What Gaudi Knew

On Sagrada Familia, long projects, and walking home in the rain

Before I ever witness the work of the famous Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi, I hear the story of his death. While on a bike tour in Barcelona, our tour guide asks if any of us know the sad story of how Gaudi’s life ended. The kids on our tour offer many creative (albeit morbid) ideas, but none of us guesses the correct answer: In his 70s, while still working on his famed architectural projects, Gaudi was hit by a tram while crossing the street. Because he was dressed in shabby, dirty work clothes at the time, he was mistaken for a homeless man and denied the lifesaving care he needed. By the time he was recognized as the renowned Spanish architect, it was too late.

The day after hearing this tragic story, we visit Basílica de la Sagrada Familia, the cathedral Gaudi was working on when he died. The cathedral—his most ambitious project—is the antithesis to his death in every way: awe-inspiring, stunning, hopeful. We have seen many cathedrals in Europe, but Sagrada Familia features Gaudi’s incredibly creative architectural style, which is in a class of its own.

The cathedral’s eighteen spires rise into Barcelona’s skyline in clusters. On the facades of the spires, biblical stories are carved in stone—so many stories and carvings that it’s hard to track where the guide is directing our attention throughout our tour. Inside, massive columns rise in tree-like shapes toward a canopy of geometric ceiling carvings, reflecting Gaudi’s love of the natural world. The stained glass windows are different collections of colors in each part of the church based on where the sunlight will enter at different times of the day—blue and green in the mornings, red and yellow in the evenings.

But although it’s beautiful, the cathedral is also surrounded by cranes and scaffolding. Nearly 150 years since construction began, the project is not yet complete. Gaudi died in 1926, and the work has continued for almost a century since.

This is the way of cathedral-building—every cathedral we have visited took centuries to build.¹ Even though it is being built in the modern era with access to better equipment and technology, Sagrada Familia’s construction has been slowed by lack of funding, by war, by fire (in which the original blueprints were lost), and by changing construction codes and teams. Building a cathedral is a massive project—more than a lifetime’s work.

Gaudi knew this. He understood the impossibility of the project being completed in his lifetime—the vision was too grand, too ambitious, and too time-consuming. Inside the cathedral’s museum is a quote from Gaudi:

“I know the personal taste of the architects that follow me will influence the project, but that doesn’t bother me; I think the Temple will benefit from it. Great temples have never been the work of just one architect.”²

But Gaudi’s words are not just an echo from the past. They are a reality still unfolding nearly one hundred years after his death.

Recently, my friend and colleague JT³ introduced me to a quote from Oliver Burkeman’s book Meditations for Mortals:

“The most liberating and empowering and productive step you can take, if you want to spend more of your time on the planet doing what matters to you, is to grasp the sense in which life as a finite human being with limited time and limited control over that time is really much worse than you think—completely beyond hope, in fact.”⁴

After offering this terrible news, Burkeman goes on to explain what might be hopeful about this situation. A “psychological shift occurs,” he says, when we realize the visions we hold might be too big for us. We release our grip. He likens it to the moment on a rainy day when you realize that your umbrella is not doing its job, and you finally decide to give up and simply get wet.

Burkeman’s words made me think of a recent day when I decided to walk downtown from our home in Germany. When I left on my outing, the sun was shining and the sky was clear, but the weather had shifted before I headed home, and it was beginning to rain. The walk back from downtown to our house is entirely uphill—parts of it very steep. I was wearing a jacket, but it didn’t have a rain-worthy hood. I also didn’t have time to wait for the bus, or I would be late picking up the kids from school. So, I had to reckon with my situation: I would be getting very wet.

I have forgotten many other walks home, but that one stayed with me. In fact, remembering it now, I feel a little joy over the sheer accomplishment of finally arriving home, sweaty, soaking, breathing hard.

I don’t suppose I’m alone in finding it challenging to keep creating beauty and building good things right now. Sometimes it’s difficult to keep walking forward, much less with faith, kindness, and courage. The climb is uphill, the rain is pouring, and we are left without an umbrella.

Will we lengthen our vision and keep going?

Until Gaudi’s tragic death, he was working to complete as much of Sagrada Familia as he could, even living on site for a time. One of Gaudi’s wishes for Sagrada Familia was that it might allow for more sunlight than other cathedrals, which tend to be very dark. So, he designed skylights to be installed in the roof. The skylights are currently in place, but they are not open yet—they remain covered while construction is ongoing. The light won’t shine through them for years.

But one day—hopefully by 2034, if current estimates prove correct⁵—the light will pour in.

Until then, the work carries on.

A few notes …

– While I was away from Substack earlier this year, my friend Megan Willome published a poetry collection! She even wrote a post called Dear Jenna that describes her writing process. I was honored to receive such a letter and especially loved this line: “No one told me what hard work dreaming can be.”

– I had a poem featured in the Coffee + Crumbs Spring Collection: “To My Seven-Year-Old Daughter, as She Wakes Up” is inspired by one of my favorite quotes from Marilynne Robinson.

1. The Strasbourg Cathedral in France took over three centuries to complete. The Cologne Cathedral in Germany was built over six centuries.

2. Quote from the wall of the cathedral museum.

3. I also love this quote from one of JT’s posts, which highlights similar themes: “the truest, most beautiful things grow slowly and often in near obscurity.”

4. I have not yet read the entire book, but this particular quote was helpful to me. Source: Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for Mortals, (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2024), 3, Kindle.

5. The cathedral was scheduled to be completed in 2026—one hundred years after Gaudi’s death—but according to our tour guide, the date has been delayed to 2034.