April 25, 2025

When a city values art not as decoration but as essential that is something special. To build with love, to create with care, to have your life’s work reshape a city’s soul, merging the sacred and the artistic, that is spectacular.

Antoni Gaudi was a sickly child. He had rhematic fever, instead of playing outside he spent time alone in tireless reflection and observation where he developed his love for nature and geometry which would go on to define his work. He had deep religious devotion during his formative years which brought him closer to God. His achievements are nothing short of extraordinary. Of his more than one dozen major projects in Barcelona, between 1984 and 2005, seven of his works were declared UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Among them, his crown jewel, Basilica de La Sagrada Familia, (Basilica of the Holy Family), so ambitious that it is still under construction more than 150 years later. Gaudi dedicated every working hour to the Basilica even sleeping on site.

Gaudi didn’t just build churches; he saw architecture as a type of worship. My brother Brian’s company, The Collage Companies, has built churches throughout Florida. The company mission statement is “To build projects that strengthen the foundation of our community.” For Gaudi, every mosaic design, every spark of light was part of his spiritual offering. He was not just building buildings; he was building community.

Antoni Gaudi lived a humble life and at age 74 he died in a horrible accident. He was hit by a tram on the streets of Barcelona, and he looked so poor that people thought he was homeless. As a result, no one thought to bring him to a hospital, and he died soon after. But when his identity was discovered 30,000 people attended his funeral! Gaudi was laid to rest in the crypt of his masterpiece.

But Gaudi was not the only artist to influence Barcelona.

Pablo Picasso could not have been more different that Antoni Gaudi. Gaudi was spiritual, reclusive, humble. Picasso was fiery, boisterous, secular. One was quiet the other had a sharp tongue. Gaudi pointed his aspirations upward, Picasso looked inward rearranging human anatomy to his pleasure. One reached for the heavens, the other dug into the earth. Yet both turned Barcelona into a canvas. And Barcelona embraced both of them.

It seems Barcelona doesn’t ask art to be one thing. It lets contradictions flourish, religion beside the radical, the ancient next to the cutting edge. Today street artists, painters and puppeteers all adding their own voice.

You don’t need to be Catholic or religious to visit The Basilica de La Sagrada Familia. Let the colors wash over you. Look up. That’s the miracle.

I believe that process brings us closer to God or at least closer to each other.

Art does not have to be locked up or framed to be powerful. It can be walked on. It can be lived in. Art can be sacred not only in the church, but in the streets, and in its people.

Thanks for traveling with us.