Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia gets building permit after 137 years
The article misses an important bit of info: when the construction started, the Sagrada Familia was not in Barcelona, but in an independent municipality, Sant Martí de Provençals. It was to this municipality that the building permit was requested, not to Barcelona, which would annex the municipality and with it, the Sagrada Familia, 15 years later. Plus, most of the documentation regarding the building, including plans, scale models etc. were destroyed in a fire caused by anarchists when the Civil War started. The story is more complex than just incompetent bureaucracy.