
Barcelona's Sagrada Familia agrees to deal over lack of building permit - prostoalex
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45906155?fbclid=IwAR1oCjmO-jrzIt5RumH6XmHY_m7LdKE3SXfpY4VnmEs5w4jcN-JP2H8w1rc&__twitter_impression=true
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mabbo
The most marvelous thing about the Sagrada Familia (okay, second to how
insanely beautiful it is for a Catholic cathedral) is the ticketing system:
There are almost no lines to get in.

Every ticket you buy has a time and day- a 15 minutes period in which you may
enter. And there are a limited number of tickets per 15-minute period.

This does mean you have to plan your visit ahead by a day or two, but you'll
be rewarded with not needing to line up for more than a few minutes.

Operationally, the management have an exact steady stream of visitors from
open to close, so staffing can be just as even, which I can only imagine
reduces costs. And management can also tell if they've priced entry correctly
by seeing if they have open spots all week or having three weeks' backlog sold
out.

Could we please do this for everything that has a line up? It's a wonderful
system.

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drb91
OTOH visitors who discover it will be unable to explore it. Seems like a
tradeoff.

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saudioger
that's like "discovering" the eiffel tower, it's not like you're stumbling
into an unexplored land

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jowiar
There's (at least one) order of magnitude difference in popularity between the
two. I don't think the average American could name the Sagrada Familia from a
picture of it, for instance. For me, when I travel, sometimes I don't really
look up what there is to see/do in a city until I'm there. When I landed in
Barcelona, I didn't know what the Sagrada Familia was.

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subroutine
Sure it's a tradeoff. But also consider, like the eiffel tower, both are large
architectural installations with beauty one can marvel from a distance. No
ticket needed. Haven't had your fill from the outside views, and want a deeper
look, you'll probably go back home/hotel and look it up, learn a bunch about
Gaudi on wikipedia, find out you can book tickets online. Get them, a couple
of days later you can go back and explore the inside, and find that everyone
there seems to be a little knowledgeable about Gaudi, and there are no lines,
since there are no walk-ins.

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bennettfeely
This seems absolutely insane, maybe someone can provide more context. Looks
like a leftist government money grab to me.

How much tourism revenue does 4.5 million visitors annually bring the city of
Barcelona? What other famous national landmarks (likely Church-owned) in Spain
can be retroactively fined for being constructed without a building permit?

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colechristensen
If you attract 4.5 million tourists a year and charge admission your
"nonprofit" label is a bit of a joke.

I don't buy the argument about bringing in other tax revenue by association.
"Everybody else" shouldn't be subsidizing infrastructure for the most
attractive place in town just because it's the most attractive place... those
people are probably working harder and taking more risks, they shouldn't have
to foot the bill for the group profiting the most. (see also, sports stadiums)

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geezerjay
> If you attract 4.5 million tourists a year and charge admission your
> "nonprofit" label is a bit of a joke.

If you don't charge for admissions then there is no way to moderate how many
people visit the site, and you start to create a lot of problems just to deal
with the massive influx of people.

> I don't buy the argument about bringing in other tax revenue by association.
> "Everybody else" shouldn't be subsidizing infrastructure for the most
> attractive place in town just because it's the most attractive place...

If you ever visit the Sagrada Familia you'll notice that the blocks
surrounding the cathedral are packed with businesses living off the
cathedral's popularity.

Even FC Barcelona and Nike have official stores right next to the front
entrance.

It is rather obvious that the cathedral is a huge profit source for the city
and a lot of companies, not counting the typical tourism and HORECA
businesses. Insinuating that the Sagrada Familia is leechng off the poor
government's goodwill is simply wrong and the exact opposite of the truth.

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colechristensen
What? You don't need to charge for admission to rate limit.

Just give out a fixed number of free tickets.

I don't have a problem at all with selling admission tickets, but maybe if you
have millions of visitors a little bit of the money you get from them which
you use to maintain your own premises and employees can also go to maintain
the roads and police and schools just like everybody else.

Nonprofits can be great, but there gets to be a level with so much money that
the value to society of not taxing seems lost.

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geezerjay
> What? You don't need to charge for admission to rate limit.

That's your opinion, and one that is based on your personal assumption that no
fee should be charged for admission.

> Just give out a fixed number of free tickets.

That's a effective way to generate a profitable ticket scalping network for
criminal organizations. Is that your notion of a better outcome?

> I don't have a problem at all with selling admission tickets, but maybe if
> you have millions of visitors a little bit of the money you get from them
> which you use to maintain your own premises and employees can also go to
> maintain the roads and police and schools just like everybody else.

For some reason you've assumed that directly or indirectly absolutely zero
money goes into those populist cliches.

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blahedo
Serious question: were building permits required in Barcelona at the time
construction began?

(Side comment not worth its own response to others' posts: the church is not
technically a cathedral—ie the seat of the local bishop—but rather a
basilica.)

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subroutine
That would be surprising judging from some of the the pictures from the early
1900s

[https://bit.ly/2EyDkEt](https://bit.ly/2EyDkEt)

[https://i.pinimg.com/originals/06/4a/1d/064a1d213e4c75d4d48d...](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/06/4a/1d/064a1d213e4c75d4d48d37ab15b8df32.jpg)

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tomohawk
This looks to be a way for the city to coerce some money from an organization,
and which fits into an existing bureaucratic process, giving it the patina of
legitimacy.

It is a bit surprising that the cathedral didn't just immediately stop
construction and close down access with a big sign saying what was going on.
After all, its all about complying with the law and all. They could have even
started making plans to move the cathedral to a different site with all the
proper permits and everything. The city would have caved for sure.

If you're not willing to go to the mat, you'll always get taken advantage of.

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cpcallen
If this were in the United Kingdom, the local council would insist the
building be torn down.

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codedokode
What's the point of getting building permit if you can build whatever you want
anyway?

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changoplatanero
Isn't it ironic that what Gaudi intended to be a monument to God has become a
monument to Gaudi?

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labster
Cathedral building has always been about temporal prestige, with patrons,
cardinals, cities, and nations competing to build the most elaborate house of
worship. There's no unexpected element in your claim, therefore it is not
ironic.

