CONSIDERING
AND INTERPRETING
LEISURE

Pastimes, entertainments,
hobbies and addictions
in the Barcelona of 1900

© Publicacions i Edicions de la Universitat de Barcelona
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In collaboration with Ajuntament de Barcelona

All papers published in this volume had been peer-reviewed through a process administered by the editors. All reviews were conducted by external experts referees

CONTENTS

Introduction

A macro-philosophical reflection on the society of leisure, consumption, spectacle and knowledge (Gonçal Mayos and Teresa-M. Sala) 

Leisure spaces in the Barcelona of 1900 (Teresa-M. Sala)

Antecedents

Leisure, a macro-philosophical genealogy (Gonçal Mayos) 

Pastimes and parties in the times of the Baron of Maldà (Rosa Creixell)

Hobbies and amusements

The city of toys (Pere Capellà Simó)

Picture card collecting (Fàtima López Pérez)

Dressing leisure (Cristina Rodríguez Samaniego)

Entertainment and spectacle

The affirmation of the body in early modern stage language (Carmina Salvatierra Capdevila)

Topography of Barcelona theatre: 1860-1900 (Enric Ciurans)

Music, leisure and sociability in modernist in Barcelona of 1900 (Jaume Carbonell i Guberna)  

Pleasure and work

Visiting exhibitions. The first galleries and art spaces in Barcelona (1850-1910) (Ricard Bru and Isabel Fabregat)

“Relax and have your picture taken”: photography, between fun and obligation (M. Santos García Felguera and Núria F. Rius) 

Addictions

The quest for artificial paradise: images of morphinomania (Irene Gras)

Leisure and relaxation

Park Güell, from urban project for the wealthy to leisure space for local residents (Mireia Freixa and Mar Leniz)

Summer holidays and relaxation in the crown of Barcelona. The Busquets estate in Vallvidrera, a unique example (Teresa-M. Sala)

Appendices

Theatre in the dining room (Antoni Galmés Martí)

In the Shade of a Scrawny Pine (Antoni Galmés Martí)

INTRODUCTION

Collection: Biblioteca de Catalunya

A macro-philosophical reflection on the society of leisure, consumption, spectacle and knowledge

Gonçal Mayos and Teresa-M. Sala

The creation of a large quantity of disposable time apart from necessary labour time for society generally and each of its members (i.e. room for the development of the individuals’ full productive forces, hence those of society also), this creation of not-labour time appears in the stage of capital, as of all earlier ones, as not-labour time, as free time, for a few […] the true realm of freedom, which, however, can blossom forth only with this realm of necessity as its basis. The shortening of the working-day is its basic prerequisite.

K. Marx, Grundrisse and Capital, Vol. III (1894) 

The entertainment industry refines and multiplies the varieties of reactive behaviour among the masses. In this way, it makes them ripe for the workings of advertising.

W. Benjamin, The Arcades Project (G 16, 7) 

Considering and interpreting leisure in industrialization and modern society implies a series of reflections and approaches relating to its social aspects. It becomes evident that phenomena as diverse as conspicuous leisure, consumption, standards of living, matters of taste, dress as a means of expression, exemption from industrial work, conservatism and higher knowledge as an expression of culture were fundamental elements of capitalist society in the late 19th century. A useful guide is the counterpoint between The Theory of the Leisure Class ¹ by Thornstein Veblen (1899) and The Right to Be Lazy² (1880 and 1883) by Paul Lafargue.  

Work, laziness and leisure

Veblen constructs a theory of the leisure class saying, in terms of cultural evolutionism, that the appearance of this class coincides with the emergence of ownership and that it is a key factor in the economy. Taking everyday life as his point of departure, he divides society into three classes: the “predatory” or “idle”, the “working” and the “technical”. He develops a forceful denunciation of the ideological-economist tendency that granted free time to a single social group (naturally, the most powerful elite) and liberated its members from work and production. Veblen recalls mutatis mutandis the first physiocratic economic system,³ which awarded the aristocracy the social function of using or consuming what their compatriots produced, without having to participate in any way in its production.

In contrast, in The Right to Be Lazy, Paul Lafargue condemns the consequences of the modern industrial “ideology of work”. In a visionary and anticipatory way, he advocates the fight for a different society based on personal and social enrichment, with the cultivation of body and mind, in which leisure allows and provides for humanity to be free from overwork. According to Lafargue, capitalist morality is a lamentable parody of Christian morality and, therefore, is based on duty and sacrifice, stifling the possibility of enjoying the natural instincts and anathematizing the body of the worker. Labour without respite or mercy reduces the worker’s capacities to a minimum and condemns him to the role of a machine. Thus, Lafargue proposed that people work less: he believed that three hours a day would be enough to guarantee basic needs and claimed the right to be lazy, as a counter to the right to work. He thought that this would also bring an end to the industrial crises of the overproduction of capitalism, saying (Lafargue, 2011, p. 85), “The machine is the saviour of humanity, the god who shall redeem man from the sordidae artes and from working for hire, the god who shall give him leisure and liberty”.⁴ It is certainly a hope both beautiful and old, perhaps the oldest example coming from the middle of the first century BC when Antipater of Thessalonica sang, fascinated by the first Roman watermills: 

Cease from grinding, ye women who toil at the mill; sleep late even if the crowing cocks announce the dawn. For Demeter⁵ has ordered the Nymphs to perform the work of your hands, and they, leaping down on top of the wheel, turn its axle which [...] turns the heavy concave Nisyrian millstones. We taste again the joys of the primitive life, learning to feast on the products of Demeter without labor.⁶  

However, it must be recognized that modern industrialization is of such enormous power that it can or could make effective a leisure society with much less need of work. In 1995, the US economist Jeremy Rifkin⁷ made famous his thesis that increasing productivity was accelerating us toward an era characterized by the “end of work”. This would only be overcome, he affirmed, by drastically reducing working hours, sharing work among the entire population  –as it becomes a scarce social commodity– and allocating the remaining time to leisure . . .  

Lafargue’s father-in-law, Karl Marx, was also aware that overcoming capitalism required as a precondition reducing the time devoted to work.⁸ In fact, the upper and middle classes were gaining more free time, leisure and liberty (or seizing it) thanks to the savings in work time that mechanization allowed in many heavy or repetitive tasks. As the sociologist Richard Sennett points out, the pursuit of comfort in the 19th century was linked to recuperation from physical exertion and fatigue. The desire for comfort has, in a way, a worthy origin: the search for rest for bodies tired from labour. Comfort is a passive physical experience or state associated with rest, and the new industrial technology of the 19th century made its social extension possible.⁹ Thus, the initial elitism disappeared in a new mass society, giving way to consumption,¹⁰ as will be further expanded upon later in the text. 

Dumazedier’s three Ds, the three functions of leisure

Naturally, much of the technological, social and cultural framework was already in place by the turn of the century. Nevertheless, it would still be some decades before reflections upon leisure would be made in a systematic and rigorously scientific way. In the 1960s, Joffre Dumazedier (1915-2002) managed to establish the modern sociology of leisure. His pioneering ideas allowed the definition of free time as the set of activities to which the individual could devote himself completely voluntarily by liberating himself from professional, family and social obligations. This refers to, more specifically, three basic possibilities: rest, having fun and developing the personality, by participating in a voluntary and disinterested way in the social life of the community.¹¹ Thus, through surveys Dumazedier conducted, the concept of the “three Ds” as the primary functions of leisure (rest, diversion and personality development, or, in the original French, délassement, divertissement, développement) was established.

Rest is necessary and relieves one of fatigue, while diversion does the same for boredom, or in Baudelairean terms, spleen. Certainly, diversions and amusements can be understood as means of passing the time (hence the substantive “pastime”), that is, of distracting oneself, but they can also be the keys to the third function: the development of personality, for their ability to create and expand new personal and social abilities. In this sense, it could be said that leisure has to do with meeting the needs of the body and the spirit (physical, intellectual or artistic). As Dumazedier says, free time is the privileged time of all forms of human recreation. Or as Lafargue similarly intuited, advanced industrial societies are geared towards a civilization of leisure. This new parameter distinguishes them from earlier stages. In fact, the fundamental question of leisure is that, as it represents a space of time and a framework of possibilities, it all depends on how it is used. 

Thus, in the arts, creative leisure¹² is of prime importance, because it is not dolce far niente, but the space of time required to plan with creative intelligence; an essential interval because it makes possible the propensity to create, experiment, think. In this way leisure becomes a characteristic trait of the emancipated artist, who needs prolonged moments of introspection and at the same time requires rest. Hence the difference between the hand of the craftsman, that can be forced to work at will, and that of the artist. From this perception grew the affirmative attitude of the artists of the Renaissance towards their work that, later, with Romanticism, was pronounced in its favour of so-called inspiration. As Vasari recalled, Leonardo said that great minds produce more the less they work. In fact, periods of study, reflection and work, including the time spent working on an artwork itself, have nothing to do with the economic value of an artwork produced. 

Already in the Renaissance, some great artists felt that time was theirs and that they could afford to devote it to creative leisure or long periods of meditation. These great artists began to claim for themselves the freedom to choose and enjoy creative activity and, thus, its condition of possibility: leisure. However, when and how did leisure become a universal claim? When did it become considered necessary and available to the masses? When did we start talking about a “society of leisure” and what changes has leisure brought to the nature of society? 

Society of “leisure”, “spectacle”, “consumption” and “knowledge”

Significantly, today’s advanced societies tend to define themselves as simultaneously societies of “leisure”, “spectacle”, “consumption” and “knowledge”. There are other terms, but these are some of the most commonly used and closely interlinked. Moreover, their use also reflects a significant break from any other existing society, since, to date, none other has “deserved” these epithets.

Never, before the 20th century, was there a society that deserved to be known as one of “leisure”, “spectacle”, “consumption” and “knowledge”. The term “society” here refers to a group of humans that share (often in a non-voluntary and even unconscious manner) various institutions, a way of life and particular culture.¹³ Thus, it is not used to indicate a group (of society, or the whole just defined) that has associated consciously and voluntarily, with particular purposes that differentiate it from others. 

Metaphorically, of course, the term “society of knowledge” could be used to define, for example, the Athens of the 5th century BC (given the Sophists teachings, Plato’s Academy, Aristotle’s Lyceum . . .), or Alexandria in the 1st century AD (considering its famous “museum”, library and students). Similarly, one could also define as societies of leisure, consumption and even spectacle the Versailles court of Louis XIV or Japan’s Kyoto as narrated in the famous Tale of Genji. In these societies, the courtiers did not work (and were the hegemonic group that subordinated the many servants who did)¹⁴ and their whole lives were devoted to what would now be interpreted as the leisure, consumption and spectacle of the court (with its pomp, rituals, strict hierarchy, and so on). 

However, members of the current societies of “leisure”, “spectacle”, “consumption” and “knowledge” are not all philosophers, idle courtiers occupied by the endless rituals of the court, nor, of course, have they ceased to work even where possible. Or is that not the case? 

Leaving historical differences to one side, these names specifically point to the fact that leisure, spectacle, consumption and knowledge have come to play pivotal roles in the ways of life, culture, practices and, ultimately, the most critical institutions of current societies. Free time, entertainment, consumption and knowledge define, then, as they have never done before, the general character of the whole of contemporary society, even while there remain those who have no leisure,¹⁵ who live in reclusion, who can barely afford to eat or who are illiterate and completely removed from knowledge. 

In all cases, the absence of leisure, consumption, spectacle and knowledge is a clear sign of social exclusion.¹⁶ Previously, although not a good thing, this was not always the case, since a lot of people (all in some societies) lived without free time and consumption (or even a notion of what these terms could mean) at the limits of survival and were completely illiterate. Quite simply, these concepts made little difference to practically all of the population, which is to say, their absence was not a cause of exclusion from “their” society. Today, of course it is. 

In fact, this proves the relevance and meaning of these names being used. They are concepts that describe key elements of the post-industrial way of life and that, despite having possibly existed in earlier forms, could never have previously constituted society in such a profound and radical way. In this sense, it could be considered that we are living in a new era: not simply of leisure or recreation but of a “society of leisure”. Confirmation of this comes, arguably, with the fact that these four names are contemporary inventions. Significantly, they were imposed and became generalized almost simultaneously, in the 1960s: 

“Society of consumption” is perhaps the oldest of these expressions. One of its most important analysts, Gilles Lipovetsky, says the term, “is heard for the first time in the twenties [of the 20th century], was popularized in the fifties and its fortune carries on to this day”.¹⁷ Widespread use of the term can largely be attributed to bestsellers by American economist and sociologist Vance Packard (going back to the fifties), and French sociologist and philosopher Jean Baudrillard’s work La société de consommation (1970). 

“Society of leisure” is a term coined by Joffre Dumazedier, who in 1962 published the book Vers une civilisation du loisir? (Towards a civilization of leisure?).¹⁸ Here he stressed that leisure –a reality inherent to human and animal life– had acquired a new historical and cultural meaning in modern society. This new meaning was by no means secondary but absolutely essential. This point of view established clear differences from the previously cited works The Right to Be Lazy by Paul Lafargue and Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen. 

