When Antoni Gaudí began working on the Sagrada Familia in 1883, it was located in an undeveloped area outside Barcelona. In 1885, he received a letter authorizing construction from the town of Sant Martí de Provençals, before it was annexed by Barcelona, as the city grew. This document has been the only official building permit—until this October.
The builders who continue to work on Gaudí’s unfinished masterpiece and Barcelona mayor Ana Colau recently reached an agreement to end more than 130 years of legal limbo, while construction proceeded without a proper license. This “administrative silence” was tolerated by previous mayors, but in recent years, as local architecture journalist Llàtzer Moix told record, the protests of neighborhood residents over the impact of the church’s surging tourist traffic—some 4.5 million visitors per year—prompted the mayor of the Catalonian city into action.
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