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 by Pope Leo XIV on June 10. As the poet Joan Maragall said in 1905 in an article in the 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 symbolism 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 family of Nazareth that the Church wanted to promote at that time as the example of the Christian worker. Its launch was in 1882, at the height 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 established the Construction Board, always presided over by the bishop or archbishop but with members and patrons from civil society.

Dr. Armand Puig, a biblical sciences scholar and consultant for 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 workers, and greed, the sin of employers, and he reflects this in the Roser portal of the Sagrada Família, where you see a worker 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 field, the art history professor at the University of Barcelona Teresa Montserrat Sala assures that the temple has the same logic as the Sacré-Cœur of Paris, an ultracatholic temple that began to be built 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 of sins, of violence, of bombs...", she concludes. But Sala remarks that it also aims to "defend a model of family".

In the same vein, the UB history professor Giovanni Cattini states that the basilica is "one more piece in the construction of the symbolic imaginary of the most Catholic sectors of Catalanism who seek to influence both the movement as a whole and the society of the Principality of the period". In his opinion, the basilica cannot be detached from its context: the impact of the revolutionary sexennium in Spain, the growth of atheistic republicanism and a more secularized society. At the end of the 19th century, especially during the papacy of Leo XIII, there were many "recristianization campaigns", which included the popular diffusion of Marian devotion – the millennium of Montserrat –, the reconstruction of religious heritage destroyed by disentailments – the restoration of the monastery of Ripoll – or the impulse of 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 façade. 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 worldview, 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, the police opened his head in the riots accompanying the tribute to Marshal Joffre [a North Catalan and hero of the First World War, claimed by Catalanism] and security forces arrested him in 1924 when he wanted to go to Mass on September the Eleventh and refused to speak 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 Primo de Rivera's dictatorship". The architect's political stance is clear, as seen with 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 mold," 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 the Bishop of Vic Josep Torras i Bages: "Catalonia will be Christian or it will not be".

Evolution

What is today the tallest church in Christendom, in its early days it was difficult to get going and "it is taking so long to build because it does not 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 halt 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 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 city 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 that Pedro Sánchez will officially attend since he became president of the Spanish government.

The Catalan philosopher Francesc Pujols, the same one who said that "the day will come when Catalans traveling the world will have everything paid for" wrote in 1927, La visió artística i religiosa d'En 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.