Europe in One Structure

By James Lileks

Sunday, March 01, 2026

 

Sagrada Familia, the famous cathedral in Barcelona, is almost finished. Last year, it became the tallest cathedral in the world; a few weeks ago, the central tower was topped with its crowning finial. It rises unchallenged over the flat and uniform rooflines, a marvelous hallucination, under construction since 1882. Its designer, the brilliant and iconoclastic architect Antoni Gaudí, would be pleased to see the structure rise to completion, since it was just a stump when he was run down by a tram in 1926. It’s a work of staggering complexity and detail, unlike anything on the planet, unless you include giant wasp hives.

 

But you should include wasp hives, because the cathedral resembles nothing more than a massive concatenation of towers extruded from the hindquarters of Brobdingnagian bugs. I don’t like it.

 

(Photo courtesy of the author)

 This, I assume, is a minority opinion. People make pilgrimages to ooh and ahh. Gaudí fans will brook no dissent on its genius; casual observers, however, may feel compelled to like it, since everyone praises its unique approach to cathedral styles. Most European churches are either gothic piles with a million fizzy details, or voluptuous Baroque basilicas with a massive dome above like a fat prelate on a commode. Not this one! Gaudí broke the mold!

 

Oh, that he did. But you are allowed to think it’s peculiar. You are permitted to say it’s bizarre. Everyone says it’s gorgeous, but it’s okay if you think it’s not.

 

(Photo courtesy of the author)

 But there is another lesson contained in the church. You can stand outside with a holier-than-thou smirk at all the people goggling because they are expected to goggle, but you, the Unbeliever, eventually will head inside.

 

Inside is the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen in your life.

 

(Photo courtesy of the author)

 If the outside writhes, bulges, contorts, batters your brain with a torrent of stone, the inside is the most supernatural space you’ve ever encountered. The columns aren’t Roman holdovers, but clean shafts whose style suggests an alternative version of human culture, hewing to some form of logic you’d never imagined, married with a stylized organic vocabulary, an abstraction of the natural world. And the light! The sun pours through the stained glass and paints the air itself with deep, saturated hues, like massed brass just outside of the range of human hearing.

 

All in all, as a church, it’s a good lesson for the skeptic: I was wrong about this. What else might I be wrong about?

 

Barcelona, we’re told, is overrun these days by tourists, and the locals have had enough. It’s their home, not a second-tier bucket-list destination. The tourist tax recently doubled and is set to increase every year. “Tourist Go Home” graffiti spatters walls and metal shutters. Doesn’t matter. People will perpetually pile in to admire the endless blocks of exquisitely civilized flats, the broad diagonal boulevards, the narrow warren of ancient streets in the old quarter, the Roman remainders, the busy beach with families and stout old bald men in black Speedos, the careworn public parks with hairy buskers and sun-basking youth. It’s a city that makes you feel profoundly sad that you were not born here — and that there isn’t an American equivalent.

 

There is another lesson, perhaps. Recall the words of the Spanish leftist politician Irene Montero, who recently defended the government’s decision to give amnesty to half a million migrants, and crowed: “I hope for ‘replacement theory,’ I hope we can sweep this country of fascists and racists with immigrants.”

 

What if the new arrivals don’t like the church for reasons of their own? It’s not hard to imagine a time a century hence when the citizens might cart off the stones of Sagrada Familia for their own purposes, as the inheritors of Rome pried the marble off the Coliseum. As much as you don’t like the exterior of the cathedral, the idea of its deconstruction suddenly makes you feel protective. It’s Europe, in one structure. There is a spirit inside the building, contained and condensed. Tear down the walls, and it escapes, never to be gathered like this again.