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When you pronounce the name of the Sagrada Familia around the world, two words immediately come out of the mouth of our interlocutor: Gaudí and Barcelona. Subsequently, other words are associated with these: Spain, Catalonia, Subirachs and other names that have or had to do with the construction of the famous temple.
Few, and I say few if not none, have known how to say the name of Bocabella, or make a single comment about the only person who, in his day, put a part of his fortune so that today we can contemplate this wonder of a temple designed by Antoni Gaudí and which is still under construction today.
But who was José María Bocabella? Born on September 5, 1815, he was the son of Llorens Bocabella i Bunyol and Francisca Verdaguer i Bollich, residents of Calle Cotoners, where the artisans of the cotoners (cotton) guild settled in the 15th century.
Bocabella, a man of great religious convictions, had acquired the Viuda de Pla bookstore and printing house, founded in 1794, which at that time was located between the streets of Cotoners and Princesa, with the intention of continuing with the bookstore’s tradition of betting on religious themes.
Since he was young, he had had a deep interest in knowing the details of the history of the Holy Family, which is why, in 1861, he decided to make a trip to the city of Rome in order to visit the Vatican and, in the eternal city, meet the details that were known about both the Holy Family and the life of Saint Joseph.
Upon his return, he decided to promote the values ??that “the family” represented for him at that time, made up of Mary, Joseph and Jesus. In order to carry out this study, he founded in 1866, the Association of Devotees of San José and to understand what the family represented for Catholics.
The appointment in 1870 of Saint Joseph as Patron of the Universal Church marked the beginning of an international drive for Catholics in many cities around the world to build temples dedicated to the figure of Saint Joseph.
This fact influenced Bocabella, who was awakened by the idea of ??building a temple in Barcelona in honor of the Sagrada Familia. Another reason was his friendship with the writer and priest Josep Manyanet i Vives, founder in 1864 of the congregation of Sons of the Holy Family Jesus, Mary and Joseph, who, despite remaining in the discreet background, influenced the The idea was to acquire some land in El Poblet, a place located on the outskirts of the city, to the right of the expansion, which was in the middle of the urbanization process.
The idea was clear, but the possibilities of carrying it out were more difficult, since Bocabella, as far as it would go, was to be able to buy the land on the block where the temple was to be built, which cost him 172,000 pesetas.
But the problem came later with the construction. The first part of the solution was in his own house: in his bookstore he would publish a magazine that would be distributed among all the partners and that reached 25,000 biweekly copies. If he added to this the donations that they would be able to attract, since with his personal intervention he had managed to get the Association of Devotees of San José to gather more than 600,000 members, the works could be started.
Bocabella had commissioned his friend and architect Joan Martorell Montells to find an architect for the construction of the new temple. In 1887, it was commissioned to Francisco de Paula del Villar Lozano, who had designed the apse of the Monastery of Montserrat, counting on Antoni Gaudí as draftsman.
Francisco de Paula conceived a neo-Gothic project, which from the beginning was not liked by anyone, since his intention to copy the design of an Italian basilica was not liked.
This forced De Paula to carry out a new neo-Gothic design, but the confrontation between the parties had only just begun.
The first stone of the church of the Sagrada Familia was laid on March 19, 1882, Saint Joseph’s Day, blessed at that time by the Bishop of Barcelona, ??José María de Urquinaona.
As was to be expected, the differences were greater between what De Paula wanted to do and what Bocabella wanted. A year later, he once again sought advice from his friend, the architect Joan Martorell Montells. And, despite being built part of the crypt, De Paula, tired of discussions, decided to abandon the project.
Although Bocabella wanted Martorell to take charge of the work, he declined the offer, but introduced him to a young man named Antoni Gaudí, who was named architect of the temple by Bocabella on November 3, 1883.
Gaudí found himself with an inappropriate project, which forced him to present a completely different idea and which he hoped would be accepted.
José María Bocabella i Verdaguer, the main promoter of the expiatory temple of the Sagrada Família, died on April 24, 1892, being buried in the chapel of Santo Cristo, in gratitude for his desire to build a temple that was a tribute to the Sagrada Family.
For the end of the story, there are still days to finish it. Bocabella put the idea, Gaudí carried out a project considered a masterpiece of architecture. Hopefully those who see the end of the play can feel as satisfied as his predecessors.