“Society of the Spectacle” is considered to be mainly a contribution from the philosopher and activist Guy Debord and The Situationist International¹⁹ to which he belonged. In 1967 Debord published his book The Society of the Spectacle and said: “Spectacle is the bad dream of modern society in chains, expressing nothing more than its wish for sleep”.²⁰  

“Society of knowledge” is a term coined primarily by Peter Drucker,²¹ who devoted a chapter so entitled in his 1969 book The Age of Discontinuity. Drucker argues that new ICTs radically transformed economies, markets, industry, products, services, labour, politics and even, as has become evident, the world and ourselves (“subjectivization”, therefore). 

Functions of leisure: rest, fun and development

Let us now consider some of the basic ties that bind leisure, spectacle, consumption and knowledge. These are closely related phenomena, although they still tend to be seen as very different and even opposed. They often compete for time in people’s lives, with labour time available for work opposed to free time, dedicated to entertainment, consumption and knowledge. However, nowadays, time spent acquiring knowledge is also increasingly opposed to that intended for leisure, entertainment and consumption. As much as teachers strive to make education motivating, interesting and agile, convincing anyone that knowledge can be an excellent source of leisure, entertainment and consumption is a more than difficult task. The reason is that, to the general way of thinking in modern societies, these functions represent quite different realities and attitudes, if not opposites.

As previously mentioned, this has not always been the case and, in some fundamental aspects, continues not to be. Significantly, Dumazedier, in rigorously theorizing and mnemonically defining the three primary functions of leisure (the aforementioned “three Ds” of rest, fun and personality development), indicated that – according to historical circumstances – any of these three functions could be stronger and decisive than others. 

As noted, leisure or free time is a time for rest, especially from labour and the working day. Thus, the worker can fully recover his “labour-power” (to use the Marxist expression) and face a new working day in good condition. Sundays, weekends and public holidays (that in previous times tended to be religious holidays) are times of leisure and rest, necessary to performance on the remaining days. Now, in ideal circumstances, humans are not satisfied with a life divided only into labour time and rest time sufficient to recover individual “labour-power”. When reduced to this dichotomy (as in terms of intense slavery), the result is an alienation from the human spirit so deep as to cause degradation to a worse state than that of many animals. 

Humanity is a “cultural” species, which is to say, one of reason and speech (the Greek logos) that lives and organizes itself in societies (thus “political animal”, zoon politikon), and one needs to learn and “become cultured” to live in society. Therefore, inevitably, humanity evolves culturally, and does so in a manner much faster than biological evolution. To achieve the imperative cultural level of fellow citizens, all people need time for learning and personal development (Dumazedier’s third “D”). 

For reasons closely related to the above, humans also need free time or leisure in another sense and in accordance with another function: fun, or diversion (the second “D”). In this respect the motives are more subtle and linked to humanity’s need for “play” and play time. The human condition has evolved in association with a surprisingly long period of explorative and creative play. Play has always been a key feature of people, far more so than for any other animal. Thus, philosophers and anthropologists have spoken of homo ludens, man capable of play, following German philosopher Friedrich von Schiller²² and, later, the Dutchman Johan Huizinga.²³  

Seen thus, the ability to play is one of the most characteristic features of humanity and is intimately linked to the ability to learn and develop. Indeed, to the extent that it has been found that its inhibition can result in major trauma and profound alienation that prevent any learning or personal development. Evidently, the three functions of leisure are essentially inseparable and ultimately imply each other. 

The work/non-work dichotomy and the three functions

Modern society, however, has tended to assimilate the three functions detected by Dumazedier even further. The four denominations of society of “leisure”, “spectacle”, “knowledge” and “consumption” were introduced at the start of this article. The function of rest, in particular, is now closely identified with diversion and consumption.

On the other hand, fun and consumption tend to be opposed to personal development, since contemporary society flatters the individual and promotes the idea that – inconspicuously and excepting very technical issues – all are born sufficiently “personally developed” to have opinions about and appreciate everything. If this were true, there would be no need to spend free time or effort on “personal development”, especially if it were not fun or restful. Thus, so-called “development” activities that do not involve rest, fun and (increasingly) consumption are more frequently being done without. 

Above all, however, modern societies impose a brutal and radical dichotomy on life: that of work and non-work. Existence is thus cleaved entirely into two completely opposing areas: labour time for work (in which effort is accepted as a condition of possibility for the receipt of money, a “wage”) and free time for leisure or relaxed diversion... basically intended for the spending of “wages” earned during the “working day”, that is, to be spent on consumption, fun and entertainment. 

Evidently, the so-called societies of “consumption”, “spectacle” and “leisure” are thus connected, even while the trend may not yet be complete. The society of consumption also strives to penetrate labour time and the workplace, but major consumption is indisputably associated with the leisure that follows work. 

The dialectic –already explicit for many years– is of the following type: there is a time for work and a time for fun, a time for discipline and a time for revelry, a time for production and a time for consumption, a time for acquisition and a time for waste, a time for effort and a time for comfort, a time for suffering²⁴ and a time for enjoyment, and so on. 

One might say this has always been so, at least for working people. Certainly, it seems to be confirmed by Mikhail Bakhtin’s renowned and classic studies²⁵ on popular culture, its festivals, carnivals . . . The cheerfully sarcastic and mocking popular culture was at its most free and forceful in festivities such as Carnival, which, significantly, represented a momentary break from the usual strict order and discipline. 

Remember that in traditional agrarian and stratified societies, the lower classes had no possibilities (practically speaking) of social ascent, significant education or permanently improving their living conditions. In a “realist” sense they internalized this condition and, consequently, considered work a punishment (etymologically the term is linked to tripalium, an instrument of torture), and revelled especially in the relatively brief periods they had of leisure and diversion. For them it was clear that work did not “make free”, and all their joy was projected onto festivities in an outrageously playful manner (obviously relating to the aforementioned need for “play”). 

In advanced societies, this brutal and brutalizing dichotomy continues and in some cases is accentuated, in spite of the fact that realities changed along with post-industrial working conditions. Thus, it is interesting to recall the historical novelty represented by the inclusion in the “Preliminary Program to the Situationist Movement” –a political manifesto which it was hoped to make popular among the working classes– of the slogan “ne travaillez jamais” (never work).²⁶ Even though many people from the lower classes certainly would have dreamed of that possibility, as a declamation it clashed with millennia of effective and realistic life experience. Never before had it become a political slogan of the slightest “realism”. This was one of the mental revolutions of the Situationists –among others– that resonate today in many of the slogans of the “indignados” or the 15-M movement. 

It is worth recalling that the novelties expressed by terms like society of “leisure”, “entertainment”, “consumption” and “knowledge” have become –only now– profoundly widespread realities in advanced societies, affecting even the working classes, something that until now was quite unthinkable. Today, dreams or ideological slogans of a life centred basically (and exclusively) on leisure, spectacle, consumption and diversion have become a cliché. 

However, to repeat, this has not always been the case and there was even a time when new expressions –the antecedents of our terms “leisure” and “free time”– had to be coined. Then (although the meanings may have been very different from the current ones) they represented great innovation and delivered profound social change. 

The only compensation for work

We have seen that, in modern societies, leisure is mostly the other face of work. Leisure and work relate today as two sides of the same coin: each is the counterpoint to the other, but both remain absolutely inseparable. Leisure is, ultimately, free time and recreation “bought” (or made possible, if you will) with human labour and time invested in work. 

The mundane ideal –which Max Weber described as “the ethos of capitalism”– brought the association of otherworldly salvation with earthly effort, work and professional success (in addition to traditional devotional practices): 

The Puritan wanted to work in calling;²⁷ we are forced to do so. For when asceticism was carried out of monastic cells into everyday life, and began to dominate worldly morality, it did its part in building the tremendous cosmos of the modern economic order. This order is now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine production which today determine the lives of all the individuals who are born into this mechanism, not only those directly concerned with economic acquisition, with irresistible force. [...] But fate decreed that the cloak should become an iron cage.²⁸  

Weber’s metaphorical “iron cage”²⁹ (“stahlhartes Gehäuse”) of capitalist productivism has imprisoned humanity since that time. Certainly his prediction has been fulfilled, as in modern societies professional productivity has become a universal imperative, one of survival and entirely worldly, an unavoidable “iron cage”. That is, in advanced modern societies (where public life is basically secularized and desecrated) the productivist need for effort and labour no longer depends on any possible otherworldly compensation or religious salvation. Today compensation is and can only be monetary, the worldly salary, which allows one to “buy” leisure and consumption. Thus Edward Luttwak³⁰ points to mass consumption as the only goal, “lure” or great “therapy” which exists to make bearable the “iron cage” that society has become. 

Of course, the current view of leisure and recreation as the legitimate (and only) compensation for work had to be imposed on previous mentalities, to displace them totally. This included the religious mentality, which stigmatized leisure and free time as causes of vice and regarded work as divine punishment to be borne with resignation. The class mentality that associated leisure with the exclusive privileges of noble³¹ and religious strata, whereby work was the obligation of the “third estate”, also had to be overcome. 

Referring to the Proto-Indo-European tripartite hypothesis, in the feudal world society was divided into warriors, priests and commoners (workers). Warriors required leisure to prepare for war and, presumably, defend society; priests, to pray and to save the souls of all. However, farmers and artisans needed no leisure (beyond minimal rest), as their exclusive social function was working to support the other classes, who “could not” work due to their other social functions.³²  

To impose and legitimize the new values, the current society of “massive” consumption (because it includes the masses and is enormous) needed profound social change and numerous propaganda campaigns. Ultimately, it was won over by a social mentality that had become considered an absolute “necessity”: consumption, leisure, free time, amusement, entertainment . . . at least to the extent one could afford (including the working majority).³³ In short, consumption, leisure, free time and dolce far niente were exonerated for the entire population and presented as a right or personal liberty, including for the lower classes. 

Breaking the religious or Estate structure (and the Greco-Roman, as will be shown), leisure, free time, consumption, diversion, entertainment . . . become interpreted simply as the logical, compensating and inevitable counterpoint to work and, more recently, productive success.³⁴ Today, working in order to enjoy and to do is a right achieved through personal productive success. This is evidently a new model of social justice. 

The structure lies, undoubtedly, behind the “social contract” implicit in the so-called “welfare state” that was created in Atlantic Europe during the Cold War in order to avoid a dangerous social scission that might have given rise to possible revolutions. Therefore, a broad, diffuse and shifting alliance between political parties (from social democrats to Christian democrats) enforced the two main precepts of the implied pact of the welfare state.³⁵ The first was designed to ensure that all who worked and produced could enjoy –as a result of this social contribution– a certain level of quality of life. For decades, this level was much higher than at any previous time for the lower classes and included a proportion of leisure time and growing levels of consumption. The second precept guaranteed a minimum of social assistance even to those who could not work or were badly affected by the market (the unemployed, etc.). 

From then on, in rich advanced societies, the postmodern consumer mentality triumphed, assimilating leisure in consumption, escape, fun, entertainment, spectacle and passive leisure. Progressively, it identified in its most reductivist³⁶ manifestation with freedom,³⁷ comfort and quality of life. Decisive in these developments were the mass media, which not only legitimized the introduction of new values to leisure, consumption and spectacle, but also established the major indices of well-being.³⁸  

At this point we have established a brief macro-philosophical framework of leisure in modern societies. This should serve as a broad frame of reference for the articles in this book, in which you will discover, in a more profound and in some cases detailed manner, some of the parameters of the social use of leisure in a specific space and time, the city of Barcelona of around 1900.  

JL Pellicer, L’ovació den Titella (audience at a puppet show at Els Quatre Gats). Drawing published in Pèl & Ploma, Barcelona, February 10, 1900 

1. Thornstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1973 [1899]. 

2. Paul Lafargue, The Right to Be Lazy, Chicago, Solidarity Press, 1969 [1880, 1883]. 

3. The economic-social school of “Physiocratics” was created by François Quesnay (Tableau économique, 1759 et seqq., 3 eds.) and reached its peak when Louis XVI nominated as minister the reformist physiocrat Turgot. See the preliminary study by Gonçal Mayos in Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, Discursos sobre el progreso humano, Madrid, Tecnos, 1991.

4. T.N.: English version from Paul Lafargue, The Right to Be Lazy, Online, Paul Lafargue Internet Archive 2000. Trans.: Charles Kerr. 

5. The corn goddess of Greek mythology, who presided over grain and the fertility of the earth, among other things. 

6. Cited by Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization, New York, Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1934. The italics have been added. 

7. Jeremy Rifkin, The End of Work: the Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-market Era, New York, Putnam, 1995. 

8. Marx criticized the excessive importance granted to work in capitalist society, from which the entire network of social relations is governed.

9. Richard Sennett, Flesh and Stone: the Body and the City in Western Civilization, New York, W.W. Norton, 1994. 

10. Jean Baudrillard, The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures, Thousand Oaks, Calif., Sage, 1998. 

11. Joffre Dumazedier, Toward a Society of Leisure, New York, Free Press, 1967. By the same author, see also Loisir et culture. Le loisir et la ville, Paris, Seuil, 1966; La révolution culturelle du temps libre: 1968-1988, Paris, Méridiens Klincksieck, 1988, and Penser l’autoformation. Société d’aujourd’hui et pratiques d’autoformation, Paris, Chronique sociale, 2002. 

12. See the chapter on creative leisure in the book by Rudolf and Margot Wittkower, Born under Saturn; the Character and Conduct of Artists: a Documented History from Antiquity to the French Revolution, New York, Random House, 1963. 

