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Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia will be completed in 2026

cnn.com

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Re: Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia will be completed in 2026

#31
post #13
post #2

The article mistakenly refers to Sagrada Familia as the cathedral of Barcelona. It's not. It's a minor basilica, not a cathedral.

> The article mistakenly refers to Sagrada Familia as the cathedral of Barcelona. It's not. It's a minor basilica, not a cathedral. There may not be enough institutional knowledge at CNN about Catholicism that the editors would know that there is a difference between a basilica and a cathedral. This is the sort of thing that the folks at GetReligion.com were trying to address: not advocating any particular religion,…

There is this odd split in American society that makes this possible. You can go through your entire life, end up a professional journalist at the Times and not actually have asked someone about their sincerely held faith and practice. Kids rarely talked about religion in HS, outside of like the Interfaith club. (I ran my high school's and we had an annual panel of a rep from each major religion. I was was quite popular.)

Colleges, especially large ones, do have tons of students of different faiths, but I felt contacts were still minimal. My randomly-assigned freshman year room-mate was a devout Christian and would sing in worship - super wonderful guy. But after that, not much. It's so easy to just hang out with people similar to you - at all stages of life.

Even when you meet someone of a certain faith, you're likely to experience that interaction through holiday, festival, food, dress and so on - think asking a Muslim about Ramadan or being invited to a Hanukah party - but you're not likely to ask doctrinal or theological questions.

Re: Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia will be completed in 2026

#33

It won't. Gaudí's plan was to build a big staircase in front of it creating a new public square next to the temple, replacing some apartment buildings currently being used. Gaudí's project won't be finished until then. There's some pushback from the neighbors because finishing it all means bulldozing hundreds of apartments, although those apartments were bought at a discounted price decades ago because everyone knew…

and i would say probably those apartments aren't even hosting locals currently, just digital nomads in overpriced airbnbs

Re: Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia will be completed in 2026

#34
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious what "minor" means exactly in this context? I've seen the Sagrada familia, and it ain't small!

A cathedral is the official seat of the local the bishop and the Sagrada Familia isn't one. A basilica on the other hand is an honorific title granted to some churches by the pope for historical/religious reasons. An interesting note: Saint Peter in Rome, the most famous church in the christian world is not a cathedral itself as it is not where the pope has its seat, that's actually another basilica in Rome, Saint Jo…

The other interesting thing about that is the cathedral seat of the Pope is outside the Vatican City - so it is in his religious territory as Bishop of Rome but not in his secular state.

Re: Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia will be completed in 2026

#35

It won't. Gaudí's plan was to build a big staircase in front of it creating a new public square next to the temple, replacing some apartment buildings currently being used. Gaudí's project won't be finished until then. There's some pushback from the neighbors because finishing it all means bulldozing hundreds of apartments, although those apartments were bought at a discounted price decades ago because everyone knew…

> Gaudí's plan

It is incredibly rare for a large cathedral to be completed just like the original architect envisioned it, without any compromises made along the way*. It may even be said that a large cathedral is never finished - all the large cathedrals have a standing team of builders, usually with a tradition going back to the middle ages, and require constant maintenance work. "Finished" is thus a difficult term for such a building. But if major construction will stop in 2026, with the building no longer having any obvious large missing parts, I am totally fine with calling it "finished", even if the original plans were different. My understanding is that they already deviated from the original plans decades ago.

* I think Cologne cathedral was completed more or less according to the original plan, but only because historism was en vogue and they found the original medieval plans by chance in the 19th century. Strasbourg cathedral is a good example for a cathedral which doesn't look at all like the original architect envisioned it, with a long history of re-planning and some aesthetically botched construction works.

Re: Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia will be completed in 2026

#36

It won't. Gaudí's plan was to build a big staircase in front of it creating a new public square next to the temple, replacing some apartment buildings currently being used. Gaudí's project won't be finished until then. There's some pushback from the neighbors because finishing it all means bulldozing hundreds of apartments, although those apartments were bought at a discounted price decades ago because everyone knew…

> There's some pushback Quite understandable as well. The thing is big enough as it is. Bought at a discount or not, bulldozing that many homes in an overpopulated city that already struggles for space due to its geography is a little ludicrous.

Modern Architecture is ludicrous.

We build and build depressing neighborhoods in cities for us to all flee to historical centres to experience beauty for a minute. I mean if you are in the US you are lost anyway, but the Europe has some beautiful cities (Amsterdam, Venice, Palma, Rome, Vienna the list continues), but none of them are modern.

The citizens should be helped to find replacement, but please let's put some beauty back in our cities and give prominence to Gaudi's architecture (although maybe it's not the prettiest it's at least fun)

Re: Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia will be completed in 2026

#37

It won't. Gaudí's plan was to build a big staircase in front of it creating a new public square next to the temple, replacing some apartment buildings currently being used. Gaudí's project won't be finished until then. There's some pushback from the neighbors because finishing it all means bulldozing hundreds of apartments, although those apartments were bought at a discounted price decades ago because everyone knew…

> There's some pushback Quite understandable as well. The thing is big enough as it is. Bought at a discount or not, bulldozing that many homes in an overpopulated city that already struggles for space due to its geography is a little ludicrous.

As someone from Barcelona, I really wanna see it finished completely. Those apartments had an expiration date the moment they were built in the 60s. Everyone who bought them at a discount knew that they were going to be torn down when the temple itself was finished.

I feel it's like those people that buy a house near an airport, they pay pennies for it, and then start lobbying the government for a change in air traffic routes.

Re: Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia will be completed in 2026

#38

It won't. Gaudí's plan was to build a big staircase in front of it creating a new public square next to the temple, replacing some apartment buildings currently being used. Gaudí's project won't be finished until then. There's some pushback from the neighbors because finishing it all means bulldozing hundreds of apartments, although those apartments were bought at a discounted price decades ago because everyone knew…

and i would say probably those apartments aren't even hosting locals currently, just digital nomads in overpriced airbnbs

Yes.

Re: Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia will be completed in 2026

#39

It won't. Gaudí's plan was to build a big staircase in front of it creating a new public square next to the temple, replacing some apartment buildings currently being used. Gaudí's project won't be finished until then. There's some pushback from the neighbors because finishing it all means bulldozing hundreds of apartments, although those apartments were bought at a discounted price decades ago because everyone knew…

I assume in this case they're defining finished as within the realms of the possible; kind of seems improbable that the staircase thing will ever happen?

Re: Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia will be completed in 2026

#40

It won't. Gaudí's plan was to build a big staircase in front of it creating a new public square next to the temple, replacing some apartment buildings currently being used. Gaudí's project won't be finished until then. There's some pushback from the neighbors because finishing it all means bulldozing hundreds of apartments, although those apartments were bought at a discounted price decades ago because everyone knew…

and i would say probably those apartments aren't even hosting locals currently, just digital nomads in overpriced airbnbs

I mean, most of them are hosting "locals" as in residents who live in Barcelona. I just took a look now and there are at least 90 apartments available on Idealista for rent in just the ~3 surrounding blocks around Sagrada Familia.

So while in general the whole "touristic flat rentals" stuff is clearly hurting the city, maybe over-dramatizing the impact isn't super useful. Overall the situation sucks though, as prices seems to still go up :/

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