13/06/2026
One hundred years ago today, Antoni Gaudí walked out of his workshop at the Sagrada Família for the last time.
It was June 7, 1926, around 6 PM. The 73-year-old architect was heading to the church of Sant Felip Neri, as he did every single day for confession and prayer. He was wearing worn-out clothes and carrying no identification. He had been living like a monk for years, sleeping in his workshop, eating almost nothing, giving his money away.
At the corner of Gran Via and Bailén Street, he stepped back to avoid one tram. He didn't hear the second one coming from the other direction. Police records say it happened at 6:05 PM exactly.
He fell. He hit his head. People gathered around him.
Nobody recognized him. They saw a thin old man in ragged clothes and assumed he was a beggar. Taxi drivers refused to take him to the hospital. A doctor examined him at the scene and walked away. A police officer eventually carried him to the Hospital de la Santa Creu, where he received the basic care given to the poor.
It was only the next day that the chaplain from the Sagrada Família came looking for him and recognized the man in the charity ward as the most famous architect in Spain.
By then, it was too late. Gaudí died on June 10, 1926. Less than two weeks before his 74th birthday.
30,000 people lined the streets of Barcelona for his funeral procession. Shop owners closed their doors. Black ribbons hung from balconies across the city. The cortège went down La Rambla, past the Barcelona Cathedral, and all the way to the Sagrada Família, where he was buried beneath the church he never got to finish.
