Draft:José María Bocabella

José María Bocabella y Verdaguernota 1 (Barcelona, September 5, 1815-ibid, April 24, 1892) was a Spanish bookseller and philanthropist, known for having devised the construction of the Expiatory Temple of the Sagrada Familia.

Biography He was born in 18151 at Calle Cotoners No. 2 in Barcelona, son of Llorens Bocabella y Bunyol and Francisca Verdaguer y Bollich.

Owner of the old printing press and religious bookstore Herederos de la Viuda Pla,1 in Barcelona, in 1861 he made a trip to Rome, the result of which he acquired a great devotion to the figure of Saint Joseph, deciding to promote the values of the Christian family. To this end, he founded the Association of Devotees of San José (1866),23 which had 600,000 members, as well as the magazine El propagador de la devotion a San José (1866), for which he was inspired by the magazine of the same name. (Propagateur de la dévotion a Saint Joseph) published by the Salesian Joseph Huguet in Sainte-Foy de Dijon, France. The magazine had an initial circulation of 25,000 copies, and is still published today under the Temple name. He also founded workshops for workers and apprentices.4

Bocabella devised the construction of a Catholic temple dedicated to the Holy Family, 5 for which he acquired land in the expansion of Barcelona, in a place known as El Poblet, near Camp de l'Arpa, in San Martín de Provensals; The plot cost him 172,000 pesetas at the time (€1,034). He commissioned the project first to Francisco de Paula del Villar y Lozano,1 who devised a neo-Gothic complex, rejecting Bocabella's idea of making a replica of the Sanctuary of Loreto, but in 1883 Villar resigned due to disagreements with Joan Martorell, a consulting architect. from Bocabella. The project was then offered to Martorell himself, but when he refused, it was offered to Antoni Gaudí, who would turn the commission into his life's work.6

José María Bocabella married Teresa Puig y Xicola, with whom he had a daughter, Francisca de Paula Bocabella y Puig, who continued her work at the head of the printing press and on the Construction Board of the Expiatory Temple of the Sagrada Familia. He died in 1892 and was buried in the chapel of Santo Cristo in the crypt of the Sagrada Familia.