13. This is simply a working definition for the purposes of making a clear distinction and advancing the discourse.

14. Murasaki Shikibu (The Tale of Genji, New York, Viking, 2001) narrates the everyday life of the imperial court in Kyoto in the eleventh century. The book informs us that servants were ubiquitous, as their number was immense and, moreover, it was frowned upon that any member of the court should be left alone in any room at any time (even in sleep, the most intimate servants slept at the foot of their masters’ beds.) However, throughout the story and scenes narrated, the servants and “companions” are largely ignored, as if they were not there or did not exist, since their presence was for nothing but to offer their services. 

15. Without looking further afield, many of today’s superwomen have a work and home life that allows for very little true leisure. Many supermen also have a similarly intense working life, but dedicate much less time to the home. 

16. It may be a more subtle exclusion (often blended with financial success) regarding civility and contemporary way of life, but it also has social and psychological costs and has even been diagnosed as a social pathology or disease.

17. Gilles Lipovetsky, Le bonheur paradoxal: essai sur la societé d'hyperconsommation, Paris, Gallimard, 2006 [T.N.: The English is translated from the Spanish version:  La felicidad paradójica. Ensayo sobre la sociedad del hiperconsumo, Barcelona, Anagrama, 2007, p. 19.] 

18. That the title of the book presents this definition as a question perhaps indicates that Dumazedier was not yet sufficiently certain, at least, of how this new terminology would be received. Similarly, Francis Fukuyama first published his thesis on the end of history in 1989 in an article with an interrogative title which, after meeting with success, was repeated in 1992 but affirmatively. The same occurred with Samuel P Huntington’s thesis on the “clash of civilizations”, with an article titled interrogatively in 1993 and then the book published in 1996 with a more assertive title (and content).

19. See Gonçal Mayos, Internacional Situacionista. La vanguardia de la revolución, Barcelona, RBA, 2012.

20. English trans. by Donald Nicholson-Smith, New York, Zone Books, 1994. 

21. Peter Ferdinand Drucker, influential expert in business administration, inspired by Fritz Machlup, predicted that by the late 1970s the knowledge sector would account for half the GDP. That very year he presented to the annual meeting of the American Society for Information Science an article on “The advent of the information society”. 

22. Friedrich von Schiller On the aesthetic education of man: in a series of letters, Oxford, Clarendon, 1967.

23. Johan Huizinga, Homo ludens, essai sur la fonction sociale du jeu, Paris, Gallimard, 1988 [1938].

24. At least in terms of suppressing or postponing enjoyment.

25. Especially his 1941 book, Rabelais and His World (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1984).

26. I.S., January 1963, nº 8, although they state that it goes back to the early months of 1953. See Gonçal Mayos, Internacional Situacionista, op. cit.

27. Berufsmensch. One should remember that Beruf in German has absolutely tangled the meanings of “profession” and “vocation”. In that sense we could say Weber defines the condition of the puritan, capitalist and modern man from the identity of Beruf double meaning, that tipe of man (and of humanism) “vocationally professional” since what identifies him is to have “his vocation as profession” or to have made “a profession of his vocation”.

28. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, New York, Scribner’s Edition, 1953, p. 181.

29. For more on the correct translation and interpretation of the original German form, see Gonçal Mayos, “Raó ‘de ferro’ i neohumanisme. Una anàlisi macrofilosòfica”, in José Manuel Bermudo (Coord.), Del humanismo al humanitarismo, Barcelona, Horsori, 2000.

30. Edward Luttwak, Turbo-Capitalism: Winners and Losers in the Global Economy, New York, HarperCollinsPublishers, 1999. 

31. Remember that Don Quixote himself, being a hidalgo (etymologically: hijo de algo or ‘son of something’ or someone of slight nobility), outrageously refused to work even while he ran the risk of dying of starvation. 

32. See the magnificent books by Georges Duby, The Early Growth of the European Economy: Warriors and Peasants from the Seventh to the Twelfth Century, Ithaca, N.Y., Cornell University Press, 1974, and The Three Orders: Feudal Society Imagined, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1980. 

33. Needless to say, despite the increase in purchasing power experienced in the Western world over the previous centuries, for a large majority of the population and until the end of World War II, consumption centred on the three basic needs of food, clothing and housing. Only after this time did progressively high levels of consumption and needs for leisure and entertainment appear and extend to become generalized among almost the entire population. 

34. Certainly today, investing time and effort in work is not sufficient, results are demanded also. Consequently, those who “get results” with a minimum of work and effort are entitled to benefit and receive greater social admiration.

35. This pact began to break down in the 1980s with the Thatcher and Reagan governments and has now been completely dismantled, facilitating the post-2008 crisis and its brutal social consequences.

36. Gilles Lipovetsky (Le bonheur paradoxal, op. cit.) nicely summarizes the evolution from the late 19th century: “After the luxury-comfort typical of phase I, the bourgeois one, phase II promoted the idea of freedom-comfort (‘technology liberating women’) at the same time as evasion-comfort, dominated by passive ‘ready-to-enjoy’ amusements, the best example of which is television”. [T.N.: English translated from the Spanish version, op. cit.]  

37. See Robert B Marks, The Origins of the Modern World: Fate and Fortune in the Rise of the West, Lanham, Md., Rowman & Littlefield, 2007. 

38. Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: a History of the World, 1914-1991, New York, Pantheon Books, 1994.

Leisure spaces in the Barcelona of 1900

Teresa-M. Sala

On the left, a piece of Barcelona, already confused with its suburbs, extending to the foot of Montjuïc, blank, new, vast as a great metropolis. Its Eastern districts, scattered with tall chimneys, disappeared in a vaporous fog that the brilliance of the sun cast in coastal tones of blonde and pearl, half veiled by a golden vapour.  

Narcís Oller, La febre d’or (The Gold Rush) 

The new Barcelona had been growing towards the end of the 1880s and its urban morphology was transformed with the construction of the Eixample district, where the residences of the wealthy classes who had gradually been leaving the Ciutat Vella were largely concentrated. At the same time, an increasing amount of space was being allocated to factories, where the smoke and turmoil of the Rosa de Foc¹ made them scenes of the outrage of indignant crowds. Naturally, these changes heavily influenced the ways and customs of the local inhabitants. These were years of great contrasts, in which the repertoire of images relating to amusements, entertainment and hobbies were key elements of sociability, although they often disguised misery, worry and even conflict.  

This book analyses some of the more noteworthy aspects of changes relating to the use of leisure time, which some authors have referred to as the “bourgeois conquest of leisure”, or the incipient leisure culture of the Barcelona of 1900. It collates certain leisure activities that reveal how free time was used in the period and the dedication with which the people of Barcelona undertook initiatives for amusement, including both existing and new activities.² In terms of fun, beyond the traditional town festivals, fontades³ and processions, new forms of consumption were emerging that could be considered precursors to the cultural industries. These times saw the birth of many cinemas and the first amusement parks, the opening of new theatres, bars and other establishments, such as the Casino de l’Arrabassada, the Frontón Principal Palacio and the Can Tunis Hippodrome. Progressively, the lure of the street and the night took hold, and the iconic avenue the Avinguda del Paral·lel saw its triumphant expansion begin with the opening of El Molino in 1911. Our Mapa dels espais d’oci a la Barcelona de 1900 (Map of leisure spaces in the Barcelona of 1900), which is available online, makes it possible to see where the theatres, galleries, art studios and music halls of the time were located. It can be found at www.ub.edu/gracmon/docs/mapaeob. 

To consider and interpret leisure in the context of the construction of a modern city, it is useful to establish a framework for macro-philosophical reflection, which Gonçal Mayos has done in the previous article. In the chapter dedicated to antecedents, he also traces the genealogy of leisure in the ancient world, while Rosa Creixell brings us the Barcelona of the Baron of Maldà, with a description of the pastimes and festivals that illustrated the symptoms of change in an aristocratic city, of old customs and usages, to the new airs of industrialization. (This article is complemented by an interactive chronology of developments in leisure extracted from the diary of the Baron of Maldà, entitled Calaix de Sastre, which can be consulted at www.ub.edu/gracmon/docs/calaix.) 

A journey through which, if one were to follow J. Roca i Roca’s 1895 guide Barcelona en la mano as if a tourist in the city, would uncover many recommended activities: traditional festivals and celebrations (Carnival, processions, caramelles, St. Joseph’s Day, the rose festival of St. George, the Jocs Florals of the first Sunday in May, Corpus Christi, the festivals of St. John and St. Peter, the fairs and festivals of Mercè, All Saints Day and Christmas), performances (including all genres of theatre, café concerts, opera at the Liceu and the Thursday and Sunday concerts of the Municipal Band), evening concerts and public lectures held at schools and associations, exhibitions of painting and sculpture at the Sala Parés, bullfights in the summer, horse racing (which began in 1883), pelota at the frontón, sailing and cycling clubs that organized regattas and races.⁴ Aside from all that, there was entertainment available for all tastes and budgets, from the fairground stalls and circuses to animated dioramas, the cinema and private balls. Most cafes and taverns in the city also had billiard tables or games areas, among other things. Indeed, at the mythical tavern Els Quatre Gats, diverse tastes, customs, hobbies and the coterie with pretensions of Parisian bohemia all merged, in an imitation of the cabaret Le Chat Noir.⁵ There were a whole series of cultural activities and events took place, such as puppet shows, exhibitions, music concerts and discussions, while, as the Diario de Barcelona reported, “Beside the tavern and connected to it another hall, larger than the others, is to be found, dedicated to ‘sporting’ activities and hosting exhibitions and typical shows in winter”.⁶  

Opisso, Caballitos baratos, Pèl & Ploma, Barcelona, February 1, 1901. 

Also within the framework described, Pere Capellà, Fàtima López and Cristina Rodríguez place various hobbies and amusements that fall into three common categories: toys, card collecting and clothing. 

Another chapter deals with entertainment and spectacle, situating the world of the stage and theatre in a context of renewal with a musical flavour. The importance of the body, the birth of modern dance and the expansion of theatrical and musical imagination that occurred at the time are themes investigated by Carmina Salvatierra, Enric Ciurans and Jaume Carbonell. Also describing the topography of the major axes of entertainment, including the Rambla, Passeig de Gràcia and the relocation to the Avinguda del Paral·lel. In 1908, which saw the inauguration of one of the city’s most emblematic examples of modernista (Catalan art nouveau) architecture, the Palau de la Música Catalana, the magazine Ilustració Catalana invited readers to take a stroll along the Paral·lel: 

The broad avenue shines, bathing in the glory of Saturday night. Theatres and cafes fill the pavements with bright lights and bustling crowds. The air rings with the sound of a thousand voices, floating on a sea of conversation […] the crowd is vibrant, colourful, cosmopolitan […] it is the wild pulse of a city caught up in the fever of expansion.⁷  

For modern capitals, the universal exhibitions ushered in great industrial and technical developments, as well as advances in the fine arts and art industries. These events powered exchange and attracted visitors, which in turn generated many initiatives in industry, construction, business and services. A chapter on pleasure and work addresses aspects relating to the sociology of art: spaces for aesthetic enjoyment, the phenomenon of art exhibitions and the appearance of galleries in the city. Ricard Bru and Isabel Fabregat explore the shows attended by the folk of Barcelona at the time. A look at photography of the era is also included, where the fun of visiting the photographer’s studio was mixed with the obligation that came with a profession in its prime, well portrayed by M. Santos García Felguera and Núria F. Rius.  

This vast panorama would not be complete without considering the theme of addiction. A text by Irene Gras provides an in-depth look at morphine addiction and the artistic imagery derived from it. 

Another facet of leisure and free time is what Mireia Freixa calls, “The conquest of the hills”, whereby Barcelona residents reclaimed recreational areas, such as by converting the failed Park Güell project into a public garden and the urbanization of the Collserola hills, with the summer houses and chalets in Vallvidrera. In this respect, a study of the Busquets estate provides a unique example of summer architecture. In these natural areas away from the city, entertainment consisted of shared leisure activities such as festivals, parties, dances, private musical evenings and games, like bridge and tennis, among others. 

Finally, a piece on dining-room theatre by Toni Galmés constitutes the epilogue to this journey. It also includes a play adapted as a snapshot of the era, which was performed within the framework of university theatre, providing the counterpoint to past memory in the present or, if you will, the past made present. 

1. The name that came to define anarchist Barcelona after the so-called Tragic Week in 1909. 

2. An expansion on some of the research content produced for a lecture series held at the Institut Amatller in 2011 was published under the title “Aficions a la Barcelona de 1900” (Hobbies in the Barcelona of 1900). 

3. Social gatherings held around fountains. 

4. See Josep Roca i Roca, Barcelona en la mano, Barcelona, Antonio López (Ed.), 1895, pp. 31-33. 

5. See Joan B. Enseñat, “Crónica parisiense. El Chat-Noir y su escuela” in La Ilustración Artística, 8 July 1895, pp. 470-474. 

6. Diario de Barcelona. De avisos y noticias, 6 July 1897, p. 7973-7974. 

7. M. & G., “Un tom pel Paralel”, Ilustració Catalana, July 1908, p. 517. 

ANTECEDENTS

Leisure, a macro-philosophical genealogy

Gonçal Mayos

The starting point for this article is the “macro-philosophical reflection on the society of leisure, consumption, spectacle and knowledge” established in the introduction to this book. We are taking as a given, then, Joffre Dumazedier’s mnemotechnical distinction of the three functions of leisure denoted by his “three Ds”: rest, diversion and the development of personality (délassement, divertissement, développement). Another point of departure is the relationship between the “society of leisure” and the so-called societies “of spectacle”, “of consumption” and “of knowledge”.  

