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RPA, the public radio of Asturias (Spain), devoted 31 minutes of its programme «Un buen día para viajar» to José Manuel Almuzara. In the broadcast of 12 April 2026, made from Gijón, the conversation took Antoni Gaudí as a reason to travel and touched on the Sagrada Família, the book «Gaudí, el arquitecto del alma» and the cause of beatification.
José Manuel Almuzara —an architect, promoter of Antoni Gaudí's cause of beatification and author of «Gaudí, el arquitecto del alma»— was the guest on «Un buen día para viajar» (“A good day to travel”), the travel programme of RPA. The station is the radio arm of the Radiotelevisión del Principado de Asturias, the public broadcaster of this region in northern Spain. The 12 April 2026 broadcast was made from Gijón, and the interview filled 31 minutes at the start of the programme's second part. For a show of this kind, Gaudí is an obvious destination: the Sagrada Família and the rest of his work welcome visitors from all over the world. From there, the conversation turned to the architect's faith.
This is the key Almuzara has offered for decades to anyone who approaches Gaudí's work. He holds that the buildings are understood in the light of the Catholic faith that inspired them, because the architect placed his talent at the service of God and of his neighbour. That is why he invites people to enter the Sagrada Família as what it is, a temple: the offering that a practising Catholic wished to raise to God in Barcelona. Visitors who come with that idea look at the façades, the columns and the stained-glass windows with new eyes, and return home knowing a little more about the man who conceived them.
The conversation also dwelt on «Gaudí, el arquitecto del alma», Almuzara's book published by Roca Editorial in 2026. In it he gathers more than thirty years of study of Gaudí's life and work, and presents the man, the architect and the Christian who built the Sagrada Família. The other major theme was the cause of beatification. Almuzara co-founded the Association for the Beatification of Antoni Gaudí in 1992 and has presided over it ever since. Pope Francis declared Gaudí Venerable on 14 April 2025, recognising the heroic nature of his virtues, and the next step towards the altars requires the Church to recognise a miracle attributed to his intercession. The interview aired two days before the first anniversary of that decree.
The interview came a month and a half after his stay in Gijón. At the end of February 2026, Almuzara gave two lectures on Gaudí in the city, reported by the Asturian newspaper El Comercio: one in the assembly hall of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart and another in the Almirante hall of the Club de Regatas. Through «Un buen día para viajar», he carried that same work of outreach to listeners across Asturias, in the year that marks a century since Gaudí's death in 1926. For Almuzara, every one of these encounters serves the same purpose: to make known the believer behind the architect and to bring closer the day when the Church proclaims him blessed.