When between fields and esplanades, the Sagrada Família barely had the Nativity façade, the crypt and the half-built bell tower of San Bernardo, the first tourists arrived. The year was 1915: “The global attention focused on the Expiatory Temple of the Sagrada Família, which we built in Barcelona, ??has been demonstrated in the second half of April by the large number of foreigners who have visited it carefully, for which the guide has able to record their origins. They are these: from Germany, 4; Argentina, 1; Bolivian, 2; Columbia, 3; France, 7; Holland, 2; Mexico 3 and Santo Domingo, 2. From Spain they pay tribute of visitors: Asturias, 1; Balearic Islands, 10; Burgos, 1; Girona, 6; Lleida, 6; Logrono, 5; Madrid, 5; Tarragona, 15; Basque Country, 5…”.
This is the first account published, in May 1915, by the magazine El propagador de la Devoción a San José, which from that year until 1936 will periodically report the arrivals of visitors, by country and province. But in reality, the tourist history of the Sagrada Família can be found in 1912, when the model of the Nativity façade was installed –financed by Eusebi Güell, supervised by Gaudí and painted by Jujol– which had been exhibited two years earlier in the Salon of Architecture of 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 passed to the entrance. Starting in March 1915, the Board of the Sagrada Família establishes that “so that this service does not subtract money from the work”, a donation of one peseta to visit the project-model and one more peseta to visit the bell towers. Already then a combined entry of 1.5 pesetas is established to see everything.
The first guide emerged from that initial tourist activity. For two pesetas, 16 pages with explanations and engravings published 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 discover how Gaudí himself had conceived the temple. In 1936 the magazine El Propagador ceased to be published. “Between 1936 and 1950 we have not found data on visitors in the administrative collection, although since 1944, when the minutes of the first meeting of the Board after the war are made, various actions have been 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 reported that “the provisional fence that encloses the façade of the birth and a large part of the Temple enclosure has been completed, which greatly facilitates conservation and, at the same time, greater control of visitors.” ”.
It is from 1948 when it is agreed to register again the name and address of all visitors. A year later, admission was charged again and in 1950, “after extensive discussion”, it was approved to hire the services of the first official guide: Mr. René Dufour, Belgian by birth and who spoke several languages.
It will be Mr. Dufour who, as the sole and official guide, will demand in 1951 the construction of a ticket office and then an “information office” under a budget of about 29,000 pesetas”, as stated in the minutes of the Meeting held on 26 March 1954. The documents preserved in the administrative collection, in addition to the magazines El propagador and then Templo (1948-1980) and Temple (1981-2021) have served Laia Vinaixa to recover data and anecdotes from the tourist history 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 collections (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 Universal Exhibition of Barcelona in 1929, in which 7,014 visits went from 13,198. After the hiatus of the Civil War, in the fifties, the activity is constant year after year with great peaks during the sixties and a setback during the last years of the Franco regime.
Starting in 1976, with the completion of the Passion façade, the number of visitors jumped again and continued to grow until 2008, the last great economic crisis. In 2019 the absolute record was reached but the pandemic reduced activity to figures of 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, thus, it has been like since 1915 and until 2022, the Sagrada Família has registered almost 83 million visitors.
