When Pope Leo XIV visits Spain, he will bless the final tower of the country’s most famous church, the magnificent La Sagrada Familia, the masterpiece of Antoni Gaudí, renowned as “the Architect of God.”
Gaudí was declared venerable last year in one of Pope Francis’ last official acts, and now a possible miracle, the cure of a baby attributed to Antoni Gaudí’s intercession, is in the final stages of investigation by the Vatican, possibly leading to his beatification.
The architect, who died in 1926 at the age of 73 after being hit by a streetcar, is deeply connected with the city, where he realized other important architectural projects besides his famous church. But his journey to holiness seems to have started not in his Mediterranean homeland of Catalonia but rather in a very different part of Spain.
Astorga sits 500 miles west of Barcelona. The small city, founded by the Romans, lies at the intersection of two old and important transportation routes—the Camino de Santiago running east to west and the Via de La Plata running north to south. It remains today a world apart from Catalonia.
Gaudí arrived there in 1888, invited by Astorga’s bishop, Juan Bautista Grau, to design a new bishop’s residence. The former residence had been destroyed by a fire in 1886, shortly after the bishop’s appointment to Astorga. Both men were from the same town in Catalonia, Reus, and had met in Catalonia several years before for the blessing of another work by Gaudí, the altar of a chapel.
Bishop Grau had two reasons for bringing the young architect all the way to Astorga. His genius as an architect was becoming clear, and Bishop Grau decided to turn the need for a new residence into an opportunity for the diocese. From one perspective, the bishop’s plan completely failed.
The Palacio Gaudí sits behind the town’s soaring 14th-century Gothic cathedral in a small square perched on the edge of the old city wall. It is literally a small palace, complete with rounded towers topped by pointed turrets, a whimsical, fairytale-like edifice so characteristic of Gaudí. It manages to express a grandiose sense of volume—also a hallmark of the Catalan architect—within a relatively small dimension for a palace.
For Astorga, it is an architectural anomaly, standing in contrast to the much more boxy cathedral made of orange and brown stone.
Today, Astorga takes pride in its palacio, but in Gaudí’s lifetime, locals strongly criticized the site.
“It’s rather out of place for a small town like Astroga,” said Jairo Álvarez Fernández, author of the Palacio Gaudí Astorga and a history professor at the University of San Dámaso in Madrid.
According to Mr. Fernandez, the incongruity stemmed in part from the very different milieus of Barcelona and Astorga. As a big, bustling port city, Barcelona in the 19th century was a boiling pot of industrialization, social change and varying political movements, more naturally open to the world beyond its municipal boundaries. A heady mix of anti-clerical, anarchist and worker movements flowed through its civic life. In Barcelona’s church, a greater sensitivity to new social teachings and the liturgical movement embraced and advanced by Pope Leo XIII was evident.
Astorga, by contrast, was a municipal society still based in agrarian life—a community known for deeply conservative instincts and frugality, both inside and outside the church. The local clergy and faithful could not comprehend Bishop Grau’s decision to build such an avant-garde and ornate residence for himself.
“They thought it was too much for a bishop’s residence,” Mr. Fernandez said. “Only Grau and Gaudí believed in the project.”
Bishop Grau did not undertake the work as a vanity project, Mr. Fernandez added, but as a bulwark against the era’s raging anti-clericalism. The Spanish government at the time wanted to align diocesan boundaries with civic ones, putting the Diocese of Astorga at risk of suppression, as its diocesan boundaries reached into three different provinces—León, Zamora and Ourense. Bishop Grau hoped that adding a standout architectural feature to a diocese, already well regarded because of its seminary and cathedral, would protect it from dissolution.
Gaudí accepted the job and was soon after offered another job in the nearby city of León—this one a private project for one of the city´s leading entrepreneurs, a large textile and notions shop with private residences above it. These projects coincided with Gaudí’s appointment as the principal architect of La Sagrada Familia in 1889.
Despite taking on what would become his life’s work, Gaudí spent weeks at a time in Astorga, principally because he had developed a deep spiritual friendship with Bishop Grau. The two spent hours together talking in Catalan, according to Mr. Fernandez. The spiritual influence of the bishop on the architect seems clear.
“There’s a before and after of Gaudí’s time in Astroga,” he said.
