Neil Freiman

Which is a good thing, because this church has been a bear to build, primarily due to two factors, money and war.

During the Spanish Civil War in the 30s, a decade after his death, Gaudi's blueprints for the church were mostly destroyed, leaving his associates and disciples scrambling to decipher his plans.

A lack of money has also been a hurdle, with visitor ticket sales ultimately replacing donations as the main source of funding for construction.

and it's those tourists that send Catalan spiraling with rage.

In the past few years, as visitors' numbers to Barcelona have surged, locals have rebelled against foreign tourists staging protests and sometimes pelting them with water guns.

Pope Leo will probably get a warmer reception, though.

Yeah, Barcelona skyline, there's not many buildings that are tall at all.

It's like very one, two, three stories.

And then you see the Sagrada Familia, which stands 560 feet above.

It's absolutely amazing.

And people know it.

And Spain is just facing a crush of visitors.

In April, the country received 9.1 million international visitors, a new record high for the month, which was 5% more than April 2025.

And you're starting to see just so many debates play out in Spain and across Europe about people coming.

And Spain, it seems like they hate tourists more than anyone else.

There was a YouGov poll, Europe-wide, published in September 2024.

28% of Spaniards had a negative view of foreign tourism, which was by far the highest percentage of any country.

Their main gripe is housing.

Barcelona housing prices have been spiking in recent years, and they say that the foreign

The crush of forced visitors and proliferation of Airbnbs has contributed to a supply crunch that's driven them from their neighborhoods and turned the city into a kind of Disneyland and stripped it of all of its, you know, really local flair.