The episode is well known.
At around six in the evening on 7 June 1926, Antoni Gaudí i Cornet was on his way to his daily mass in Plaça de Sant Felip Neri, a tucked-away corner in the heart of Barcelona’s Gòtic quarter where the dwindling local community, embodied by the children from a nearby school who play in this makeshift courtyard, puts up resistance to the 26.1 million tourists who visit the city every year, many of them drawn by the legacy of Catalonia’s most iconic architect.Contemporary reports describe how, as the Tarragona-born architect was crossing Gran Via between the corners of Carrer de Bailèn and Carrer de Girona, two trams on the line between Plaça de Tetuán and Passeig de Gràcia crossed paths.
Gaudí stepped back to avoid one of them but was hit by the second.
The spot where the collision took place lies roughly halfway, a 20-minute walk, between two of his most emblematic works: Casa Milà (better known as La Pedrera) and the basilica of the Sagrada Família.The accident left him with a concussion, several broken ribs and, first, a transfer to a first-aid clinic in Sant Pere Més Alt (because the two passers-by who helped him failed to recognise him) and then to the old Hospital de la Santa Creu, where he died some 48 hours later at the age of 74.
