Radio Interview
"For me the most moving moment is that he should go down to the crypt where Gaudí is buried. For me that is, with all affection and respect, more than the cross, because it is the author of this work that so many millions of people come to see."
José Manuel Almuzara took part live in the La 1 special «El papa León XIV, en España», broadcast on 10 June 2026 from an outdoor set in front of the Sagrada Família. In three interview segments he discussed the religious meaning of the basilica, the life of Antoni Gaudí and the state of the cause of beatification, hours before the Pope blessed the tower of Jesus Christ.
On 10 June 2026, one hundred years to the day since the death of Antoni Gaudí, Spanish public television broadcast on La 1 the special programme «El papa León XIV, en España» from an outdoor set erected in front of the Sagrada Família. Among the guests was José Manuel Almuzara, an architect who has driven Gaudí's cause of beatification since 1992 and the author of «Gaudí, el arquitecto del alma»; the channel's caption introduced him as «Architect and expert on Gaudí's work». He was interviewed by Pepa Bueno and Gemma Nierga, with the participation of Mariángeles Fernández, from the programme «Últimas Preguntas». The conversation was broadcast live in three segments: the Sagrada Família and its creator, anecdotes from Gaudí's life, and the cause of beatification.
The first question was why the Sagrada Família still moves those who contemplate it. Almuzara pointed to the human capacity for wonder and to beauty as «the great need of man», in Benedict XVI's formulation, and recalled the Korean thinker Byung-Chul Han, who «saw the divine breath in Gaudí's work, and it led him to the existence of God, no less». Speaking of the day Barcelona was living through, he stressed the presence of the Pope, «the highest authority, let us say, in the Catholic world», and named without hesitation what was for him the decisive moment of the visit: the descent into the crypt where the architect rests.
"Gaudí's three great loves, as I sum them up: the cross, the Eucharist and Mary."
Almuzara then set out the chronology of those days in 1926. The accident happened on Monday 7 June; Gaudí died three days later, on Thursday the 10th, and was buried on Saturday the 12th in the crypt of the basilica. From that sequence he drew a spiritual reading: suffering and death point to the cross, which Gaudí always placed even in his civil works; Thursday is the day Catholics devote to the Eucharist, a great love of the architect, evoked by the pelican carved in the temple; and Saturday points to Mary. Asked when the works would be finished, he considered the 2034 horizon plausible «if everything works as it has so far, with the number of people who come, with the money that is received», ruled out any demolition —the basilica can be completed within its own plot— and noted the difference in height between calle Mallorca and the Glory façade, the one still to be raised.
The second segment turned to biography. Almuzara recalled Gaudí's devotion to the Virgin of Montserrat, to whose Spiritual League he belonged, and his student years working for Francesc de Paula del Villar —the first architect of the Sagrada Família— and for Joan Martorell: he drew plans for Montserrat that another man signed because he was not yet qualified, and later designed there the first glorious mystery of the Holy Rosary. He explained that from October 1925 until the day of the accident Gaudí lived in the parish quarters of the basilica, alone and with his closest friends already dead, and he evoked the loves that never came to be, among them Pepita Moreu, whom he met around 1878 at the Cooperativa Obrera Mataronense and for whom he would not contend because she was engaged. Of the Casa Milà he said that its last stone is missing, «what gives the building its meaning»: the Virgin and Child, Saint Michael and Saint Gabriel, who were to crown a horizontal façade on which one can still read «Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum». He also recalled the lawsuit with the owners, which the judge decided in the architect's favour: he received 160,000 pesetas and gave them to the poor because «he was not in it for the money… but for justice». From then on he devoted himself exclusively to the Sagrada Família for twelve years.
"I believe that, according to well-informed sources, before the year is out, in this centenary, Gaudí will be beatified."
The third segment addressed the cause of beatification. Almuzara summed up exactly where the process stands —«The miracle has been submitted, the doctors are studying it. The Dicastery will say yes or no»— and argued that the very fact of Leo XIV going down to the crypt to pray before Gaudí «already shows that Gaudí is a saint». Asked whether the recognition might still arrive within the centenary year, he said he was confident that it would come before the end of 2026. He left the set as the royal family arrived at the basilica, minutes before the ceremony he himself had singled out as the most moving of the day: the Pope's prayer at the architect's tomb. The full interview can be watched on this page, in its three video segments.