Within that macro-philosophical framework, it is evident that advanced contemporary societies coincide in having various ways of overcoming the strict modern duality of work and non-work. Current post-industrial and postmodern societies tend to define themselves, rather than by manual labour (hard, sweat-inducing effort, even if on a production line), by intellectual activities based on knowledge, services, communication, data processing and technical innovation (society of knowledge). Even the distinction between leisure and work is blurred; to the extent that knowledge requires creative leisure and free time for the individual, they ultimately become inseparable.

So, in post-industrial and postmodern societies, Dumazedier’s three functions of leisure again blend in a complex way, since the –erroneously named–¹ “industries” of leisure, spectacle, entertainment and consumption are often difficult to distinguish from those of knowledge, information and communication. Work and non-work (leisure, free time, amusement, rest, the development of personality, and so on) are nowadays very mixed. 

Significantly, geographer and current leader in urban studies, Richard Florida, encompasses in a single classification (according to him the most powerful, decisive and not-at-all “leisurely” of today: “the creative class”)² all social groups centred on the post-industrial magma of knowledge, information, communication, innovation, advanced technology, added value services, leisure, spectacle, consumption . . . 

Genealogy of leisure in Greco-Roman slavery and patriarchalism

For a proper analysis of the meanings of free time, diversion, entertainment, consumption and knowledge in advanced societies, they must be compared with their respective etymological origins. Furthermore, since the profound transformation of modern societies is a long-lasting and complex macro-process, comparison with former societies is particularly useful. To this purpose, the usages and modern evolution of such key concepts as free time, work, diversion, consumption and personal development will be concisely compared with those of classical Greco-Roman society (in which they would most definitely not have played the same roles).

In the macro-philosophical reflection of the introduction to this book it is established that the deep mutual legitimization that in modern society links leisure and work is, still,³ at the core of social mentality. It has not, however, always been so. This was touched upon in the introduction with reference to the estates of the realm and the feudal tripartite hypothesis; now for a comparison with classical Greco-Roman societies. These were, of course, slave societies in which work was carried out by slaves⁴ rather than citizens. This was particularly true in the case of nobility (the Eupatridae in Greece and the Patricians in Rome), the hegemonic classes of their times. They did not work and, thus, justification of their social privileges was not at all related to labour or productive success, and neither  –by default– was their access to free time or leisure. 

Therefore, the modern and bourgeois relationship of leisure to non-work and to recuperation or reward from work did not exist for the hegemonic classes of classical antiquity. This may sound surprising in our hyper-productive and econometric society, but then the citizens that had leisure time did not work, while those members of society who did work (slaves, for example) had no leisure; at the most, the latter would have minimal time to recover their “labour-power”.

It is true that citizens also exerted themselves (for example in war, etc.), but the evolution of free time throughout this period was not linked to rest and recuperation from these types of activities. This was partly due to the fact that rest was such a universal and necessary function (everyone gets tired and needs rest) that it was not a factor in the creation of a new dynamic, something that owed more to the third key function: personal development. It was this rather than rest –as will become evident– that lay at the core of the initial evolution of leisure or free time.

Precisely due to the social and productive structure based on slavery (the “mode of production”, after Marx), neither citizens nor non-citizens could have perceived the modern relationship between free time and work. The reason is clear: citizens had leisure without having to work (a duty they would have found offensive) and non-citizens had nothing but work with minimal possibilities of free time (which had no essential correlation to work done).

The same held for Greek and Roman women, since the patriarchy assigned them almost exclusively work in the oikos (home). Therefore, had they any free time it was never as compensation for work; indeed, their chores were not considered work but that which corresponded to the feminine condition, which in a similar way denied them many civil rights, such as the vote. It is worth remembering that relatively few women worked “on another’s account” and fewer still received payment in exchange. In addition, housework and tasks assigned to women –simply for being so– included extremely important handiwork (e.g. making clothes) and agricultural functions (e.g. growing vegetables, threshing grain and collaborating in harvesting). 

Di-version and dis-traction

Evidently, due to slavery and a much stricter patriarchy than currently operates, the meanings of these concepts are far removed from us. Today, free time and leisure are basically compensation for work. Thus, they firstly represent the blessed “rest” that allows for the recuperation of mental and physical strength. With post-industrialization they become, above all, legitimate compensation for the time and talent invested in production. In all these cases and in spite of differences, leisure is thought of as a space (won with a certain difficulty) of “dolce far niente” or the hard-won conquest of “free time” (because it is free of work-effort and because it is used with total personal freedom). 

The above meanings point towards the second great function highlighted by Dumazedier and that, without doubt, has gained in significance in current societies. This is free time as “diversion” or “distraction”, which go back to a common source: a change in the use of time and in the activities that di-vert (change course or direct to other areas; from divertere: “move away, part, deviate”) or dis-tract (to draw in a different direction; from distractio: “separate, divide”). In a broad sense, they not only part or separate one from work pur et dur, but also from any habitual effort, occupation, routine, boredom, monotony or daily activity. Certainly in rich and advanced societies attention is not only directed to achieving comfort but also to avoiding boredom, melancholy, ascidia, ennui de vivre, spleen . . .  The human condition –particularly when biological survival is already guaranteed– also demands distractions or diversions to break from these special kinds of mental or existential “tiredness”. 

With respect to Greco-Roman societies, the differences are clear, in that –depending on the circumstances– many slaves, men and women had to work to the point of exhaustion and, in extreme cases, until death. Meanwhile, some citizens never “worked”, although they could, for example, go to war and invest great effort and suffer serious injuries and other misfortunes in compliance with the duties of a “citizen” or “patrician”. That, however, was never conceptualized as “work”.

On the other hand, distractions did exist and they tended to be more socially or temporally codified than today, as they were strictly linked to very specific times or rituals (harvests, bacchanalia, etc.). It clashes with current mentality, but just as it cannot be said that the Greek citizens worked, nor can it be said that their lives were mere diversion, distraction, entertainment and “recreation”. Thus, neither did the function “distraction” –in the primary sense of the term– have a marked effect on the classical evolution of leisure.

For millennia there existed nothing similar to today’s terribly powerful entertainment and show business “industry”. Individuals normally generated their own diversions or did so within intimate groups. In addition, distractions from daily monotony were very few and limited. It is worth remembering, however, that the pace of life was generally much slower than today, even for slaves, the poor and women.

Given the above, complaints –let’s say the more spiritual and/or existential of them– of boredom, melancholy, ascidia, ennui de vivre, spleen . . ., were relatively few and confined to a very limited elite. The hard life of slaves gave them no time to experience these; women and the popular classes surely could have, but had no voice and little possibility of expressing or communicating them in any profound way. Philosophers could have done so, but they were a clear minority that, in any case, did not have to work.⁵  

It comes as no surprise, then, that the hegemonic high culture (in many aspects aristocratic) we know of from Greece and Rome kept the semantic fields for the spheres of work and leisure separate. For this reason, it is not considered a universal rule that leisure is a compensation or “re-compense” for work. Neither in pre-modern Christian society could work be thought of as the pre-requisite for qualifying leisure as legitimate rather than vicious (as it effectively became later). Paradoxical as it may seem, in those societies and for the hegemons of high culture, subsistence production⁶ was practically separate from Dumazedier’s three functions of leisure: rest, diversion and personal development. 

Personal development in the society of knowledge

So what about the third function, the development of personality? Which is to say, education and training. For the greater part of the population in modern societies the share of leisure time dedicated to education normally has much to do with work or, at least, possible or future work. Yes, there is a part of basic humanist education that, in principle, has no direct end in work, but in general, the masses have not been able to afford education that did not somehow represent a work advantage, to gain access to better jobs and as a “social ladder”.

For centuries, professional and personal education have represented one of the most obvious and well-trodden “social ladders”. In fact, members of the population that excelled in their own education have meritocratically nourished large proportions of the middle and professional classes. No wonder, then, that for the former the function “development” was one of the primary uses of free time. And for the latter, the risk of succumbing to the vice of all leisure activities was thus exorcised and used positively by investing a great amount of leisure time in personal education and professional training.

Therefore, once again, the function of leisure constituting education has a clear link to work: as the path to professional improvement, and to a better and higher paid job. As we already mentioned, the link between education and work is progressively related to productive success, as results are now more important than effort invested or work done. In the current “society of knowledge”, information, culture and knowledge are the main factors of production and the principle sources of “added value”. Thus, free time devoted to education stresses its productive significance and is the main source of productivity.

A paradox appears, however: in the “society of knowledge” the relationship between education and productivity has become so explicit, reflexive and obvious that there is a tendency to increasingly assimilate them in a dangerously reductive manner.⁷ So explicit, identical and direct has the link between training and productivity in work become that education (sometimes even the most basic or humanist) tends to be thought of simply as the first phase of work, a kind of necessary phase prior to working life. 

According to the current assimilation of education to work, training for production and direct productive labour appear almost indivisible. Furthermore, the incredible acceleration of technology means that education people have obtained is easily rendered obsolete (Mayos and Brey, 2011, 186ff. and 169ff.). Today, people need to continuously update their education and update themselves. Otherwise, one can easily fall into chronic unemployment and be unable to maintain a level of remuneration. This precarious situation is closely linked to the accelerated obsolescence of training and personal skills resulting from rapid technological change.

Evidently, the constant succession of time and tasks devoted to training (continuous education becoming inevitable) and those dedicated to effective production makes distinction between them very difficult. It is now hard to know when we are learning in a purely formative way or for the development of personality and when there are medium- to long-term productive and chrematistic goals. In fact, politicians and administrations tell us continually that each and the other are or should be essentially interchangeable.

The ultimate conclusion is that education no longer seems to be such a function of leisure (as Dumazedier considered), but rather another function of work. Of course, it is rarely undertaken in exchange for money, but more and more scholarships and grants exist specifically to facilitate education and training.

Personal development in Greece and Rome

Similarly to what we have seen, the function of leisure that is the development of personality was very diverse in the Greco-Roman world. Work training was very limited, and basically consisted of observing the experienced and following their instructions. In the classical world there was little education for production, corresponding to a relatively simple slave society that held little respect for manual or merely instrumental tasks.

Therefore, time devoted to training (sjolé, sckolé or scholé) mainly concerned the education of citizens who did not work and was related to subjects far removed from production. Significantly, in Greek (and ultimately satisfying Dumazedier’s thesis) the term used to designate free time used for self-development comes from scholazein, meaning “to stop”, “to have time” or –more pejoratively– “to waste time”. Later, “scholé” came to have meanings like amusement since it implied “stopping” daily occupations, breaking from routine and “having time” to “divert oneself” in a special entertainment, “di-verting”. 

In one of the etymological senses of the term, it could be said that leisure arose in the classical world as a result of a “faire autre” (a dif-fer-ence) or great di-version that had nothing to do with a need for entertainment or pastimes (as today). On the contrary, it related to a very subversive di-version, dis-traction and dif-ference that drew citizens away from the omnipresent political life. It was to be a new di-version or dis-traction linked to philosophical contemplation, meditation, speculative dialogue with others, philosophical thought, the love of wisdom. 

Scholé also means “school”, as it refers equally to free time that takes one away from regular activity for the purpose of education specific to personality development. Scholé as education means “to stop” or “move away” from the daily frenzy, creating the “critical distance” and “giving time” for contemplating reality, reflecting upon it and learning from those who have done so before; that is, becoming educated. To the extent that scholé, as school education, is a process and requires a specific relationship with others that have a similar interest in thought, the term later adopted the meanings “disciple of a master”, “teaching students” and “the sharing of lessons”. 

Furthermore, and suggesting the current term “school”, scholé finally came to designate the specific physical space and facilities where formal education is carried out. But also –more abstractly– it signifies the intellectual links between those that share or have shared the same teachings, the same educations and similar ideas, which is to say, a “school of thought”. Subsequently, in the Middle Ages they spoke –without disdain– of “scholasticism”, although since the Renaissance, the term has been used as such even though education activities and their link to “school” have become too institutionalized and rigid. 

In all the above cases, however, scholé, is not normally associated with work or production (and much less manual labour!), as it inevitably seems to be in modern societies. Here, as we have seen, it has come to be directly identified with production and work. Very much to the contrary, the Greek scholé, as an act of philosophical contemplation,⁸ could not represent business (hence the aforementioned Platonic condemnation of the Sophists) or the necotium of the Romans (nec being negation, complementing otium), meaning that which is not leisure, or otium. 

Scholé and philosophy opposed any other utilitarian or private activity (nec-otium), as they were in themselves already ends, essentially implying the whole of the community and not in service to financial gain. As Werner Jaeger says, “[. . .] education is not a practice which concerns the individual alone: it is essentially a function of the community. The character of the community is expressed in the individuals who compose it; and for man, the zoon politikon, [. . .] the community is the source of all behaviour”.⁹  

The protagonists of the dif-ference or dis-traction that scholé represented in the Greco-Roman world were the philosophers. There is evidence of many witnesses being surprised by the dif-ferent or dis-solute behaviour of philosophers. For example, Plato described Thales of Miletus falling into a hole at night while gazing at the stars and prompting the laughter of a slave.¹⁰ Indeed, the philosophers tended to act “otherly”, to distance themselves and di-vert themselves from the normal behaviour of citizens (which in the Greco-Roman world was entirely focussed on political practice), in order to remain totally and exclusively occupied with what Dumazedier termed “personal development”. 

