(ANSA) – MADRID, Aug 02 – The latest available estimate of the total cost to finish building Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia, Antonio Gaudi’s masterpiece begun in 1882 and never finished, is just over €374 million. This is reported today by the newspaper El País, which explains that it has obtained a document approved by the Barcelona municipality in 2019, which sets the necessary budget for the completion of the works.
The plan for obtaining the building permit for the Sagrada Familia was submitted to the private ecclesiastical institution responsible for the construction sites, which had not been officially granted in the past 137 years. At the time, it was believed that it would be possible to eradicate it in 2026, a goal declared unattainable in September 2020, after the start of the Covid pandemic.
According to a recent article by La Vanguardia, the bulk of the business will not restart before 2024, due to the sharp decline in revenue caused by the reduced volume of tourist visits from March 2020 onwards. Current forecasts indicate that the number of tourists visiting the Sagrada Familia next year will reach 50% of the number of tourists for 2019 (when they were, on average, 12,000 per day).
Currently, construction of one of the towers envisaged in the Gaudí project and not yet completed, the Maria Tower, is still ongoing. The goal is to have it finished by the end of this year: it will have a total height of 138 metres.
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