I remember thinking when I was there years ago that it didn't seem like it was all that far from completion. Now I see how wrong I was.

Aren't there any civic-minded Catholic Spanish billionaires up to the task of funding the rest of the project?

According to this there are 8 Spanish billionaires... but there isn't a lot of insight into whether they're civic minded.

Enric Bernat seems to be our man. He owns a Gaudi building in Barcelona and made his fortune from Chupa Chups.

Compared to most cathedrals, though, this one is going up quite quickly.

I saw it maybe a decade ago. At the time, I was told that the installation of huge naked Christ over the door had stalled construction. The Church was upset about the son of god's full frontal nudity. The artistic community found it tacky and didn't want to support further construction.

That's certainly true... historically the timetable for building cathedrals is measured in lifetimes, not years. And even if you compare it to modern cathedrals, the comparison may not be so bad. Is St. John the Divine finished yet?

On the other hand, I mentioned this to my friend from Barcelona (an expat American), and she mentioned an expression in Catalan that's something to the effect of "I'll get to that when Sagrada Familia is finished."

:-) There's kind of a peculiar awesomeness to the slow pace, though... when we saw it in June, my cousin said that all of us should demand that our future offspring bring us back in our wheelchairs when it's complete.