In 1872, Josep Maria Bocabella i Verdaguer returned to Spain following a visit to the Vatican. This visit left him feeling inspired, with a desire to build a place of religious importance. In his head, he had found his inspiration in the basilica at Loreto. Josep founded the Spiritual Association of the Devotees of Saint Joseph, under which he began campaigning to construct a temple dedicated to the Holy Family.

The Sagrada Familia was not intended to be a cathedral, but from the outset it was planned from the outset to be a cathedral-sized church. The original designs had clear similarities to earlier Spanish cathedrals lik the Burgos Cathedral, the León Cathedral, and the Seville Cathedral. The Sagrada Familia has several building aspects in common with Catalan and other European Gothic cathedrals such as a great complexity of parts. However, it is not in fact a cathedral as it does not have a cathedra – Latin for “seat” – of a bishop, thus functioning as the central church of a diocese, conference, or episcopate.

The Sagrada Familia is also known as Gaudi’s Cathedral because when he took over of the project in 1883 he transformed the project with his architectural and engineering style, combining Gothic and curve lines of Art Nouveau forms. He dedicated the rest of his life to the project and he envisioned it as “a cathedral for the poor.” Pope Benedict XVI in the first Mass at the Sagrada Familia repeated the following: “A church [is] the only thing worthy of representing the soul of people, for religion is the most elevated reality in man” at its dedication on 7 November, 2010.

In reference to the subject of the considerably extended construction period Guadí is said to have remarked: “My client is not in a hurry”, as he referred to his client as God. The Sagrada Familia is the most iconic monument in Barcelona, Spain, and it does not have a single straight line because according to Gaudí they do not exist in nature, and the temple reflect Nature, Life, and Death, and should not have them. The construction has relied exclusively on private donations since the start and the progress has been slow, and the construction was interrupted by the Spanish Civil War. In July 1936, revolutionaries entered the building and set fire to the crypt and broke their way into the workshop and burned a large part of Gaudi’s plans and models. But, some of the instructions and plans remained untouched and the construction continued, with new architects like Francesc Quintana, Isidre Puig and Luis Bonet. They made their best efforts to remain true to the view of Gaudí and they also brought their own style in accordance to Gaudi’s vision of each generation to participate in the construction.

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