The dis-traction that philosophy provoked in many of their children greatly infuriated the Eupatridae of Greece and the Roman Patricians, as it removed them from political life and thus threatened the hegemony of these classes. Remember that political activity was the main demand on these people; for Greek and Roman citizens politics was the principle and most intense “occupation” (in this respect that which most resembled “work”, although under no circumstances would they have accepted that term).

The teachings of the philosophers deviated many young citizens away from their political obligations for “dis-traction” or “di-version” towards the good life, the love of wisdom, contemplation of the world, creation of theoria and, in the words of Pierre Hadot,¹¹ the “higher self”. Of course, in Greece and ancient Rome¹² this development of the personality could not be achieved individually; for this reason philosophers who shared similar ideas gathered in “schools”, communities or “sects”. This further irritated their citizen parents, because instead of being fully engaged with the polis or the res publica, they split off into isolated lives in small groups or “sects”.¹³  

Evidently, the meanings and uses of free time in the Greco-Roman world are of great help to understanding modern societies, and vice versa. These macro-philosophical counterpoints are necessary when analysing long-lasting, complex, transversal and interdisciplinary processes such as leisure. Only with “macro” analyses and comparisons of this type can we identify basic characteristics, such as the enormous and profound differences throughout history of phenomena as complex as leisure. And only this way can the incredible strangeness of historical diversity and the naïve assumption that everything is the same be overcome.

1. Since they already constitute the dominant model of post-industrialization.

2. Richard L Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class. And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life, New York, Basic Books, 2002. 

3. When it is subject to deep stresses and changes. 

4. Certainly, there were also the freed and poor who worked on the account of others, and women in the home (although they mostly did not understand their activities as “work”).

5. Recall the furious criticism from Socrates, Plato and their followers of the fact that the Sophists received money in exchange for their wisdom (even though the Sophists did not conceptualize this as work!). 

6. Quite different from “creative or poetic production”; poetry, a term clearly derived from the Greek poiesi (production). 

7. Gonçal Mayos and Antoni Brey (Ed.), La sociedad de la ignorancia, Barcelona, Península, 2011. 

8. Remember that, for the classical Greeks, theoria was a product of this disinterested contemplative speculation. 

9. Werner Jaeger, Paideia: Ideals of Greek Culture, New York, Oxford University Press, 2nd ed., 1945, pp. 13-14. 

10. The anecdote continues, explaining that Thales then wanted to show that philosophers, even while amusing themselves gazing at the stars or with seemingly impractical things, could achieve great worldly success if they so wished. So, when he anticipated (by looking at the sky) that there would be a year of heavy rain, he leased all the oil presses in the city in advance, and when the bumper crop was confirmed, since he had a monopoly, he made a fortune. 

11. See particularly Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, Oxford, Blackwell, 1995, and The Present Alone is Our Happiness: Conversations with Jeannie Carlier and Arnold I. Davidson, Stanford, Calif., Stanford University Press, 2009. 

12. At the end of the Roman Empire things changed and individualistic solutions became more prevalent. 

13. This meaning expresses the two possible etymologies from Latin. The first and most plausible is from secta, meaning ‘path’ and ’way of life’ (whence comes ’followers’). The second, close in meaning to the first, is from sectare, which means to ’cut’ or ’separate’. 

Pastimes and parties in the times of the Baron of Maldà

Rosa Creixell

The existence of an abundance of moral literature focusing on the value of work over that of leisure indicates the complexity of evaluating and understanding the use of free time throughout the modern era. Pedro Mexía, in his book Silva de varia lección (Seville, 1540),¹ and also Sebastián de Covarrubias with his Tesoro de la lengua castellana,² published some years later, provided evidence of how entrenched the widespread negative perception of leisure at that time was. For Covarrubias, leisure was evidence of idleness or useless timewasting; it was qualified in similar terms by Mexía, whose acceptance of the legitimacy of leisure was closely dependent on the existence of work.  

If the impact and the mechanism of defining the very concept are difficult to specify, the truth is that literature offers us some very significant depictions of all things relating to leisure. Images of pastimes, entertainments and amusements oblige us to consider, among other things, what was meant by “useful” and “useless” in terms of the use of time in the modern era. Or to what extent the views of moralists of the period resonated within society. This, then, brings us to the sentimental chronicles of a Barcelona of work and leisure in equal parts which are related in detail in the diary of the Baron of Maldà ³ and in the memoirs of the politician and historian Josep Coroleu, two sources fundamental to creating an accurate portrait of the pastimes and entertainments of our ancestors. These are portrayals which coincide in time of action –the turn of the 18th century– but not of writing, and thus on more than one occasion complement each other with views of the same issue through different prisms. Memorias de un menestral de Barcelona⁴ was written almost a century after Rafael d’Amat i de Cortada had recorded events in the city as they happened, between the second half of the 18th century and the early 19th century. Indeed, Coroleu used the Baron’s diary as the coordinating axis of his narrative. 

Regarding the diary, and before getting into an analysis of the pastimes of the authors’ contemporaries, it is worth noting the sense of amusement with which it was conceived. Now considered an inexhaustible source of information for tracing and illustrating the social fabric of 18th century Barcelona, Rafael d’Amat i de Cortada’s diary was itself nothing more than a way of passing time, something enjoyable and light. Written for amusement and to amuse, the Baron’s pen recorded different possible visions of the city while revealing the diversions that helped his fellow citizens and himself pass the time of day; activities of fun and festivity that marked the rhythm of their everyday life. 

That said, the map of leisure in the Barcelona of the second half of the 18th century and early 19th century reveals a tapestry of suggestive nuances, wherein it is difficult to systematically establish the boundaries between public and private, collective and individual, religious, professional and familial. Indeed, on more than one occasion, the borderlines between these categories remain entirely blurred. Thus, in mapping the leisure of Barcelona society, there are contributions from a whole range of festive activities that provided momentary breaks from working life, closely connected with religious meaning: celebrations and processions in honour of a particular saint or patron of a guild, for example, where the lines between devotion, duty, celebration and entertainment are decidedly not clear.⁵  

Among the most common and usual pastimes, in addition to public and private balls, was music, a constant in the lives of the people of Barcelona. There was not a week went by without well-attended musical evenings and classes being held in private homes throughout the city. Not to mention the numerous other functions or family celebrations –weddings, teas, social gatherings and visits– that would end in song with someone playing a musical instrument. There are many recorded examples of meetings held at the Baron’s house where those in attendance would accompany in song any guest willing to delight the group with boleros on the guitar, villancicos⁶ or any other type of music. As for modern music, the compositions of the Viennese Joseph Haydn were the most popular in the Barcelona musical academies of the time. As noted on numerous occasions in the diary, the work of this leading exponent of classical music was swiftly assimilated in Barcelona, almost at the same time as it was in other European countries. 

Music and dances were not, of course, the only sources of entertainment. Especially popular among the public were expositions of handicrafts, “scientific gadgets”, mechanical inventions and artworks. Regarding art exhibitions, each year the Llotja School showed the work of their drawing and painting, sculpture and architecture students. For a week, whomsoever chose could view this work in various galleries, with presentation and lighting designed for maximum effect. Exhibitions of wax figures were also very successful. The first examples to be seen in the city were by foreign artists, particularly German and Italian masters, but local artists who picked up the technical and thematic precepts set out by the foreign makers were soon copying them. 

In the Baron’s descriptions of various wax exhibitions –including those seen at the Llotja School– one can already sense a museography designed to captivate and attract the public, utilizing scenography and narrative elements. Thematically, as in an exhibition by a Catalan master in a house on the Rambla, the figures modelled were largely of well-known characters, some illustrious and others more common. Charles III with two halberdier guards, the Count of Aranda and the Marquis of la Mina were some of the more illustrious figures, while the second group included artisans of the court, like “lo Pau dels versos” (Paul the poet). These wax representations shared space with more symbolic figures, such as a mother feeding a child, a rich peasant or a nursemaid, among others. More impressive still were works by a German master that represented the members of various European royal families, including the tsarina of Moscow, Maria Teresa of Austria, and more exotic figures including a Sultan and his harem or the famous doctor and alchemist Paracelsus, to name a few.⁷  

Curiously, and despite the thoroughness of the diary entries, in most cases the names of the artists are not known, as the Baron indicated only the country of origin as identification. An Italian from Lombardy is mentioned, who some years later presented in the Carrer dels Escudellers an exhibition of life-sized, realistic statues showing traditional dress from different countries, and repeatedly mentioned is a German who charged half a peseta to see his figures. Only one artist is named, Fernando Luchesi, whom the Baron refers to as “the cadger”, an estimation that appears on more than one occasion in relation to various shows. Despite the Baron’s criticism, Luchesi, an academic and sculpture professor, apparently found a degree of success and recognition with his work, considering that it was exhibited in various regions of Spain, especially Andalusia.⁸  

The taste and admiration for the art of wax figures lasted for quite some time. Indeed, in late 1803 and early 1804 the Diari de Barcelona was still advertising this type of amusement. In this instance, the advertisement referred to a life-size Nativity scene by an artist of the Sicilian wax sculpture school: 

You will see here not only the figures of the Nativity, but also the town of Bethlehem where the Saviour was born, Jerusalem where he suffered, Calvary where he was crucified, Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb where he was buried and, as well as all this, you will also see the Valley of Jehoshaphat where all generations will be gathered for judgement.⁹  

The artist behind this unusual Nativity –unusual in terms of its composition– was Giuseppe Chiappi,¹⁰ a professor of anatomy and sculpture who was resident in Barcelona at the time. Rather than simply craft a traditional Nativity scene, the Sicilian professor chose to create a truly theatrical spectacle with music and scenes from the life of Christ, which apparently earned him a fair share of criticism.¹¹  

There is no denying that Barcelona was a city with a strong theatrical tradition, considering all the references to it in the Baron’s diary. The array of shows on offer was extremely varied and largely consisted of works of a religious nature. However, as with music, the locals knew first-hand of emerging trends and, despite the constant disapproval expressed by Rafael d’Amat i de Cortada, they could not be prevented from staging foreign comedies by the most fashionable playwrights, principally Racine and Voltaire from France, whose work was “full of deadly poison”.¹²  

The list of plays performed either by local or foreign companies, or even by amateur groups, is extensive. Some of the comedies staged during this period were Caer para levantar, El rico avariento, La buena casada, No siempre lo peor es cierto, El amante escrupuloso, La esposa amable, Los amantes de Teruel, El o predicador, El delincuente honrado by Jovellanos and Caballero de espíritu, and they were generally accompanied by sainetes such as Prevenido engaño, Los palos deseados or different tonadillas¹³ played in the intervals. 

Preserved municipal documents also lead to the conclusion that theatre was of great relevance to the city of Barcelona. A simple review of them shows constant activity replete with quarrels and lawsuits between producers and actors for breach of contract, intensive programming that ultimately makes one wonder if there was a need, already at that time, for regulated time off, and box office records that leave no doubt as to the volume of business in the sector. Comparing the accounts recorded by producer Domingo Batti in the balance sheet El estado de los gastos [...] hechos en el teatro para el total de diversiones, comedias, operas, bailes [...]¹⁴ for 1778-1779, a considerable increase in expenditure is evident, particularly relating to opera, although the greatest expenditure corresponded to comedy productions.¹⁵  

Juan Antonio Salvador Carmona, Primer bayle de Mascara que se dió en el Coliseo del Príncipe. Madrid, Calcografía Nacional, between 1775 and 1800. Engraving from the Biblioteca de Reserva, Universitat de Barcelona. 

The theatrical scene also encompassed a series of spectacles that captivated audiences through technique, curiosity or rarity. Animal shows and freak shows, especially those featuring giants, were very well received by the Barcelona public and remained on programmes for a long time. Of note among them, for example, was the presence in the city of a giant of German nationality who presented a show with a goose and a female monkey. The monkey danced balancing on a rope, while the goose’s skills included an outstanding ability to “indicate the quarter-hour and hour markings on a clock with its feet”.¹⁶ Also, there was the announcement of the arrival at the end of 1798 of three camels, two Polish bears, five monkeys and an ape for an upcoming show.¹⁷ Not to mention the Arab giant who charged half a peseta to see his show, which did not meet with public approval, wherein he ate a live chicken on stage as well as all sorts of other raw flesh.¹⁸  

Among the more popular and well-received shows of particular note were the Chinese shadow puppets, even though Age of Enlightenment thinkers of such status as Jovellanos heavily criticized this form of entertainment.¹⁹ In his work Memórias para el arreglo de la policia de los espectáculos y diversiones públicas y sobre su origen en España,²⁰ he exhibited concern about certain types of amusement while making a categorization of leisure activities in Spain at the time, which included Harlequin shows, puppets and Chinese shadow plays, among others. However, as in other instances, the reality was quite different, as these distractions were well established within the society of the time. In Barcelona, Giacomo Chiarini had great success with his shadow plays for many years, which included versions of works such as La caza del león, L’al·legoria de la Pau and Toros reials de Madrid, and images including “the duck hunt”, “the girl at the inn” and “the poor woodcutter”, among others.²¹ He also had a special predilection for recreating bullfighting scenes in shadows. 

