Stories · Barcelona
Why is the Sagrada Família still not finished?
The Sagrada Família is paid for only by gifts and tickets, and Gaudí's models were smashed in 1936. As of October 2026, its main façade is still to come.
3 min read
Work began in 1882, and the architect, Antoni Gaudí, died in 1926 with less than a quarter of the church built. On 20 February 2026 the cross went onto its central Tower of Jesus Christ, taking the Sagrada Família to 172.5 metres, about 566 feet: the tallest church in the world. What remains is the main entrance, the Glory façade, and its four towers.
A church started by a bookseller
Josep Maria Bocabella sold religious books in Barcelona. In 1866 he founded a society devoted to Saint Joseph, and its members wanted a church to the Holy Family. It was to be expiatory: an act of atonement, paid for by the gifts of the faithful.
In 1881 the society bought a field on the edge of the city. The first stone was laid the following March. Within a year the first architect had fallen out with the society and quit. The job went to Gaudí, who was 31.
Gaudí is said to have joked that his client, God, was not in a hurry. When he died, after being hit by a tram in June 1926, only one of his eighteen towers was finished.
The models smashed in 1936
Gaudí worked out much of the design in plaster models rather than on paper. In July 1936, at the start of the Spanish Civil War, anarchists broke into his workshop on the site, burned the plans and smashed the models.
One of his assistants, Francesc Quintana, saved the fragments he could. From 1944 he and a small team pieced them back together. Everyone who has built here since has worked from those broken pieces, a few surviving drawings and old photographs.
Who pays, and what is left
The church is still paid for privately, today mostly by the tickets of around five million visitors a year. That money has sped things up: six towers have been finished since 2021. On 10 June 2026, a hundred years to the day after Gaudí died, Pope Leo XIV blessed the new central tower. Work inside it is due to continue until 2028.
As of October 2026, fourteen of the eighteen towers stand. The last four belong to the Glory façade, on Carrer de Mallorca. Their foundations are in, but the sculptor for its hundred-plus figures has not been chosen. In September 2026 the chief architect, Jordi Faulí, said the façade could be finished in about ten years. He called that more a wish than a reality.
Then there are the steps. Gaudí planned a broad stairway from the Glory façade down across Carrer de Mallorca, where apartment buildings stand today. As of September 2026, the builders were proposing to demolish one building and rehouse its residents nearby, with no final agreement yet from the city.
Where to stand
Start in Plaça de Gaudí, the park across the pond from the Nativity façade, the side Gaudí built first. This spot is outside and free. Look behind the façade's four towers for the tallest tower of all, with the white cross on top: the Tower of Jesus Christ.
Hear it where it happened
The Trevlo tour of the Sagrada Família tells the bookseller's story at its first stop, by the pond, and ends at the windows over Gaudí's grave in the crypt. In between come the Nativity façade, the forest of columns, the Passion façade and the plaster models saved in 1936. Six stops, about twelve minutes of listening, at your own pace.
The first stop is free to play on this page, and your first tour in the app is free.
