When, between fields and esplanades, the Sagrada Família barely had the Nativity facade, the crypt and the half-built Sant Bernat bell tower, the first tourists arrived. It was the year 1915: “The world’s attention focused on the expiatory temple of the Sagrada Família, which we have built in Barcelona, ??has been demonstrated during the second fortnight of April by the large number of foreigners who have visited it thoroughly , and that is why the guide was able to write down their origins. These are: Germany, 4; Argentina, 1; Bolivia, 2; Colombia, 3; France, 7; Holland, 2; Mexico 3, and Santo Domingo, 2. From Spain, visitors receive tribute: Asturias, 1; Balearic Islands, 10; Burgos, 1; Girona, 6; Lleida, 6; Logroño, 5; Madrid, 5; Tarragona, 15; Basque Country, 5….”.
This is the first count published, in May 1915, by the magazine El Propagador de la Devoción in San José, which from that year until 1936 will periodically report on visitor arrivals, by country and by province. But, in reality, the tourist antecedents of the Sagrada Família must be sought in 1912, when the model of the Nativity facade was installed – financed by Eusebi Güell, supervised by Gaudí and polychrome by Jujol – which had been exhibited two years earlier at the Salon of Architecture in Paris. At that time, the visit was free except to see the model, which involved “the payment of a modest stipend in favor of the works of the temple”.
Three years later, the “stipend” is changed to entry. From March 1915, the Board of the Sagrada Família established that “so that this service does not leave money for the work”, a donation of one peseta to visit the model project and another peseta to visit the bell towers. Even then, a combined ticket of 1.5 pesetas is established to see everything.
The first guidebook emerged from this initial tourist activity. For two pesetas, 16 pages with explanations and recordings edited in Catalan, Spanish, German, French and English. A guide that, after the war and with all the documentation burned and the models destroyed, becomes essential to know how Gaudí himself had conceived the temple. In 1936 the magazine El Propagador stopped being published. “Between 1936 and 1950 we have not found visitor data in the administrative fund, although since 1944, when the first meeting of the Board after the war is recorded, several actions are carried out to resume visits ”, says Laia Vinaixa, head of the Documentation Center of the Sagrada Família and author of the study on the evolution of visitors. Thus, in 1945, the architect Quintana reports that “the temporary fence that closes the Nativity facade and a large part of the temple grounds has been completed, a fact that primarily facilitates conservation and, at the same time, greater control of visitors”.
It is from 1948 that it is agreed to register the name and address of all visitors again. A year later, the entrance fee is charged again and in 1950, “after extensive discussion”, it was approved to hire the services of the first official guide: René Dufour, Belgian by birth and who spoke several languages.
It will be Dufour who, as the only and official guide, will claim in 1951 the construction of a ticket office and then an “information office with a budget of around 29,000 pesetas”, as recorded in the minutes of the held meeting on March 26, 1954. The documents kept in the administrative fund, in addition to the magazines El Propagador and later Templo (1948-1980) and Temple (1981-2021) have served Laia Vinaixa to recover the data and anecdotes of history tourist of the basilica. The Documentation Center of the Sagrada Família, renovated and relocated in the basement of the monument, between the Museum and the walls of the Crypt, functions as a library (with more than 2,400 titles) and preserves, in addition to the bibliographic holdings (also 78,595 articles ), documentary funds and more than 4,000 plans of the temple or 600 posters.
The evolution of tourists since 1915 reflects the growing interest that the Sagrada Família has always aroused. With significant leaps such as the death of Gaudí in 1926, the year in which the number of visitors doubled, or the Barcelona Universal Exhibition of 1929, in which visits went from 7,014 to 13,198. After the hiatus of the Civil War, in the 1950s, activity returns and is constant year after year, with great increases during the 1960s and a decline during the last years of the Franco regime.
From 1976, with the completion of the Passion facade, the number of visitors jumped again and continued to grow until 2008, the last major economic crisis. In 2019, the absolute record was reached, but the pandemic reduced activity to figures in the nineties. The recovery registered in 2023 (of more than 2.7 million visitors in one year), now without physical ticket offices, is the most significant. And this is how, from 1915 until 2022, the Sagrada Família has registered almost 83 million visitors.