As for musical theatre, we’ve already mentioned the sainetes and tonadillas that were programmed with the comedies performed each day at five in the afternoon in different venues around the city. Additionally, of course, artistic and musical life also provided a privileged leisure activity in the form of opera, even though notes and comments on it are rather scarce in the Baron’s diary. This is most probably not due to his musical tastes, but rather the endless financial troubles that dogged him through life. To avoid this expense, then, he preferred to attend concerts and music classes held in private homes where he was an invited guest. 

Opera as a theatrical spectacle in Barcelona, as studied by Roger Alier, went through different stages in Barcelona to varying degrees of success. While it was relatively inexistent in the first half of the 18th century, the only recorded instance being an opera performed for Archduke Charles of Austria’s visit in 1708, from 1750 onwards there was quite a continuous programme that steadily grew in popularity. It was then between 1760 and 1773, considered the third stage of development, that the taste for ballet and opera became more widespread among the masses.²² Gluck, Mozart, Salieri, Pergolesi and Galuppi, among others, were composers well known in Barcelona. 

The different branches of science, especially natural phenomena and chemistry and physics experiments, gave the people of Barcelona many opportunities for entertainment. One must not forget the extent to which society in the second half of the 18th century was immersed, as Jesusa Vega noted, in the reclassification of knowledge, whereby physics and chemistry together with philosophy played defining roles in the concept of science.²³  

While the Baron of Maldà recalled a mechanical vehicle that drove its inventor to madness in 1771, endless attempts to launch aerostatic balloons and astronomical observations of stars, planets or comets on more than one occasion, Josep Coroleu also described these kinds of amusements in his memoirs.²⁴ And, interestingly, both alluded to the symbolism and superstitious significance which the “common people”, to borrow the Baron’s expression, attributed to these phenomena as evil omens or portents of doom.²⁵  

Anonymous, Vista del globo aereostatico que se hecho ante sus magestades y su real familia en el qual fue Dn. Vicente Lunardi el dia 8 de enero de 1793 […]. Engravings from the Biblioteca de Reserva, Universitat de Barcelona.

Diabolical was the term used to describe the launch of an aerostatic balloon to mark the royal visit to Barcelona in 1802. In truth, for the people of Barcelona it was not a new machine, since just a year after its invention by the Montgolfier brothers an example had been brought to the city by compatriots of theirs. Repeated attempts to launch it had been resounding failures, which “caused endless trouble for many of the salaried workers”,²⁶ but always to a great turnout, with the workers gathered along the city walls so that they had not to pay and nobility entering the site for a small fee. Of all these attempts the most notable was that mentioned above, undertaken by Vincenzo Lunardi on the occasion of the Royal visit in 1802. The Italian aeronaut, who had made various flights previously in Naples and Madrid, took off on 5 November 1802 and suffered the misfortune of being carried out to sea, adding yet another failure to the existing catalogue. At the same time, however, it is worth noting that science did give rise to pastimes that were both fun and educational, for example, as Captain Lunardi “would explain that very day the normal dimensions of the aerostatic machine and answer questions posed in the Spanish, Italian, French, English and Portuguese languages.”²⁷  

In fact, according to the Baron, all amusements that were diabolical and worthy of criticism had their origins in France. They were the eternal enemy. On 5 January 1802 he expressed his opinion of the French and their activities with these harsh words:

The French seem to live in perpetual Carnival inventing these aerostatic machines, just as they have done recently with their invisible 15-year-old girl, which those who went to see her heard her and did not see her, as she wouldn’t have been invisible otherwise. I know that here, in Barcelona, those who have gone to see that haven’t been of a mind to go back, and, meanwhile, the Frogs already have the money from their pockets, being extremely good at that.

The citizen Fondart made her laugh, sing, sigh and tell the time, but I have no curiosity to see her physique, leave all those with their physics and chemistry and money in their pockets, as from mine they won’t fish out single coin.²⁸  

Coroleu, although with somewhat less venom, expresses a similar view: 

The Government prolonged the privilege to hold public masked balls in the Casa de Lonja, taking any profits to aid the needy. This concession was made during Carnival in 1801, stipulating an entry fee of two pesetas. The turnout was huge and very splendid. My father said that only beardless boys and idiots could have fun, but I, coming of age at that time, noticed a lot of hustle and bustle. And it was that the people were hungry for distraction. It could have been no other way, as our alliance with France had brought us nothing but disaster and was every day becoming more turbulent.²⁹  

Both authors, moreover, introduce the existence at the time of paid leisure activities, the obvious antecedents to the entertainment industry that followed. The most typical example were the balls, held in various halls around the city, such as the Llotja or the Teatre de la Santa Creu, or in warehouses on the Rambla and in the Barceloneta, and they were attended by varying crowds depending on the price of entry. The more expensive balls cost around two pesetas, while the cheaper ones cost half a peseta. These dances were so popular that every non-working day they would be held at numerous different times from two in the afternoon until ten at night, with the eight o’clock events being the most popular. 

The masked balls held during the Carnival were the busiest of all. Among those held in homes and at other locations in the city, one of the more notable dances was the Ball de la Patacada, a rowdy and popular dance generally held in less salubrious venues, as explained by Cortada i Manjarrés in his book El libro verde de Barcelona published in 1848: 

There is really no need for the warning, because this ball is a twopenny-halfpenny affair. Popularly known as the Patacada, a high-sounding and meaningful name, a name that, for one who knows the language of the country, leaves no doubt about the events and adventures that may happen at the venue. By its nature, this ball falls into the group of things that being common to all countries are not particularly characteristic of any of them, such as having a nose even while having longer fingernails than anyone else; and herein lies the reason why time should not be invested in analysing the event too deeply. Suffice to know that at this ball one can dance everything danceable, even the clacking balls rodons of the country, and the spirited bolangera. Save for the odd exception, order tends not to be disturbed, that is, the order of a dance of such ilk; and you will see police notices to the extent that you do in a country where so many are printed. At midnight the ball comes to an end, not without the attendants having squeezed the last drop out of the 4 reals entry fee.³⁰  

Of course this was not the only popular ball; they also included stick dances, masquerade balls, the Buddha and Vienna balls, among others. These balls also played a significant role for the more illustrious figures of society, principally members of the royal family, as events at which tribute was paid to them, but also for joining in collective leisure. This was the case, for example, when the Princes arrived in Barcelona in 1802, momentarily paralysing the city and showing it in a new light. On the one hand, the population threw themselves into the streets to witness the royal procession through the city. More entertaining yet, however, would have been the soirées and masked balls, and the impressive fireworks.³¹  

In composing a true picture of leisure in Barcelona, one must not lose sight of the role played by the city’s government. As documentation shows, there was always, in this sense, a strong will to provide the public with entertainment under two tenets: control and revenue.

Regarding control, the town hall repeatedly issued edicts, laws and regulations to ensure exemplary conduct in the exercise of public leisure and to prevent disruptions. Among the many cases on record, the military and political governor Juan Procopio de Basecourt, Count of Santa Clara, in view of the scant effect of regulations, issued in 1795 a new call for moderation, decency and the maintenance of composure, which led to the signing of a new edict relating to public spectacles. It prohibited smoking in the halls or venues where shows took place and, to help prevent quarrels and fights, the wearing of hats that impeded the view of others. In addition, it said, “Nobody should raise their voice, clap out of time and much less shout or heckle, or make any other demonstrations that would be likely to disrupt the quietude and decorum expected in a theatre such as that of this capital.” Neither, naturally, was one permitted to obstruct passage to the courtyards, lunettes, boxes or doorways or to distract the actors.³² It should be noted that the government did not only exercise control over public spectacles but also on the occasion of private events held in homes. In these cases, it was the custom to request official permission, especially for theatrical performances, indicating the piece that was to be performed. Ignacio Lacasa and his friends Francisco Aruz, Ramon Baiell and Manel Passarell, youths of whom the eldest was 14, and Narcis Casacuberta, were some of the Barcelona residents that requested these permits. Lacasa and Aruz, along with other respectable colleagues, amused themselves staging three comedies entitled Las victimas del amor, Federico segundo rey de Prusia and La condesa Genovitz, while the young Baiell and Passarell wished to interpret some scenes from The Passion and the latter, with other friends, proposed staging El job de las mujeres and El amor julial.³³  

The government’s second concern, revenue, stemmed from the royal prerogative granted by Philip II in 1587, which provided that all theatrical performances were to be held in locations stipulated by the administration of the Hospital de la Santa Creu and that a proportion of the takings were to be awarded to this institution to help cover the costs of its benevolent activity. This privilege was still in force and renewed in 1770.³⁴  

Concerning collective leisure of a more intimate nature, aside from visits, meetings and gatherings within homes, familial celebrations are worthy of mention, as they constitute rites of passage rooted in private leisure activities. To wit, celebrations of weddings, engagements, baptisms or great parties held for various reasons that also represented times for enjoying dance, music and games with family and friends, and a new component of leisure that was none other than the delight of exquisite foods. Of particular significance in this context, especially among the affluent, were fashionable drinks: coffee, tea and, above all, chocolate. In this way it is also possible that, from within these more social aspects of private activities, leisure became a new element in service to the family image, as it followed a rigid social etiquette. From this perspective, looking at ceremonies that took place within the strict parameters of sociability and within the home environment, leisure also found itself highly defined in ways, forms and rhythms.

1. Pedro Mexía, Silva de varia lección, Madrid, Castalia, 2003 [1662].

2. Sebastián de Covarrubias, Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Barcelona, Altafulla, 1987 [1611].

3. Rafael d’Amat i de Cortada, Calaix de Sastre, Ramon Boixareu (Ed.), Barcelona, Curial, 1987.

4. Josep Coroleu, Memorias de un menestral de Barcelona, Barcelona, José Asmarats Editor, 1913 [1880]. Chronologically speaking, the Baron of Maldà recorded events between 1769-1819, while Coroleu’s history covers the period from 1792-1854. 

5. The territory of leisure is vast and extensive, for which reason this article focuses on the activities and pastimes least associated with the religious calendar and meaning.

6. Villancicos were musical pieces of popular and profane origin very typical in the 17th and 18th centuries. During the 17th century they evolved into Christmas carols. According to Covarrubias, they were “songs that peasants tended to sing when in solace. But the courtesans, remembering them, composed cheerful ditties in the same mode and measure. Popular Christmas carols have this same origin”; Sebastián de Covarrubias, Tesoro de la lengua, op. cit., p. 74. 

7. Rafael d’Amat i de Cortada, Calaix de Sastre, op. cit., Year 1777, p. 65.

8. Rafael d’Amat i de Cortada, Calaix de Sastre, op. cit., Year 1799, p. 258; Eduardo Molina Fajardo, Historia de los periódicos granadinos (siglos XVIII  y XIX), Granada, Diputación Provincial de Granada, Instituto Provincial de Estudios y Promoción Cultural, 1979, p. 65.

9. Diario de Barcelona, 25 December, 1803, p. 1654. 

10. Núria Pérez Pérez, Anatomía, química i física experimental al Reial Col·legi de Cirurgia de Barcelona (1760-1808), Bellaterra, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 2007. See: http://tdx.cat/bitstream/handle/10803/5174/npp1de1.pdf?sequence=1 (7-XII-2011). Giuseppe Chiappi later went to Cuba, in 1818 founding the first academy in Havana, where he died in 1834. Some figures he created for the Reial Col·legi de Cirurgia de Barcelona are preserved in the Museu d’Història de la Medicina de Catalunya.

11. Diario de Barcelona, 30 December, 1803, p. 1683. 

12. Both the Baron of Maldà and Coroleu make reference to prohibited books. Coroleu mentions Voltaire’s El Cándido , El origen de los cultos by Depuis and Las ruinas de Palmira by Volney, which were listed in the inquisitorial edicts; Josep Coroleu, Memorias de un menestral . . ., op. cit., p. 20. 

13. Tonadillas were of a genre that mixed song, dramatic performance and dance; they were performed in the intervals of comedies. 

14. Arxiu Històric de la Ciutat, Ajuntament Borbònic, Diversions públiques [1D.XX-1]. 

15. Ibid.

16. Rafael d’Amat i de Cortada, Calaix de Sastre, op. cit., Year 1778, p. 65.

17. Rafael d’Amat i de Cortada, Calaix de Sastre, op. cit., Year 1798, p. 142.

18. Rafael d’Amat i de Cortada, Calaix de Sastre, op. cit., Year 1803, p. 181. The Baron announced that the very next day this giant was to eat a live cat. 

19.Juan Serrera, Goya, los caprichos, y el teatro de sombras chinescas. See:
http://155.210.60.69/InfoGoya/Repositorio/Partes/Serrera1997_GoyaCaprichosSombras.pdf (17-XII-2011).

20. Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, Memórias para el arreglo de la policía de los espectáculos y diversiones públicas y sobre su origen en España. See: http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra-visor/memoria-para-el-arreglo-de-la-policia-de-los-espectaculos-y-diversiones-publicas-y-sobre-su-origen-en-espana--0/html/fedbb6e0-82b1-11df-acc7-002185ce6064_4.html (12-XII-2011).

