26 Sep, 2020 @ 14:15
1 min read

Completion of Barcelona’s iconic Sagrada Familia cathedral delayed by COVID-19

Sagrada Familia

BARCELONA’S famous Sagrada Familia cathedral has become the latest victim of coronavirus.

Its final completion – 143 years after the first stone was laid – has been put back after the project was thrown into financial turmoil when tourist numbers plunged.

It had been scheduled to be completed in 2026, which is the 100th anniversary of the death of its architect Antoni Gaudi.

Sagrada familia e
Construction halted

The cathedral relies on tourism for the vast majority of its income – with 94% of the 4.5 million people who visited the basilica last year being foreign.

It expected to take €103 million in entrance fees and donations this year, with more than half of that earmarked for the final phase of construction.

Speaking to El Pais, a cathedral official said: “We planned to use €55 million from our tourism revenue for construction. But we reduced the budget to €17 million due to a sharp drop in tourists.”

The total number of tourists to vist the basilica in July was a paltry 2,000 – last year July saw 15,600 visits a day.

Construction work was suspended in March when the nationwide state of emergency was declared in Spain to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Last year the project was finally given planning permission, 137 years after construction started.

The licence given – it was first applied for in 1885 but no record could be found that it had actually been granted – is valid until the end of 2026.

It is not known what will happen should the cathedral not be completed by then.

The licence cost the foundation in charge of the project €4.1 million in fees.

While the foundation says that the cathedral will be completed, it will not be as Gaudi originally designed it.

His plan for 12 towers, each representing one of Christ’s disciples will probably never be fulfilled. One central tower due to be completed would be Europe’s tallest religious structure at 172.5 metres tall

Dilip Kuner

Dilip Kuner is a NCTJ-trained journalist whose first job was on the Folkestone Herald as a trainee in 1988.
He worked up the ladder to be chief reporter and sub editor on the Hastings Observer and later news editor on the Bridlington Free Press.
At the time of the first Gulf War he started working for the Sunday Mirror, covering news stories as diverse as Mick Jagger’s wedding to Jerry Hall (a scoop gleaned at the bar at Heathrow Airport) to massive rent rises at the ‘feudal village’ of Princess Diana’s childhood home of Althorp Park.
In 1994 he decided to move to Spain with his girlfriend (now wife) and brought up three children here.
He initially worked in restaurants with his father, before rejoining the media world in 2013, working in the local press before becoming a copywriter for international firms including Accenture, as well as within a well-known local marketing agency.
He joined the Olive Press as a self-employed journalist during the pandemic lock-down, becoming news editor a few months later.
Since then he has overseen the news desk and production of all six print editions of the Olive Press and had stories published in UK national newspapers and appeared on Sky News.

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