The main access door of La Sagrada Família is put in place

From June 6th, the great gateway door to the main nave of the Temple can be visited.

08/14/2009
The main access bronze door that Josep M. Subirachs created for the Glory façade was inaugurated on the Open Day that the Expiatory Church of La Sagrada Família organises every year.

When Subirachs had already finished the works on the Passion façade, which required twenty years to be completed, the Temple Building Board commissioned him the works on the façade door facing Carrer Mallorca.

In collaboration with Bruno Gallart, Subirachs' assistant during the works on the Passion façade, the sculptor completed a group formed by two doors, five metres wide and five metres high. The Fundició Vilà (Valls), company which also took care of the doors of the Gospel according to St. Matthew and St. John, was commissioned the melting of the bronze. As usual, when the door when was placed, Subirachs applied bronze a first patina that will be transformed in time.

Josep M. Subirachs work history is comprised of many other previous forged bronze doors. The repeated letter is one of the most emblematic techniques he used in order to turn message into a work of art, paying thus a tribute to typology: art that has always drawn the artist attention.

The middle part of the main access doors is inscribed with the Lord's Prayer in Catalan with relief letters, and highlights the fragment 'Give us, o Lord, our daily bread' (Translation from original Catalan: 'el nostre pa de cada dia doneu-nos-el avui') in Catalan and 49 more languages (in alphabetic order: Albanian, Arabic, Aramaic, Aranese, Basque, Berber, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Coptic, Croat, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Finnish, French, Gaelic, Galician, German, Greek, Guarani, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua , Rumanian, Russian, Sanskrit, Sardinian, Serb, Slovenian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog , Tibetan, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, and Wolof).

The first doors sculpted by Subirachs (1959-1961) can be found in the Virgen del Camino Sanctuary (León). On that occasion, the young sculptor created four doors. However, it was on the main façade where he applied typography as an architectural technique for the first time. As background for the rest of the elements, ora pro nobis can be found inscribed thereon repeatedly. This sculptural technique is so powerful that he will take it up again later.

The rest of 'typographical monuments' can be found in La Sagrada Família. For the description of Christ's passion, Subirachs created single sculptures, sculptural groups and relief letters, and four bronze doors dedicated to Gethsemane's garden (1995), the Coronation (1997), the Gospel according to St. Matthew and the Gospel according to St. John (2000). The sculptor wanted all the façade work to be captured in the centre door (2000). For this reason, he decided to reproduce the text of the Gospel illustrated by means of the sculptures, with over 8,000 smelted bronze letters erected 'like two enormous open books', as Subirachs put it.

With the creation of the main access doors of the Expiatory Church of La Sagrada Família, Josep M. Subirachs becomes again a sculptor, a bronze smith and a typographer.