Sagrada Unfamiliar?

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I returned to Barcelona recently. While mostly eating my way around the Catalan capital I did venture back towards the cathedral Sagrada Familia. I was curious enough to see what they’d done with the old place. The last time I visited the towering landmark was in 2001 and Liverpool FC were on their way to a cup treble. So I presumed, quite rightly, that substantial progress had to have been made on the building. It’s an incredible, monumental structure both inside and out. It’s towers now stretching towards heaven as Gaudi had envisaged.

There’s one problem however… The parts of the cathedral completed by Gaudi are completely different to the rest of the structure completed after his death in June of 1926.

Gaudi’s work is organic in texture and drips with life. It almost moves and crawls when looked upon. The work done after his death simply doesn’t measure up. It’s too modern, too angular and doesn’t have any of the textural qualities of the original. The figures are stark and hard. The organic qualities have been replaced by hard angular lines. (See images above.)

You can hear the coercive conversations of committee councillors desperate to keep budgets in place and costs to a minimum. Stone costs more than concrete after all...

Despite all of this it still remains an incredible building, and if you get the chance go and see it for yourself. But in my opinion it’s just not what Gaudi’s vision was…