Happily, the ticket line was short when I arrived. Within minutes I was climbing the steps to the Passion Façade. Without some foreknowledge of what to expect, the Passion Façade can be an unexpected, some say disquieting, surprise. Completed about 64 years after Gaudí’s death in 1926, the Facade is an aggressively modern interpretation of Gaudí’s original vision. The structure is a roofed portal sheltering sculptures depicting scenes from the Passion. The architecture is stern, very unlike Gaudí’s sympathetic style. The sculptures are brutally angular and sharp. Except for the figure of Christ on the Column, which is truly poignant, the remaining figures shun sentimentality or any tender emotion that ultimately minimizes Christ’s ordeal. Gaudí expressed his original intent for the Passion Façade thusly. “I am ready to sacrifice the building itself, to smash vaults and cut columns in order to give an idea of the cruelty of sacrifice.” Yet, characteristically, Gaudí’s drawings of the Façade do not reflect cruelty.

His columns, rising tree-like to support the Portico, resemble the organic columns of the Portico Gallery in Parc Guëll, and are strangely inviting. His balustrade, which crowns the Portico, resembles a collection of dinosaur bones supporting a leafy tiara. The sculptures within are vague. The entire effect is rather bizarre, but the idea of cruel sacrifice is not evident. The existing façade more accurately reflects Gaudí’s intent rather than his drawings. The portico columns thrust rigidly upward, supporting an unfinished roof that is, for now, stingy and severe. The balustrade is missing altogether. The sculptures, created in the late 1980s by Josep Maria Subrachs, are cold and cruel. In short, the Passion Façade is hard to love.

My first impulse was to rush on by, the same way I want to rush through Good Friday to reach Easter Sunday, but the stark, stone figures arrested my attention. Their stilted expressions were a reminder of how perpetrators and victims of extreme cruelty will suppress their emotions to survive. The figures’ stern rigidity also chided the state of my own personal faith: bereft of wonder, closed to enlightenment, open to unbelief. I did not want to be reminded of this. I resented it, but upon reflection it was an appropriate approach into the Cathedral, sort of like climbing numerous stone steps on my knees. Mea culpa. Then I passed through the portal. I knew before entering the Cathedral that its impressive exterior surrounds a shell in which construction is in progress. I must say, however, I was stunned by the degree of industry inside: steel girders stretch upward toward open sky, scaffolding high and scaffolding low, ladders, ramps, pulleys, dust, debris, all amid the hollow racket of sawing and hammering to beat the devil. This place is neither a church nor tourist haven. It is a hard-hat construction area where non-laborers are shoved to the side, merely tolerated, while the serious work of building the world’s most quixotic modern cathedral proceeds apace. A covered walkway outside the cordoned area provides a platform from which to watch the works while being protected from flying sparks and falling debris. No friendly foreman stops by to give a clue about what is going on. Observers have to figure that out for themselves. There are, tacked to the posts along the walkway, a series of schematics that show some of architectural devices used in the overall plan.

One I recognized. During a dinner discussion the night before, a member of the tour group gave insights into the design of the Cathedral. He smoothed out a paper napkin on which he drew ten or twelve strings of varying lengths, each string pulled down at its center by a weight to form an acute angle. The result was a body of overlapping angles hanging at different levels. He turned the napkin upside-down and voila! There was a simplified silhouette of Gaudí’s Temple. “No math,” he explained. “Gaudí didn’t use any math in his early designs, just strings and weights.” Well, whatever. Certainly, in their execution, Gaudí’s designs require mathematics enough to give Buckminster Fuller a migraine. The schematics on display are replete with esoteric measurements and geometric modellings which involve hyperbolic paraboloids, helicoids, hyperboloids, and conoids, that (according to the tour brochure) provide the “structural and plastic possibilities... and all the beauty Gaudi had observed in nature.” Fortunately, the layperson doesn’t need to understand any of this to appreciate the construction in progress. And progress is being made. Tall fluted pillars, with armatures jutting tree-like from ovoid capitals within the columns, support the perimeters of the vaulted ceiling. Wall niches, statues, and decorative details line the walls. The Portal of the Rosary, to the right of the entrance, is detailed and beautiful. There actually is a great deal to see and admire, but the overall experience is one of a work in progress; a strangely exciting experience that, for me, demystified the mighty cathedral. Here, in this cluttered workplace, the spirit waits while human hands build a venue worthy of God. Daylight, streaming through the Portal of the Nativity, lured me back outside to view the East Facade. A multitude of tourists crowded the viewing platform, all eyes looking up, fingers pointing, cameras clicking. I felt my anticipation mount even before I, too, gazed up at what many consider Gaudí’s masterpiece.

Like most tourists, this was what I had really come to see: angels and kings, manger and star, Joseph and Mary at their most gracious, the Christ Child, Christmas! Work began on the Nativity Façade in 1892 and was completed in 1930, four years after Gaudi died. The architect wanted the Façade completed within his own generation even though it meant putting off construction on other parts of the structure. In effect, the completed Façade was a hook for drawing in the support needed to complete the entire Cathedral, and it is this Façade that most clearly celebrates Gaudí’s visual genius. No single word can describe it. It is at once massive and delicate, exciting and serene, virginal and fecund; the sculpted figures are finely wrought. And there is so much of it: on and on, up and up; every inch of it adorned with intricate details. Gaudí’s predilection for storybook coziness, so evident at Parc Guëll, predominates over all. Concrete icicles, signifying winter, drip across the face of the Facade like melted frosting on a gingerbread house. Familiar tableaus portraying the Holy Family, saints, shepherds, and kings nestle within sculpted grottoes like peek-a-boo scenes within decorated sugar eggs. Flowers, fruits, and birds abound, while angels trumpet the good tidings: Come see such wonders to behold! 

As my eyes devoured these delights, my heart returned to my childhood religion, thirsting for its comfort and joy. Nostalgia, for a brief moment, overwhelmed me, and I became, not a pilgrim, as I had fancied myself, but a prodigal daughter too long away. Gaudí’s cathedral is indeed incomplete, but not I think, disappointingly so. True, the Passion Façade is a disappointment to many, mainly because its modernity goes far beyond Modernisme. Some people have concerns that the remaining work on Cathedral’s interior and the Glory Façade will, in the end, betray Gaudí’s vision. And yet the work goes on, possibly because people recognize that at whatever stage of completion the Cathedral is greater than its parts; that La Sagrada Família is an emerging act of worship. No one knows how much longer the construction will take.

No one knows how much it will eventually cost. No one knows if the devotion of future generations will justify the enormous investment. Yet, in spite of these unknowns, construction continues. In the end, La Sagrada Família is simply a matter of faith. 

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