The president of the committee in charge of finishing the massive building has declared it will be ready in time for the centenary of Gaudi’s death in 1926, when the work was only a quarter finished. Gaudi – known as “God’s architect” – once famously said of the basilica, “my client is in no hurry.”

Though one of the world’s most well-known architectural masterpieces, La Sagrada Familia has not been universally loved through its long construction. George Orwell wrote in his memoir of the Spanish Civil War that the basilica was “one of the most hideous buildings in the world.”