Antoni Gaudi

Spanish architect with a highly original, three-dimensional art style. Drawing inspiration from the Gothic style, he built strange art nouveau creations in Spain, emerging as a highly nationalistic and religious young talent. He became famed for his design of the unfinished church of the Sagrada Familia and became known as the greatest architect that Spain has ever produced. With the lifelong patronage of Count Evsebi Guell, Gaudi began his design of the Guell Park in 1900.

Gaudi was excessively pious, especially as he grew older. He used to shuffle around the streets of his city nibbling on crusts of bread and seeking alms for the building of the Sagrada Familia. He hated liberalism and was devoted to the most penitential and reactionary in Spanish Catholicism. Gloomy, short-fused and arrogant, he was untroubled by the Christian concept of humility. A misogynist, he never married and probably died a virgin.

He died 10 June 1926, Barcelona, Spain after being hit by a train. He had lived such a private life, that when his body was picked up, authorities assumed that he was just another homeless vagrant.

In 1992, a movement began to stir in Barcelona among the city's Catholic hierarchy to push for the beatification and eventual canonization of Gaudi. Virtuous and pious he may have been, but sainthood requires strong evidence of miracles, and though Gaudi has left breathtaking beauty behind, he has no track record of providing divine intervention.