Barcelona's city council awarded the license to the committee in charge of completing the construction of the church for 4.6 million euros ($5.2 million), according to a Twitter post by Janet Sanz, in charge of urban planning.

The money will be used to fund projects designed to mitigate the impact of approximately 4.5 million people who visit the unfinished basilica every year.

She told reporters that the council had finally managed to "resolve a historical anomaly in the city -- that an emblematic monument like the Sagrada Familia... didn't have a building permit, that it was being constructed illegally," Agence France-Presse reported.

The Catholic temple's designer, Catalan modernist Antoni Gaudí, had asked for a permit in 1885 from the city council of Sant Martí de Provençals, which is currently one of Barcelona's neighborhoods, but never received an answer, according to a Friday blog post from the church. 

And even though construction of the neo-Gothic church began in 1882, authorities only discovered in 2016 that it never had planning permission, AFP reported. 

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