The basilica of the Sagrada Família was designed by Gaudí to express through its architecture and decoration the hopes of the dominant class in Barcelona during the most conflictive decades of industrialisation of the city. The slow progress of construction meant his ideas evolved until his death in 1926, and the connotations in the building continued to develop in the decades since then. Today the church has very different meanings to what the architect and his clients anticipated, having become a global icon and metonym for the city.