“Do you know how to get to the Sagrada Família from here?” 

I asked my wife as we climbed out of the Barcelona metro tunnels.

“Turn around.”

So I did.

The cathedral filled the street, a crane hanging over the central towers, its arm frozen mid-swing. 

Below it, newer stone stopped abruptly against older stone.

~

We’d arrived an hour before opening.

With nothing else to do, Dani and I walked.

Every few steps the building changed shape. 

Towers disappeared behind one another. Facades emerged around corners—one covered in flowers, the next crowded with stone figures.

“Maybe over here?” 

I followed. Dani was backing up, trying to find a view that made sense. 

It never did. 

No matter where we stood, something blocked our view of something else.

The cathedral remained too large to fit into a single glance—yet it was still incomplete.

When we finally joined the entrance line, only a handful of people stood ahead of us. 

Behind us, hundreds followed.

Nearby, a maintenance worker repainted chips in the handrails leading up from the street. 

When he finished, he exchanged his paintbrush for a broom and swept the staircase from top to bottom.

Nobody entered the gates until he reached the final step. Then the crowd began moving.

~

Inside, sunlight poured through stained-glass and painted the floor in bands of color.

The stones shifted from blue to red under my feet.

I tried following our guide. He moved us slowly through the building, explaining the symbolism of the towers.

“The facade represents…”

The windows. 

The columns.

After a while, it began to blend.

People stood looking upward. So did I.

The columns rose like tree trunks and branched overhead.

Maybe that was enough.

~

On the way out, the guide said the cathedral would open in 2024—one hundred years after Gaudí’s death.

“Will they make it?”

“We hope so.” 

His eyes flicked up.

I followed his gaze.

The crane still hung over the cathedral.