Doug Stanglin

USA TODAY

For a project in the works for more than 130 years, it is perhaps fitting that when the chief architect for Barcelona's breathtaking basilica La Sagrada Família recently announced construction had reached the final stage, he meant it would be wrapped up in a mere 11 years.

The soaring Roman Catholic church, also known as the Basilica and Expiatory Temple of the Holy Family, has been under construction since 1883, when architect Antoni Gaudi took over a modest, year-old project for a standard Gothic church and turned it into a wondrous structure that combines Gothic and curvilinear Art Nouveau forms.

Gaudi, who is buried in the chapel of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in the crypt of Sagrada Família, worked on the project for 43 years before dying in a tram accident in 1926 after completing only a quarter of it.

Chief architect Jordi Fauli said last month that construction is on track to complete the church in 2026 on the centennial of Gaudi's death, according to Dezeen, a British architecture and design magazine.

But he also built in a little more time for the final touches. He said decorative elements could take another four to six years. "It's difficult to predict but we can say that it will be completed by 2030, 2032," he said.

The project has encountered numerous difficulties over many decades, including the Spanish Civil War, when insurrectionists set fire to one part of the structure and, in their anti-clerical zeal, destroyed Gaudi's models and plans for the finished building. The pieces were partially reassembled but only scraps of the original plans were restored.

Gaudi was untroubled during his life by the slow pace of such a project, believing that God had all the time in the world. “The work of the Sagrada Família progresses slowly because the master of this work is in no great hurry,” he is widely quoted as saying.

Architect Jodi Bonet, 90, who invested most of his life to the basilica, first set foot on the construction site when he was 7. He was accompanying his father, Luis Bonet, one of four architects who managed the project for 40 years. His father eventually handed the role over to him.

The church has been largely shielded from financial and political pressure because it is mainly financed by fees from tourists, who pour in at a rate of more than 3 million a year.

Over the decades, while stonemasons and builders quietly reached for the sky, the building has long generated passionate views.

Some critics have argued that Gaudi's successors strayed from his vision. In 2010, Bonet rejected those concerns, telling The New York Times that Gaudi himself left a certain degree of artistic freedom to those working alongside him.

"Almost every cathedral has been the work of many people and over many centuries,” Bonet told the newspaper. “Even when he was in charge, there were 40 different sculptors working for Gaudi, and of course he inspired them, intervened and commented on their work — but it remained the work of several different sculptors.”

American architect Louis Sullivan, the so-called “father of skyscrapers," once described the basilica as “spirit symbolized in stone.”

On the other hand, George Orwell once called it “one of the most hideous buildings in the world” and rather hoped it would be destroyed during the Spanish Civil War, according to the BBC.

Even the artist Salvador Dali, a fan of Gaudi and the project, weighed in: "Those who have not tasted his superbly creative bad taste are traitors."

Regardless of the criticism, the Sagrada Familia is firmly established — in spirit and in stone. It was consecrated in 2010 by Pope Benedict XVI, who officially proclaimed it as a minor basilica because a cathedral must be the seat of a bishop.

The church has already been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

According to the cathedral website, the main projects still underway include construction of the west sacristy and the central towers.

The Tower of Jesus is being built above the vaults of the crossing and the apse and will be crowned with a cross more than 500 feet above ground level. It will be flanked by the four Towers of the Evangelists. Work on those five towers has already begun. There will also be a tower dedicated to the Virgin Mary above the apse.

Once finished, the basilica's central tower will soar 566 feet, making it the world's tallest church. As CBS' 60 Minutes observed in 2013, "Gaudi designed it to be three feet shorter than the tallest surrounding mountain, in deference to God."

The final touch, at least for 2026, will be the construction of the west front, or Glory facade.

While the construction timetable is impressive, the Barcelona basilica is only a piker when it comes to world records for construction. Work began on Germany's Cologne Cathedral in in 1248 and continued until 1473, when construction was halted. The cathedral was eventually completed in 1880 — 632 years after the cornerstone was set.