21. Rafael d’Amat i de Cortada, Calaix de Sastre, op. cit., Year 1803, p. 186.

22. Roger Alier, L’òpera a Barcelona: els orígens, desenvolupament i consolidació de l’òpera com a espectacle teatral a la Barcelona del segle xviii, Barcelona, Institut d’Estudis Catalans, Societat Catalana de Musicologia, 1990.

23. Jesusa Vega, Ciencia, arte e ilusión en la España Ilustrada, Madrid, Polifemo, 2010.

24. Outstanding among the events noted by Josep Coroleu was the observation of a comet by the French astronomer and geographer Pierre Mechian while he was in Barcelona in 1793 to study and measure the meridian arc; Josep Coroleu, Memorias de un menestral . . ., op. cit., p. 13.

25. Coroleu commented extensively on the negative symbolism of these events that were considered signs of foreboding: “We have spoken much of this at home, because my father and my friends do not cease to scoff at the credulity of the common people, who attribute the phenomenon to a bad omen, and that very month Louis XVI of France was beheaded, a coincidence my mother remembered all her life to dumbfound those who would not allow that these apparitions forebode wars, troubles and the deaths of kings”; Josep Coroleu, Memorias de un menestral..., op. cit., p. 14. 

26. Rafael d’Amat i de Cortada, Calaix de Sastre, op. cit., Year 1784, p. 129. 

27. Diario de Barcelona, 10 October, 1802. Jesusa Vega, in her book, includes an extensive description of this aeronaut, who enjoyed great popularity in Spain at the time. 

28. Rafael d’Amat i de Cortada, Calaix de Sastre, op. cit., Year 1802, p. 9. 

29. Josep Coroleu, Memorias de un menestral..., op. cit., p. 18. 

30. See Joan Cortada and Josep de Manjarrés, El libro verde de Barcelona. Añalejo de costumbres populares, fiestas religiosas y profanas, usos familiares, efemérides de los sucesos más notables de acaecidos en Barcelona, Barcelona, Saurí, 1848. See: http://oreneta.com/libro-verde/1848/12/08/658/ (10-I-2012).

31. Rafael d’Amat i de Cortada, Calaix de Sastre, op. cit., Year 1802, 112ff.

32. Arxiu Històric de la Ciutat, Ajuntament Borbònic, Diversions públiques [1D.XX-1]. 

33. Ibid. 

34. Ibid. The documentation from 1770 indicates that the Hospital’s privilege only applied to theatrical productions and not to balls, functions or parties that were not performances. In general terms, the system was that a theatre company would rent the productions they were to do to the Hospital for a given length of time. This document again showed the propensity for control, with regulations segregating women in the venues, specifying which officials could attend for free, costumes permitted and other matters.

HOBBIES AND AMUSEMENTS

The city of toys

Pere Capellà Simó

The reformulation of areas of leisure and an unprecedented overvaluation of childhood were determining factors in the development of an international toy manufacturing industry. Indeed, by the end of the 19th century, toys had become symbols of the novel ways to have fun and express feelings. 

At the world expositions that followed London’s 1851 Great Exhibition, toys were granted pride of place, in accordance with the level of expectation they generated among the visiting public.¹ However, the games and toys section at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900 was truly exceptional, and was reported on by prestigious journalist Léo Claretie.² In 1893 Claretie had published Les jouets. Histoire. Fabrication,³ a key work in the historiography of the field that, among other incentives, called for the creation of toy museums and training centres for manufacturers. In fact, the 1900 Exposition Universelle featured the novelty of the “Exposition rétrospective des jouets et des jeux anciens” (Retrospective Exhibition of Toys and Antique Games),⁴ which gave an account of the emergence of specialized collection. Also, at the suggestion of Claretie himself, French collectors united in 1905 to form the first Société des Amateurs des Jouets et Jeux Anciens.⁵  

The city of Paris became established, during the second half of the 19th century, as a preeminent centre of luxury toy manufacturing, capable of ousting the Bavarians as leaders of the international trade in metal objects. However, at the end of that century, German economic policy allowed for unrestrained development of its industry, which became evident in the establishment of major cross-border firms. The Exposition Universelle of 1900 provided a platform for the launch of the Société Française de Fabrication de Bébés et Jouets, a trust headed by the German company Fleischmann & Bloedel that brought together the cream of the French brands specializing in the manufacture of luxury dolls. ⁶  

In a general climate that did not encourage rash statements,⁷ the new trust was received in Paris as a guarantee for national industry. Nevertheless, in taking stock of a century characterized by the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900 there is no ignoring the fact that that mirage was followed by the consecration of the German centres as industrial and artistic models.⁸ Meanwhile, aside from French and German products, toys from many other countries looking for a share of the international market were also on display, from Russia, Japan, the United States, England, Austria-Hungary, Siam, Romania, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, Portugal, China, Ecuador and Spain.⁹  

Of this last country, Claretie remarked upon the presence of just one toy manufacturer, who was established in Barcelona. It was a company belonging to Eusebi Roca Farriols,¹⁰ set up in Carrer Sepúlveda in 1879. Roca Farriols had become known as the most prestigious maker of metallic toys in the city, after successful participation in various industry expositions in Catalonia and other regions of Spain.¹¹  

Tram bearing the company initials of Les Tramways de Barcelone. Painted tin, 50 cm, Barcelona, c. 1905. Ton Boig Clar collection, Palma.

In Paris, Roca Farriols was awarded a silver medal, and served as an ambassador for a city that became, according to Léo Claretie, “[A] centre of toy production, after trade protection measures came into force obliging Spain to produce for its domestic market.” It was an industry in expansion that, “Given the quality and finish of its products” and the low labour costs, threatened to close the doors of the Spanish market to French toys.¹²  

Indeed, in 1900 some 31 patent applications for inventions relating to toys were issued from Barcelona. In that year the city had 112 businesses that sold toys and 39 specialized factories, rising to more than 50 just before the First World War. In the context of Spain, the Barcelona of 1900 was unequivocally the city of toys. ¹³  

The ambassador of this nascent industry, Eusebi Roca Farriols, presented a total of 25 designs in Paris. Léo Claretie was suitably impressed by the transport miniatures: a locomotive, a wind-up boat, a submarine, a stable, coach houses and the Madrid-Granada stagecoach. He stressed the magnificence of a mail-coach with four horses, carrying eight couples on its running boards, and he was captivated by an electric tram with a trolley.¹⁴ Just the previous year the first electric tram line had opened in Barcelona.¹⁵  

The Barcelona of 1900 became the scene of profound social upheaval while engendering a sense of pride towards the transformation of the city. Workers’ strikes and anarchist uprisings coincided with the consolidation of the Eixample district as the nerve centre of modern Barcelona. The year 1897 saw the annexation of surrounding municipalities and the city became a metropolis of more than 500,000 inhabitants. Within a context marked by the loss of the last Spanish colonies, Catalanism and regeneration emerged as ideological platforms for the modernism that expanded through the arts and ways of life.¹⁶  

The flourishing of newspapers and illustrated magazines allowed the recording of events and different impressions of everyday life in the city. Certainly the Barcelona of 1900 boasted prestigious chroniclers and historians, but artists also took up the challenge of interpreting the city’s streets and interiors. In fact, they bequeathed an invaluable corpus of written and painted images of the city. At the same time, toy manufacturers like Eusebi Roca Farriols also contributed to the overall civic portrait. 

However, in the case of toys, it is significant that they were primarily made for children,¹⁷ because the toy images of the city straddled the threshold between the everyday reality and dreams of the future. Eusebi Roca Farriols produced toy electric trams at the same time as this new form of transport was improving communications in the city. But toys made in Barcelona were also interspersed, in shop windows, among those from other European centres. These toys from Northern Europe effectively brought with them the iconography of their origins in which Barcelona, inevitably, saw itself. 

Moreover, while toys became representations of an idea of the city, so the Barcelona of 1900 gave back, like a mirror, a barrage of images, painted, photographed and written, that documented their forms and usage. Illustrators such as Josep Lluís Pellicer and Apel·les Mestres collaborated with department store El Siglo on their commercial catalogues. The more prestigious photographic studios used toys as distinctive elements in children’s portraits. 

Also, with the development of realist and naturalist aesthetics and the revaluation of painted interiors, painters were giving special attention to children’s emotional links to toys. Novels and short stories also illuminated the spaces where toys played a role in the daily lives of children and their families. Writers did not fail to observe the great consumption of toys as a paradigmatic example of all that constituted the 19th century regarding lifestyles. 

In short, these testimonies allow us to trace a journey through the biography of artefacts. From the factory to a child’s room, via shop windows, to arrive at the toy box or eventual abandonment, toys serve as hermeneutical instruments that reveal some of the least explored corners of the Barcelona of 1900. Ultimately, the city was their cradle and, at the same time, their most representative image.

The factory

The first documents relating to the beginning of the toy industry in Barcelona go back to the 1840s, with the inclusion of toy manufacturers in city directories. They were listed as “box makers, sieve makers (Manufacturers of cushions and children’s toys).”¹⁸ During the 1860s, the classification appeared in industrial exhibition catalogues,¹⁹ coinciding with the opening of the first shopping arcades in the city. 

In Barcelona, as elsewhere, the toy industry grew out of the shops. Adorned with lavish toys, shop windows became a true agent of change for the city’s manufacturers.²⁰ Also, many shops either converted into toy factories or else prompted their foundation. As it happened, the role of merchants as middlemen meant that the existence of the manufacturers often passed unnoticed, but industrial exhibitions provided an effective interface between manufacturers and customers.²¹  

Playing its part, the press of the time shed light on the toy factories for the general public. Journalists and, later photojournalists, traced the route the novelties followed. In October 1887 Luciano García del Real was captivated by some toy butterflies that beat their wings as a child pushed them along: 

Have you seen the beautiful butterflies, riding on wheels, that run along the Rambla and other streets drawing the gaze and desire of children? They are of metal, and many are being sold thanks to the enterprise of a Barcelona manufacturer, the first to have opened a metallic toy factory in Spain.²²  

Taken by the novelty, the writer, he explains, “went to see the factory, in the Carrer Sepúlveda, number 186; and saw 120 different toys, priced from half a real to four duros per item, and some custom-made pieces, such as a magnificent castle on the rocks with its turrets, barbican and drawbridge.” Inside Roca Farriols’s place –at the time called Roca & Co.– García del Real saw, “Train sets, kitchens, boats, laundry basins, fountains, baths, furniture boxes, laundry buckets, flower tables, omnibuses, trams, flower pots, wheelbarrows, moving locomotives, rollercoasters, bathrooms, merry-go-rounds, water carriers, figures on cycles, vanity units, sofas, coaches, etc.”²³ The journalist was delighted by the luxury as well as the price of these metallic toys, belonging to a century, he declared, “of iron, as iron has come to invade all, from the grandest of constructions to children’s toys.” ²⁴  

In March 1888, a universe in miniature once again attracted Luciano García del Real. It was, in this case, inside the Casa Cruset, then Carrer d’en Mina, where, he marvelled, “Of cardboard, wood or tin they had perfectly constructed everything from toddlers’ push wheels to railways of fine detail, from tiny chapels to great cathedrals, from a kitchen service to a fully furnished sitting room.” The cheapness of the products notwithstanding, “The influence of the artistic hobbies of the younger of the Cruset brothers” was evident in that workshop.²⁵ Their speciality was composition dolls, for which a patent was issued in 1883: it was the first patent in the field of toy making requested in Spain by a company from Barcelona.²⁶  

By the turn of the century, photography had made an entrance into doll factories and shops. During Epiphany celebrations in 1906 the magazine Garba ran a feature on toys leading with a picture of the interior “of Francisco Aduá’s establishment, in Carrer Ferrando”,²⁷ in which three businessmen appeared amidst a great pile of products that reached the ceiling. It was a hardware store called La Villa de Madrid that had opened in the mid-19th century, referred to by its popular name Can Fradera in the Singlots poetics of Frederic Soler.²⁸ At the end of the century, the business expanded with the opening of a factory for making spring-loaded toys on Carrer Aragó. The magazine printed two other pictures. The first showed an insalubrious room where men, women and children “started the toys.”²⁹ In the second image a worker applied the finishing touches to a miniature automobile, finished toys piled up on the shelves beside him among which various different models of trams could be made out. 

The outbreak of the First World War halted much of European production, prompting the celebration in Barcelona of a series of annual toy exhibitions organized by the manufacturers themselves, who had created an association under the umbrella of the confederation of business organizations and companies Foment del Treball Nacional.³⁰ In this context, Josep Brangulí’s lens reproduced interior scenes of the better-known factories of the time, such as Lehmann & Co.³¹  

At that time, this factory made porcelain dolls stamped with an anchor, a symbol of the port city. They had opened their doors in 1894 in Carrer Consell de Cent at the behest of a retailer: the El Siglo department store. Lehmann & Co. was the name under which the Société de l’Éden-Bébé operated in Spain, itself a division of Fleischmann & Bloedel. This German company had relocated their headquarters in 1890 from Furth to Paris, where they registered the French brand Éden-Bébé by which they distributed porcelain dolls made all over the continent. In 1899, Fleischmann & Bloedel became the major shareholder in the Société Française de Fabrication de Bébés et Jouets, a trust in which the major French doll manufacturers united in an effort to avoid bankruptcy.³²  

Of course, the opening of a subsidiary of Éden-Bébé in Barcelona allowed Fleischman & Bloedel tax-free access not only to the market in Spain and its colonies but also, through Puerto Rico, to the United States. With Lehmannn & Co., Barcelona was thrust into the very heart of the international toy making industry and became the touchstone of a project of monopolization that was effectively presented, although concealed by the euphoria of the time, at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900. 

