SPAIN:Experts are divided over plans for a new tunnel under the Catalan architect's controversial temple, writes Jane Walkerin Barcelona.
In July this year a video broadcast on Catalan television showed shocking images of Barcelona's Sagrada Familia collapsing like a house of cards into mounds of rubble.
An alarming prospect: however, viewers were immediately reassured that the video was a publicity montage to demonstrate what some say could happen if authorities continue with their plan to construct a tunnel under the centre of Barcelona and beneath Spain's third most visited building - after the Prado in Madrid and Alhambra in Granada.
For years there have been demands for an AVE (high-speed train) to link Madrid and Barcelona, and to continue to the French border at Perpignan. The Madrid-Barcelona link is almost complete and will come into service in two months' time, reducing the 659km journey to less than four hours.
But the Barcelona-Perpignan leg will take at least another five years - and probably much longer if the Sagrada Familia committee has its way.
When the eccentric Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí was killed by a tram in 1926 his iconic modernist work, which began in 1882, was still incomplete.
He had left only vague sketches and no detailed plans. Work came to a virtual halt for many years and only resumed in earnest in 1952. It was consecrated by Pope John Paul II in 1982. If all goes to plan, the building, much larger than originally planned, should finally be complete by 2020.
Few visitors to Barcelona can have failed to see, and probably visit, the soaring spires of the Expiatory Temple of the Holy Family. Of the 2.5 million who do so every year, many will have marvelled at it, but others will agree with George Orwell who described it as "one of the most hideous buildings in the world, with four crenellated spires in the shape of hock bottles"
But before the AVE can continue towards France a 12-m diameter tunnel must be dug, and part of it will run beneath the main facade of the temple.
The Sagrada Familia committee, whose team of experts warn that the building could be damaged by the tunnelling, have brought an injunction to force the railway construction company to halt the work.
Joan Rigol, president of the committee, claims that part of the planned line will be only 75cm below a supporting wall and just 1.75cm from the foundations. Architect Jordi Bonet said that the sheer weight of the building was the problem.
"It is a unique structure. The Gloria facade alone weighs 22,500 tonnes, and spires are 10 times the height of the high-rise apartments in the area."
Bonet described the tunnelling project as "an act of vandalism. There are already Metro lines under two sides of the building and every time a convoy goes past you can feel and hear the vibrations in the crypt."
Ramón García Bragado, deputy mayor and urban planning councillor for Barcelona, is sympathetic to the fears of his fellow citizens but dismissed their concern. "No one can forget the Carmel tunnel disaster," he said, referring to the collapse two years ago of an entire street of apartment buildings when a new Metro line was being built below.
Bragado said: "I am convinced the proposed route is a safe one. The railway company has made detailed studies of the subsoil along the entire path, paying particular attention to the buildings. Wherever possible the line will go under the street and not under any buildings. I know they have studied alternative routes, but none are suitable."
Many people are still not convinced. Mark Berry, an architect who travels from his office in Melbourne every couple of months to oversee progress, says: "maybe everything will be fine at first, but we have seen so many problems with urban tunnels around the world that it is difficult to predict what could happen in five, ten or even 20 years."
His colleague, civil engineer José María García was even more pessimistic. "They said the Titanic was unsinkable. Look what happened."