Sagrada Familia, a Barcelona Masterpiece, and Scofflaw?

The Sagrada Familia basilica in Barcelona has worldwide fame as an architectural treasure, the dreamlike masterpiece of Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí, which draws millions of visitors a year though it is still under construction, 136 years after work began.

What it has not had for more than a century, according to the city, is a valid building permit.

The Sagrada Familia basilica has agreed to pay city authorities 36 million euros, or about $41 million, over 10 years to settle the dispute over the legality of the work and help pay for transportation improvements around the basilica.

Using the permit as leverage, the administration of Barcelona’s far-left mayor, Ada Colau, took on the Sagrada Familia, part of a trend of civil authorities around the country challenging the legal and tax status of Roman Catholic Church properties. Colau hailed the agreement, announced Thursday, as historic.

The Sagrada Familia’s board had denied any wrongdoing, saying that it had a building permit — one issued in 1885 by Sant Martí de Provençals, which was an independent town at the time. Barcelona officials contend that after Sant Martí was absorbed into the city several years later, the construction required a Barcelona permit; the board says that for more than a century, no one asked for any such thing.

Work began in 1882 on the Sagrada Familia, whose radical design, incorporating elements of Gothic revival, art nouveau, modernism and Asian art, has been compared to everything from a Dr. Seuss drawing to an underwater forest of kelp and coral.

Gaudí died after being hit by a tram in 1926, with the project only about one-quarter complete, and for decades after his death, progress was slow, sporadic and often intensely debated. But the pace of work picked up in recent years. The Sagrada Familia is more than two-thirds completed, and planners hope to finish it in 2026, in time for the centenary of Gaudí's death.

Critics contend that the Sagrada Familia has drifted too far from the vision of Gaudí — some of his plans were destroyed long ago — or that it has more appeal as one of the world’s greatest unfinished monuments.

Even incomplete and surrounded by scaffolding and building cranes, Sagrada Familia is Barcelona’s most famous monument, visited by over 10,000 people a day and pictured on countless postcards and calendars. In November 2010, Pope Benedict XVI consecrated the church as a basilica and held Mass there before 7,000 people.

Colau and her administration accused the basilica’s board of working without a building permit, failing to submit required plans to tear down existing residential structures to finish the Sagrada Familia’s esplanade, and failing to pay construction taxes.

The city’s complaints struck a nerve in a country where, over several decades, the church had quietly registered thousands of properties, including the famed cathedral-mosque Córdoba, as tax-exempt, leading to claims of tax evasion and a debate over how the church spends tourism revenue.

After a Socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, took power in June, his government announced that it would publish an inventory of all property claimed by the Catholic Church, opening the door to potential challenges to that ownership.

Colau faced pressure to resolve the conflict over the Sagrada Familia before what is expected to be an uphill campaign for re-election next spring.

Under the deal struck this week, city authorities will go ahead with transportation infrastructure work around Sagrada Familia, including a feasibility study to build a passageway linking the basilica directly to the closest subway station. The agreement did not settle the dispute over the planned seizure of nearby homes.

But the basilica will, at last, have a building permit.