins of the Paris Commune," the revolutionary era, and the distancing from the Church. "The Sagrada Família is also an expiatory temple for sins, for violence, for bombs...", she concludes. But Sala remarks that it also aims to "defend a model of family".

In the same vein, Giovanni Cattini, a history professor at the UB, states that the basilica is "one more piece in the construction of the Catalan symbolic imaginary that must be read within Modernism, the culmination of what a Catholic sector seeks" and the reconfiguration of "Catalan plasticity". In his opinion, the basilica cannot be detached from its context: the revolutionary sexennium in Spain, the growth of atheist republicanism, and a more de-Christianized society. In the 19th century, there were many "re-Christianization campaigns," which were driven by movements such as that of Leo XIII with Marian devotion for the millennium of Montserrat, the claim of Ripoll's architectural legacy, or the impetus for the Sagrada Família.

Inspiration

Puig also sees that the small homeland, Camp de Tarragona, and "the great homeland", Catalonia, are always present in Gaudí's work, as in the Nativity scene and the way of celebrating Christmas in the Principality on the Nativity facade. But his role in politics was clear: "When they propose he go on lists with the Lliga, he replies to Enric Prat de la Riba that he serves Catalonia with architecture". Social justice, social peace, and the absence of violence are three keys to his conception of the world, with Pope Leo XIII and his Rerum novarum, Gaudí's artistic and religious visionIn fact, Gaudí had expressed "adhesion" and had visited Prat de la Riba in prison for his Catalanism. "In 1920, his head was opened in a tribute to Marshal Joffre [North Catalan and hero of the First World War, claimed by Catalanism] and the police arrested him in 1924 when he wanted to go to mass on September Eleventh and refused to speak in Spanish with the police", adds Cattini.

Sala sees in Gaudí's work "Catalanism rooted in what it means to build a country", in this case "a Bible in stone". But he also recalls Gaudí's personal commitment, who "never stopped speaking Catalan even during the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera". The architect's political stance is clear, as seen in a conversation with King Alfonso XIII: "He addressed him in Catalan, it made the newspapers. He was a Catalanist like Domènech i Muntaner, but of a conservative bent", he maintains. Imbricated in the brotherhood of artists working in the service of religion, Gaudí also subscribes to the motto of conservative Catholic Catalanism of Bishop Josep Torras i Bages of Vic: "Catalonia will be Christian or it will not be".

Evolution

What is today the tallest church in Christendom, in its beginnings it was difficult to get going and "it takes so long to build because it doesn't have the recognition it has now", according to Cattini. Proof of this is that Maragall complained 121 years ago that "resources to continue the work were running out" and warned that a stoppage would be "more disastrous than when a bomb explodes in a public place or when a hundred factories have to close" because "a people without identity is nothing and has no right to anything". After Gaudí's death, his successors continued the work until the workshop was set on fire in 1936 by an anarchist squad. Models and documents were burned which took years to be reconstructed. The Franco regime of the fifties tried to appropriate it – during the International Eucharistic Congress of 1952 it hosted a massive mass – and collections were resumed to continue the work which, finally, since the nineties, has accelerated thanks to its tourist attraction. The continuation of the temple, however, has always also been a cause of political controversy between the left – generally critical – and the right – in favor of continuing the work –, which has been reflected in the treatment it has received from the various town councils. Right now, however, this division is not so clear. It was with Ada Colau's government that the building permit for the temple was agreed upon, and the mass that the pope will officiate will be the first attended officially by Pedro Sánchez since he has been president of the Spanish government.

The Catalan philosopher Francesc Pujols, the same one who said that "a day will come when Catalans traveling the world will have everything paid for" wrote in 1927, The artistic and religious vision of Gaudí, a text in which he defended the architect and said that the Sagrada Família would be "the swan song of Catholicism". It cannot be said that he has been very visionary. At least, Catalans still have to pay.