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An elegant modernist building in the mountains north of Barcelona, originally constructed to house engineers establishing a nearby mine, has been confirmed as a work of Antoni Gaudí, Catalonia’s most celebrated and distinctive architect.
The Xalet del Catllaràs, about 80 miles from Barcelona in the county of Berguedà, was built in 1905 and commissioned by Eusebi Güell, Gaudí’s lifelong patron. Güell was the owner of a cement company with mines in the region and he needed somewhere to house the engineers, many of them British, who would help extract the coal for his factories.
It has long been suspected that the chalet, now not in use, was the work of Gaudí but historians had not firmly established the architect. The building contains elements of Gaudí’s naturalistic style, evoking the forms of plants and animals that would later be expressed in works such as Park Güell and the Casa Batllò in Barcelona. The pointed arch structure also foreshadows Gaudí’s best-known work, the Sagrada Família in Barcelona.
Sònia Hernández Almodóvar, the Catalan culture minister, said the attribution was the fruit of “rigorous research which is of enormous value for our heritage” and enriched Gaudí’s legacy on the centenary of his death.
The analysis was carried out by the Catalan heritage department led by the chair of Gaudí studies, Galdric Santana Roma. “After much research we have concluded that the Xalet del Catllaràs is the work of Gaudí,” he said. “However, this attribution is strictly limited to the initial stages of the project as Gaudí didn’t supervise the work which didn’t follow faithfully the original design.”
Santana said the process of certifying an architectural work is very different from that of a painting and the knowledge acquired in the study of the chalet will contribute to investigating other works attributed to Gaudí.
Gaudí died on 10 June 1926, at the age of 73, three days after being hit by a tram in Barcelona, and numerous commemorative events and exhibitions are planned throughout the centenary year.
The installation in June of the final elements of the illuminated cross atop the central Jesus Christ tower of the Sagrada Família, more than 140 years after the project began in 1882, is likely to have the longest-lasting impact on the city’s skyline.
Initially funded by repentant sinners and more recently by tourism, the completion of the tower will make it, at 172.5 metres, Barcelona’s tallest building. The Sagrada Família is already the world’s tallest church since part of its central tower was lifted into place in October.
Gaudí devoted the latter part of his life to the Sagrada Família, but little of it was completed in the architect’s lifetime, and work practically came to a halt at the outbreak of the Spanish civil war in 1936. The rise of mass tourism after the 1992 Olympic Games helped to make Barcelona a popular tourist destination and work on the church accelerated and moved into its final stages.
Work on the Glory facade is expected to last another 10 years, and there remains the thorny issue of constructing the grand entrance stairway, in Gaudí’s original plan, that would now entail rehousing 10,000 people and demolishing about 3,000 apartments.
