They are not the stairs themselves. The problem is how the effects are resolved. A complex three-way game – Sagrada Família, affected neighbors and the City Council – that has dragged on for years and years. The works are progressing without pause and the new government team has set out to find an agreed urban solution during this mandate. This is the main commitment that the neighbors have made this afternoon after a first meeting in which the first deputy mayor and head of the urban planning area, Laia Bonet, has committed to guaranteeing access to housing for those who have to be relocated. and that forced expropriations will be carried out by the Sagrada Família.
The number of properties affected has not been discussed, nor have any of the options on the table been raised as a starting point. All stages remain open. This afternoon’s meeting at City Hall served “to put the current situation on the table and see the perspective with which we approach the coming years,” Bonet pointed out. A first meeting point in which the priority has been to end the scenario of provisionality caused by the General Metropolitan Plan of 1976, which reserves a wide promenade two blocks long in front of the Gloria façade.
The second commitment that the municipal government has acquired is to guarantee access to housing “and we have to do it during the mandate to be able to translate the current urban planning approach into a new legal reality,” Bonet added. Whatever solution is agreed upon, “if it involves forced expropriation, the beneficiary has to face it, which is obviously not the City Council,” stated the deputy mayor, assuming that the cost will be borne by the Sagrada Família.
In addition to the first deputy mayor, the meeting was also attended by the chief architect Maria Buhigas and other technicians from the urban planning area, two representatives of the Sagrada Família Veïns Association and two from the platform of those affected by the works. One of them, Salvador Barroso, has highlighted “the good predisposition of the City Council”, although he has acknowledged that there has not been talk of a specific proposal, “what has become clear is that this situation of uncertainty is going to end, which will prevail the right to housing of those affected, that the commitment will be firm and that the Sagrada Família will bear the cost.”
The intention is that the solution adopted before May 2027 is the result of consensus and the one that prevails when the Temple Construction Board, which plans to complete the façade of glory within a period of ten years, addresses the project of the staircase.