Biographers agree that Gaudí was a typical “dandy” of his time when he embarked on his career in Barcelona. A believing Catholic, yes, but also a young man who loved wearing fine clothes, going to trendy restaurants and riding in fancy carriages. He was not yet “God’s architect,” as devoted to daily prayer as he was to drawing architectural plans.
A change in Gaudí’s demeanor began with his work in Astorga. It is evident, Mr. Fernandez said, that Gaudí spent some much time in the faraway city, not to oversee the work on the palace but to spend time with Bishop Grau. According to Mr. Fernandez, Gaudí never once visited the work site of “El Capricho,” a villa he designed in far northern Spain, but would take weeks at a time away from Barcelona to be in Astorga.
Simultaneously, Gaudí was reading the works of St. Teresa of Ávila and St. John of the Cross as inspiration for his work on a chapel commissioned by St. Enrique de Ossó, founder of the Teresians, a women’s religious order.
Bishop Grau was a man of deep spiritual vision and was concerned with the issues of his day—liturgical renewal and social justice. According to Mr. Fernandez, Gaudí discussed his work on La Sagrada Familia in depth with Bishop Grau.
From Bishop Grau, Gaudí learned that more than finding inspiration for his work in his faith, “architecture was at the service of the liturgy.” In 1891, Gaudí presented a completely revised architectural vision for La Sagrada Familia, one he spent the rest of his life dedicated to carrying out.
In Astorga, he implemented, too, some of the innovative architectural features he would later use in La Sagrada Familia, like the catamaran arch, a self-supporting arch used in bridge building, and “muletas,” decorative columns that do not support any structural weight.
Though it was a much smaller undertaking, Gaudí also never saw the palace in Astorga brought to completion. Bishop Grau died in 1893, and the presbyteral council of Astorga put the work on hold, an expression of their hostility toward the project.
After Bishop Grau’s death, Gaudí never returned. “I´ll never go back to Astorga, not even in a hot air balloon,” he famously said, and kept his word. A later bishop attempted to mend fences and invited Gaudí back, but the architect declined with the excuse of his work on La Sagrada Familia.
The palace in Astorga was finally finished with the oversight of other architects in 1913, but no bishop has ever lived in it. During the civil war from 1936 to 1939, nationalist forces used it for offices.
In 1963, the diocese turned it into a museum. It housed a collection of art and artifacts from around the diocese, including everything from Roman mile markers to Romanesque statues to Renaissance paintings. Of course, the highlight of the museum is the palace itself: Its interior decorative touches colorfully complement its joyful neo-Gothic exterior.
The building is replete with symbolism of the Diocese of Astroga and the role of the bishop. Three angels at the top of the exterior carry the symbols of the episcopal office, Mr. Fernandez said.
While Gaudí was a magnificent architect, his holiness consisted largely in a very ordinary spirituality.
“He put his trust in divine providence and that never disappoints,” said José Manuel Almuzara, one of the founders of the lay association that sponsored the cause for Gaudí´s beatification in 1991 and presented to the Vatican Gaudí’s relatio, an in-depth biography that offers evidence of a candidate’s holiness.
Mr. Almuzara, who first learned about the life of Gaudí as an architectural student, noted that alongside his brilliant architectural career, Gaudí suffered losses and trials. In his early 20s, two of his siblings and his mother died in quick succession. It was a sorrow that deeply marked the architect, who also outlived the rest of his siblings, a niece and many of his friends. He never married. Even as he was acclaimed by many because of his art, he also endured criticism and economic hardship.
“My dearest friends have died, I have no family, no clients, no fortune, nothing,” he once said. “So I can give myself entirely to this temple [La Sagrada Familia].”
By the end of his life, according to Mr. Almuzara, nothing of the dandy remained in him. Gaudí had become a mystic. He spent his last 12 years living in the workshop of La Sagrada Familia, sometimes mistaken for a pauper because of his ragged clothing, dividing his time between work and prayer in an effort to leave all the plans for the enormous church complete. He even collected alms personally to support the construction of the church, which was paid for entirely by donations, a fact he also always showed the deepest appreciation for.
“God’s architect,” Gauidí may one day be the first modern architect “raised to the altars.” His mark on the world already reaches far beyond Spain to inspire not only by his art but also by his personal example of holiness.
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