The stylish and practical restoration of the Archbishop's Palace of Tarragona has been carefully respectful of the building footprints of Cardinal Vidal i Barraquer (1868-1943), the church's most important contemporary history in Spain. In this rooms, in this chapel, in this office, he decided, with only the Gospel in hand, the observance of the Catholic Church to democracy and the Second Spanish Republic, in 1931 -the last fall of Bourbon , then restored by the Franco-, reflected in the Pastoral Letter of 20 December 1931, perhaps the paper most of the height of the Spanish episcopate throughout the twentieth century and signed unanimously by all bishops.
Here the Cardinal Vidal i Barraquer decided that, despite the lack of money to carry on, his admired Gaudi put the first stone of the nave of the Basilica of the Sagrada Família, which the architect had finished the plaster model scale 1/10. The Cardinal himself solemnly blessed it on December 11, 1921.
This stone remained solitary for sixty-five years, until in 1986 Cardinal Narcis Jubany i Arnau (1913-1996) commissioned the construction of the nave to architectJordi Bonet.
The job lasted twenty-four years, and was driven in the final stage by Cardinal Lluís Martinez Sistach, who on 7 November 2010 arrived to the dedication to the cult by pope Benedict XVI.
Of these three cardinals, two were archbishops of Tarragona: Vidal i Barraquer (1919 to 1943) and Martinez Sistach (1997 to 2004). Both portraits are hanging in the Archbishop's Palace. The first comes from a historic photograph; the second is splendid oil of Isabel Guerra, the technique of the Spanish masters and incredible light, which contemplating worth a visit to Archbishop’s Palace of Tarragona.
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