Antoni Gaudí was the most original architect of his age and spent the last forty-three years of his life on a church. He took charge of the Sagrada Família in 1883, when it was a conventional neo-Gothic design, and turned it into something without precedent: a building whose structure is worked out from the forms of trees and bones, and whose whole surface is a programme of Christian doctrine, the Nativity on one façade and the Passion on the other.
From 1915 he gave up every other commission. His words about it are recorded: 'My good friends are dead; I have no family and no clients, no fortune nor anything. Now I can dedicate myself entirely to the Church.' He moved into a workshop on the site, lived on very little, fasted to the alarm of his friends, and went out to beg money for the building from people who had stopped taking him seriously. He knew he would not finish it, and said as much: his client, he remarked, was not in a hurry.
On 7 June 1926 he was knocked down by a tram on the Gran Via on his way to confession. He was shabby and carried no papers, taxi drivers refused to take him, and he was left in a pauper's ward until the chaplain of the Sagrada Família recognised him the next day. He died on 10 June and was buried in the crypt of his own church, which is where he remains while it is still being built. The Archdiocese of Barcelona opened his cause in 2003, and Pope Francis declared him Venerable in April 2025.