Antoni Gaudí's Sagrada Familia in Barcelona has been given the building permit after 137 years to continue the building. The Sagrada Familia has been under construction since 1882, its first building permission. 

Janet Sanz, who is Barcelona's deputy mayor for ecology, urbanism and mobility, first announced this new on her Twitter account, saying that "I've signed THE license of works of the Temple of the Sagrada Família after 130 of irregular works".

She also added: the Sagrada Familia would be paying €4.6M to Barcelona for the permit, in addition to the €36M it already agreed to compensate the impact it causes in its environment. "We are a brave government that does not allow privileges," she added.

In addition, the website of Sagrada Familia officially announced that The City Council of Barcelona approved the works license that will allow the Construction Board of the Sagrada Familia to continue building the project of Antoni Gaudí.

It said: "the regularization of the works license is the result of a joint work between the Barcelona City Council and the Sagrada Família, who have worked closely in the last two years." 

"Last October, the two institutions signed an agreement to regularize the works license and contribute financially to urbanization, mobility and maintenance of the environment. As a preliminary step, the Special Plan and the Modification of the Metropolitan General Plan were approved in February," the statement added.

What will happen in the next stages?

The building permit is only valid until 2026, which means the building must be completed until 2026. On March 19, 2017, 135 years of the laying of the first stone of the temple were fulfilled. 

The Sagrada Familia was in its last construction stage and at present, 70% of the construction of the Basilica has been completed and they started the construction of the six central towers.

Throughout 2017, the construction of the towers of the Evangelists and of the Virgin, started in December 2016 with tiled stone panels premonitioned at the Galera workshop, continued at a good pace. The towers follow the architectural model of the sacristy, defined by Gaudí in a gypsum model.

During 2018, the work focuses on the continuity of the construction of the towers of the Evangelists and of the Virgin Mary and at the beginning of that of Jesus Christ. The symbolic elements that are missing in the upper porch of the facade of the Passion are also executed and placed.

Sagrada Familia's construction history 

The Sagrada Familia has had a long and complicated construction history since it was built. The first stone was put on March 19, 1882, festival of San José, in a ceremonial ceremony presided by the bishop of the city, Josep Urquinaona.

Gaudí worked on the project until his death in 1926. When he died in 1926, he assumed the direction of the works his narrow collaborator, Domènec Sugrañes, until 1938.

In 1930 the bell towers of the facade of the Birth were finished and in 1933 the portal of the Faith and the central cypress were enlarged. In the period from 1936 to 1939, the fire of the crypt and provisional schools of the Holy Family took place, and the worker was destroyed. 

Due to these facts, the drawings, drawings and original photographs are lost, and a part of the plaster scale models is crushed. It should be noted, however, that since the intervention of Gaudí in 1883 and despite those acts of vandalism, the construction of the temple has not stopped and the will of the original idea of the architect has always been respected.

In the current construction plans, since the majority of the plans was lost, the building will be completed based on the reconstruction of plans and models. 

The Sagrada Familia was declared as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Gaudí followed a method based on the technique of trial and error, so it gave a lot of importance to the models, even more than the planes. He used to install his workshop next to the works and there he experimented with models on a scale, with the forms and with the structures that he later applied to constructions. 

The Sagrada Familia is the most visited landmark reaching 4.5 million visitors in 2016, which is a new record.

All images courtesy of Arup

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