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[wjfox]

Sagrada Familia in Barcelona ‘will be completed in 2026’

Mon 25 Mar 2024 05.00 GMT

Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia basilica has a new completion date of 2026, which will come 144 years after the first stone was laid.

The president of the organisation tasked with completing Antoni Gaudí’s masterwork announced the date last Wednesday, which coincides with the centenary of the death of the building’s architect.

Esteve Camps said they had the money and material to finish the building, including the 172.5-metre central tower dedicated to Jesus Christ, making the Sagrada Familia Barcelona’s tallest building.

Although the building is set to be complete by 2026, work on sculptures and decorative details and, above all, the controversial stairway leading to what will eventually be the main entrance, is expected to continue until 2034.

When work began in 1882 the site was open farmland but in the intervening years the city has grown up around the church. The stairway, which would extend across two large city blocks, would involve dislodging about 1,000 families and businesses.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/ ... 6-stairway

[Time_Traveller]

Ibiza locals living in cars as party island sees rents soar

6 hours ago

César Nebrera pours out a cup of coffee he has brewed on a stove in the boot of his car. The old green Kia saloon sits in the shade of a carob tree just off the main road near Ibiza Town.

"I miss the basic things that make life comfortable, like being able to stand up in your own home, being able to cook properly, or even open a drawer and pull out some socks," he says.

"Those are the kinds of things that you miss out on when you live in a car."

César's Kia has been his home for the past three years. He works as a chef, but with rental costs on the Spanish island of Ibiza having spiralled, he cannot afford to live in a flat.

"In Ibiza, accommodation is very expensive, and it's getting more and more expensive," he says. "And the cost of renting is completely out of kilter with what you earn. So living like this is an alternative. It's less comfortable, but it allows me to keep living on the island."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68730891

[Time_Traveller]

Catalonia's Puigdemont says pro-independence party close to taking back control of region

April 16, 20242:35 PM GMT+1



PERPIGNAN, France, April 16 (Reuters) - Catalonia's former president Carles Puigdemont, who has been living in self-exile since a failed independence bid seven years ago, believes his party is "neck and neck" with Spain's ruling Socialists to win control of the region in an election in May.

Puigdemont said that if it failed to do so, he may reconsider his party's critical support for the national government.

Puigdemont fled to Belgium in 2017 after his attempt to secure Catalonia's independence collapsed, with Spain's then conservative government sending police to quash a referendum that courts had annulled and prosecuting its leaders for sedition and misuse of public funds.

Now, with an amnesty bill due to exonerate him and hundreds of others, he is running for his hardline Junts party in the regional election from over the border in France. If he succeeds, he plans to return to take up his position.

He said that despite early April polls showing the Socialists leading in Catalonia ahead of the May 12 vote, his party's internal polls show the race narrowed after he threw his hat in the ring.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ca ... 024-04-16/