Is the Sagrada Familia being banalised in the name of tourism?

Antoni Gaudí was the most modern and the most medieval of souls

saw himself as recreating a Christian society through art

it becomes an art of energy and change even as it wishes for order. Gaudí's genius is inexhaustibly rich. But has it been betrayed?

A group of Spanish architects and art world types has savagely denounced the continuing work to complete Gaudí's religious masterpiece the Sagrada Familia.

Gaudí, they complain, is being banalised in the name of tourism.

Work there has carried on, sporadically, since 1926. In other words the completion effort predates Gaudí's contemporary fame. I personally find it moving

The collective work, however, has the poetry of an architectural spectacle more medieval than modern - the century-long effort to build a great cathedral

is kept alive today by the pious effort to finish Gaudí's masterpiece. I love the emerging result, kitsch and all.