Neo-Mudejar Barcelona, a hidden pearl among modernisms

Barcelona, as in any large European city, has been very concerned in recent times to develop an official story about its history, recognizable in the streets through endless urban traces. But a non-existent period in the tour of the Catalan capital is the Muslim, between 718 and 801, when the Frankish king Ludovico Pio defeated the Arab invader to recover that strategic enclave for Carolingian interests. There are no traces of the presence of the Caliphate of Cordoba in the streets of Barcelona, destroyed over the centuries. On the other hand, the second half of the nineteenth century led to a boom in neo-Mudejar architecture for several reasons. The main one was the possibilities of growth derived from the demolition of the medieval walls in 1854, when the city gained for its expansion the immense plain between its old limit and the nearby villages, later known as the Eixample.

This refoundation had to be planned and even Ildefons Cerdà, the engineer appointed by Madrid to undertake it, set a series of aesthetic premises for the Eixample, ignored because the new rich who occupied it wanted with all their strength to be seen with colorful and exotic homes, both to highlight and to equate themselves with the French bourgeoisie, very steeped in oriental fashions.

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This neo-Mudejar style emerged, more or less, in the early 1870s and is distributed throughout different parts of Barcelona from economic moments. The buildings with Arabic winks in the center were substantial. Now we can only admire the Pere Llibre house, at number 24 Passeig de Gràcia, barely mentioned in the guides despite being an exception in that stretch so rich in stimuli. It was erected in 1872 by the architect Domènec Balet i Nadal, and boasts a profusion of geometric motifs, polylobed arches, wrought iron railings as a modernist prelude and windows with horseshoe arches. Elements visible much further away, in the distant periphery of Sant Gervasi, at that time a suburb always more populated by Barcelona gentlemen eager to have summer villas in the nearby periphery, only added to the metropolis on April 20, 1897. The location in that area of the popularly known as the house of the German or Alhambra Building, also by the architect Domènec Balet, and the name of its street, the Berliner, have given rise to endless legends. Built in 1875, the façade is amazing, unmarked from the entire urban complex of today, superlative next to the round of General Mitre, perched on the heights regardless of its access staircase.

The Pere Llibre house, at number 24 Passeig de Gràcia, was erected in 1872 by the architect Domènec Balet i Nadal. Roman Babakin (Alamy)

The myth of this construction, protected by the City Council, derives from its interior, inaccessible unless you are very lucky and someone opens the door to admire the lobby: a scale copy of the Patio de los Leones of the Alhambra in Granada. The cause of this affinity is fantastic in the popular story, according to which a citizen of Berlin married a woman from Granada and wanted to pay tribute of love with that replica of the Andalusian architectural jewel. Actually, the German was called Otto Streitberger, he was a hustler in the business world of the late nineteenth century and settled for giving a villa to his wife, from Cádiz, in the town of Caldes de Malavella. The conservation of this hoax is understandable by the few surviving samples in Barcelona of this Islamic inspiration, also theorized from the leaders of the incipient Catalanism, many of them architects, as a way to resurrect all medieval forms to distance themselves from Renaissance hegemony on European soil. This would place all this trend as a foretaste of modernism, only curdled in 1891, when a municipal law allowed to decorate the facades more profusely.

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Before that frontier year, the neo-Arab unfolded with ease, without being branded as eccentric. The margins were filled with some villas with these attributes. One of the most curious is the Marsans Tower, at 41 Passeig Mare de Déu del Coll. It deceives at first glance because its entrance resembles a castle, prelude to a climb to the palace of 1907, signed by Juli Marial Tey, with a square floor plan and exuberant decorations in its inner courtyard, an Arabic cloister dazzling for its polychromy.

If from the Marsans Tower we descend the Vallcarca viaduct we can observe the idiosyncrasy of this neighborhood, still with the aroma of peace despite its densification during the twentieth century. From the bridge it is not difficult to look at a Mozarabic horseshoe arch crowned with two eagles. It is the only reminiscence of the family residence of Joan Batllori in Vallcarca, an old nineteenth-century estate popularly known as the House of Arabesques. It was demolished between 2009 and 2011, within the framework of an urban reform that concluded in 2017 and that turned the axis into a landscaped road.

The Casa de les Altures, a building designed in 1890 by Enric Figueras Ribas for the Compañía General de Aguas de Barcelona. Andres Membrive (Alamy)

Better luck ran the Casa de les Altures, a building designed in 1890 by Enric Figueras Ribas for the General Water Company of Barcelona, which adopted the palace as headquarters next to its facilities, recovered for the neighborhood as a park, while this neo-Mudejar pearl is since the nineties the headquarters of the municipal board of the district of Horta-Guinardó.

The Arc de Triomphe of Barcelona, on Passeig Lluís Companys. Maciej Olszewski (Alamy)

The taste for neo-Arab architecture declined when the Catalan bourgeoisie found in modernism a form of unitary expression as a symbol of its strength. However, until 1900 he contributed contributions protected from an official discourse, not in vain the Arc de Triomphe designed by the architect José Vilaseca as the main entrance to the Universal Exhibition of Barcelona of 1888 drinks from those Moorish airs. Also the bullring of Las Arenas in the Plaza de España, raised, nothing is casual, at the behest of the businessman José Marsans. It functioned from 1900 as a multipurpose space by hosting political rallies and bullfights until 1977, when it was in danger until its conversion into a shopping center and exceptional viewpoint. It is advisable for its 360-degree panoramic views, which show how the surroundings of Montjuïc are the zero kilometer of the mixture of styles between the Venetian Towers, towards the mountain, the National Palace in perspective and the Escorxador park, with its statue Woman and Bird, by Joan Miró.

The Catalan capital, like any city of our time, is an amalgam of styles. The neo-Arab spreads stealthily, and detecting it is a pleasure for the visitor reluctant to the normative, who moves like a fish in water if he departs from an orthodox story and walks to find all the hidden Barcelonas among the landmarks of the tourist circuit.

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