GOD’S ARCHITECT

Months before he died, Spain’s most revered modernist architect Antoni Gaudí cloistered himself in the workshop of his temple, the , famous today as the world’s longest-running construction project, still incomplete 137 years later. Shabbily dressed, unkempt, and bearded, Gaudí, who was often mistaken for a beggar, took his daily, before noticing a tram coming towards him. The great master of Catalan Modernism took two steps back to avoid collision but was struck from behind by another tram coming in the opposite direction, snapping his ribs in two. Seeing an ‘injured beggar’ on the tracks, no one bothered to take the revered creator to hospital.