As mentioned above, Eusebi Roca Farriols received an award in Paris. Twelve years earlier, Luciano García del Real had been contemplating the splendour of his factory when, he wrote, “A mother entered, followed, or rather, driven by five children. The rowdy tribe wanted everything, and, while the metallic toys could not have been more economical, it was to be an expensive outing for the good lady, as the little angels left with one in each hand.”³³  

The shop window and Epiphany

For an advertisement published on 30 December 1887, Josep Lluís Pellicer drew a crowd of pedestrians of different ages and social classes, staring out at the viewer, with smiling faces or alternately expressions of perplexity. Imagining the interior of the El Siglo department store, Pellicer had drawn the spectacle of the people gazing in at the toy displays. The advertisement was titled “Los Reyes”, in reference to the gift-giving celebrations of Epiphany, and was accompanied by the phrase, “What you will see at El Siglo in the coming days.”³⁴ Every year, the store arranged an exhibition of toys for 4-5 January that took over the entire establishment. 

The Epiphany celebrations precipitated a wave of unprecedented consumerism. On the eve of Epiphany in 1893, Francesc Miquel i Badia noted, “The noise in the streets, the hustle and bustle in all those shops selling things for children . . . throngs of people, and stacks of toys of all descriptions were to be seen everywhere in Barcelona.” These were toys, he said, “that could have featured in an exhibition of Fine Arts, [. . .] veritable works of art in some cases, and in others the products of pure science.” The author got carried away, “with coaches and shotguns and horseshoes and baby dolls and all the other ingenious toys that are the glory and amusement of the little ones.”³⁵  

However, nor did writers shy away from the inherent conflict of the season. In Els Reys del noy del porter, Ramon Suriñach Senties portrays the six-year-old son of the porter of an apartment block. At five in the afternoon when he returns home from school, “in a velvet suit, well cared for, and with a leather shoulder bag”, the boy stood in the light of the lantern inside the porter’s booth. On the eve of Epiphany he wondered if they would bring him, perhaps, “a colouring set, a spinning top, a walking stick for Sunday strolls with his aunts, and some sweets.” That year, for the porter’s son, the illusion of the Three Kings bearing gifts was shattered when he saw neighbours arrive home impudently carrying gifts for their children. The author addresses his character, telling him, “Life is so harsh that it sooner makes men of poor children than rich ones, for whom bitterness is held back, and that, poor boy, causes great pain, but also great strength.” Among the scenes witnessed by the porter’s son, there suddenly appears “a man carrying a large toy, openly visible, [. . .] a car in which two children could sit side-by-side. By the man’s neck the pedals could be seen. [. . .] Tied atop the car were small toys and boxes and packages.” Also, the man from the second floor, a salesman “whose daughter was ill, passes by so burdened with things that he looks like a delivery man for the King on his way to the station.”³⁶  

To the disturbance caused by the neighbours in the stairwell of El noy del porter one could add the story of the main character of Els Reys d’en Marianet by Carme Karr. Dolors Vidal, “doily maker” and single mother, walks the streets of the Ciutat Vella just before midnight, the hour until which the shops stayed open on the eve of Epiphany. She had pawned an item of jewellery. Finally, “At the end of the street, that light . . . was the shop . . . She could see the baubles being taken down, the flags, the dolls that decorated the illuminated shop front.” The train set her son Marianet had wished for had been sold, “She hadn’t counted on that . . . There was only a very handsome one left, in a large box, that cost five duros and had ‘15 minutes’ wind-up power.” Dolors, however, “didn’t think twice. Her son came first. In two days she would be paid, and those nine duros were like a lottery prize . . . For six duros Dolors bought the train set and a large elephant, with a purple-coloured carpet for a saddle, fringed with gold . . .”³⁷  

Impressions of Epiphany celebrations went from the streetscape to penetrate private spaces, crossing the thresholds of balconies and windows where, in the words of Ramon Garriga, “the Three Kings lavished toys and sweets.” Garriga observed, “a neighbour’s balcony […] the trays were brimming with toys and treats, and among the blessed piles of toys I noticed some golden diabolos, some soldiers’ headwear, rifles, lances and swords. After midday, with the sun high in the sky, all around was the joyous racket and hullaballoo of contented children playing for the first time with their gifts from the Three Kings.³⁸  

The child’s room

Images and literary texts allow us to trace the usage of toys and to discover their hiding places. Santiago Rusiñol illuminates the interior monologue of a young girl in a Sitges patio who, after a reprimand, takes refuge in the company of a papier-mâché doll.³⁹ Lluïsa Vidal is entranced by the imaginary meadow her nephew creates, in a time of repose, with wooden animals.⁴⁰ The young Picasso painted his sister Lola in their apartment on Carrer de la Mercè, playing with a jointed doll. ⁴¹ Ricard Canals covered his son Octavi’s bed with toys during a time of convalescence.⁴²  

Narcís Oller, for his part, described an authentic “toy warehouse” in an apartment where, every morning, an upper class baby girl would await the arrival of the “bread boy”. The story narrates the distance between two childhoods and two worlds separated by class borders. On the morning when the girl showed the boy her “warehouse of extravagance”, she “wound up a doll dressed for horse-riding that leapt from a horse to tumble around a circus ring; she then showed him a miniature ballroom decorated with such magnificence that it could have aroused dangerous ambitions in the poor boy; and then, finally, there were jack-in-the-boxes, stereoscopes, push wheels with bells on, skipping ropes, balls and glass marbles.”⁴³  

Oller describes this upper-class girl’s room as “a slice of heaven”, where the “furniture, from the beds to the side tables, were of light woods, fine, sleek and of elegant design.”⁴⁴ However, one of the most accurate descriptions of a child’s room can be found in a poem by Paul Leclerc, which was translated into Catalan by Santiago Rusiñol. In the infant’s room, “The furniture is simple and solid . . . [the] pile of toys tumbles happily against the door of a large wardrobe.”⁴⁵ These were cupboards or trunks where toys were stashed, either at the end of playtime, or at the end of childhood. ⁴⁶  

Doll from the collection of the painter Alfred Opisso i Cardona. It is the model for which the Cruset company applied for a patent in 1883. Card and cloth, 80 cm. Capellà-Simó collection, Palma.

The junk room

As children grew up, toys gained privacy in family homes. Often, they were hidden away until a younger child came to visit. In Santa ignosencia, Ferran Girbal Jaume explains, “Pepeta, as a girl, had the two bottom drawers of a chest full of toys; she was the youngest of nine siblings and enjoyed many that had not been originally hers.” When the girl grew older she left the toys in the same piece of furniture, waiting for another infant. The first on the scene was her nephew: “As she was growing up, the toys were left behind in a corner, and when Quimet reached the age of four or five, she began to give him the more solid ones to play with.”⁴⁷  

The passing of time implied the removal of toys from one piece of furniture to another, and when deemed obsolete they tended to be packed off to a second residence. In Oller’s Vilaniu, the old toys were removed to the summerhouse. There, “The toys of the little lords and ladies, once they were tired of them, [. . .]” fell into the hands of the caretaker’s daughter who, “when she found herself before the owners, seemed to say to them, ‘See how well I have looked after your souvenirs, see how grateful l am.’”⁴⁸  

In other cases toys were kept as “priceless relics, inside cupboards that were never opened.” Gabriel Alomar referred to them as “the toys of dead children”, that remained “in darkness, desperately intact, conserving the shine of the factory varnish and reviving in our eyes the very antique poetry of disappeared children.”⁴⁹  

Sooner or later, the toys would end up in the junk room. Maria Teresa Vernet recalls, “At the heart of the flat there was a dark, severely wallpapered room, that [. . . ] was allocated to junk and toy storage.” During her childhood, the writer, born in 1907, had “discovered a ‘beyond’ at the foot of the everyday world. Specifically, her curiosity crystallized around the great basket where boxes of games and dolls and bits of clothing were strewn. That basket was bottomless, and she was sure that in any moment of boredom, if she had the patience to dig deep enough, she could find a new toy, something right out of the mystery.”⁵⁰  

In the junk room, more than in any other private space, objects found themselves “free from the servitude of utility”,⁵¹ a freedom that could lead to the trash or again to the world of entertainment. For toys, the cycle is renewed in antique shops, for example, where new stories of life are to be found. Lola Anglada expressed it thus: 

In piling up all these objects that people threw out because they had no material value, two dolls had been abandoned that could well have said, “We’ve been thrown away. Have mercy on the despicable beings that only value material things: those unfortunates that do not abide by the spirit.” 

By a stroke of luck, the dolls were saved by coming to me.⁵²  

Epilogue

In 1967, Maria Lluïsa Borràs reflected upon the meaning of toys “when they were no longer toys.”⁵³ That is, when they survived beyond the play time and infancy of their first owners. More recently, Alexandre Ballester claimed that toys were “infinitely more than objects made for playing with, for entertaining children.” Among other reasons, this is because toys, he says, “enter through the eyes, live in the hands, reach the heart and remain in the memory.”⁵⁴  

In the summer of 1914, within the framework of the Primera Exposició Nacional de Joguines (First National Toy Exhibition) organized by Foment del Treball, Apel·les Mestres presented his collection of antique toys. Just a few years later, the illustrator Lola Anglada acquired, in Paris, the first pieces of a distinguished collection of 19th century dolls. Anglada had been a young child in the Barcelona of 1900, as were the figures behind the other great collections of toys from that time: Maria Junyent, Frederic Marès, Manuel Rocamora and Alfred Opisso.⁵⁵  

The testimony of toys allows us to reconstruct the history of our affections. They also facilitate an evaluation of the iconography of the cities of 1900 which, like a mute dialogue between generations, is filtered through childhood leisure. Léo Claretie predicted, “The history of our time will one day become clear and intense for future archaeologists that will understand it simply by leafing through catalogues from children’s stores.”⁵⁶  

Claretie’s claim is nothing more than an attempted game of deferred symbolism with these objects, an invitation to read into the city of toys. A city that, as the cradle of factories and inspiration for miniatures, was also the modern and cosmopolitan Barcelona of 1900.

1. Hippolyte Rigault already spoke of the toy section as one of the busiest at the Exposition Universelle of 1855 in Paris. See Hippolyte Rigault, “Les jouets d’enfants”, in Conversations littéraires et morales, Paris, Charpentier, 1859, p. 1. 

2. Léo Claretie, “Classe 100. Jeux et Jouets”, in Exposition universelle internationale de 1900 à Paris. Rapports du jury international, Vol. 2, Paris, Imprimerie nationale, 1902. 

3. Léo Claretie, Les jouets. Histoire. Fabrication, Paris, Librairie et imprimerie réunies, 1893. 

4. Léo Claretie, “Classe 100. Jeux...”, op. cit., p. 233. 

5. Monica Burckhardt, “Pourquoi Paris? Pourquoi 1900?”, in Jouets: Paris 1900, Paris, Délégation à l’Action Artistique de la Ville de Paris, 1984. 

6. Anne-Marie Porot, Jacques Porot and François Theimer, Histoire et étude de la SFBJ. Société Française de Fabrication de Bébés et Jouets, Paris, Éditions de l’amateur, 1984. 

7. Philipp Blom, The Vertigo Years. Change and culture in the west, 1900-1914. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2008, pp. 7-24. 

8. One of the initiatives launched the very day after the exposition was the iconic Concours Lépine, which, in its first edition, was addressed exclusively to toy manufacturers. See François Theimer, Les jouets, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1996, pp. 70-73. 

9. Léo Claretie, “Classe 100. Jeux...”, op. cit., p. 361. 

10. Catálogo de los expositores de España, Madrid, Comisión Ejecutiva de la Comisión General Española de la Exposición Universal de París 1900, 1900, p. 291. 

11. See references to the company in Catálogo de la Exposición Nacional de Industrias Artísticas e Internacional de Reproducciones, Barcelona, Henrich & Co. 1892, p. 50; Josep Soler, Exposición de las industrias creadas, introducidas y desarrolladas en España al amparo del Arancel de 1891. Catálogo General, Barcelona, José Cunill Sala, 1897, unnumbered, and Exposición Nacional de Industrias Modernas. Madrid 1897. Catálogo de los Expositores que han concurrido á la misma, Madrid, Pedro Núñez, 1897, p. 276. 

12. Referring exclusively to Roca Farriols’s business, Léo Claretie reported, “The jury awarded a silver medal to this interesting exhibition that, alas!, will close Spain to French toys”. From Léo Claretie, “Classe 100. Jeux...”, op. cit., p. 22. 

13. Pere Capellà Simó, Les joguines i les seves imatges en temps del modernisme. Barcelona-Palma i el model de París, dir. by Teresa-M. Sala Garcia and Jaume de Córdoba Benedicto, Barcelona, Universitat de Barcelona, Departament d’Història de l’Art, 2012. 

14. Léo Claretie, “Classe 100. Jeux...”, op. cit., p. 22. 

15. Teresa-M. Sala, La vida cotidiana en la Barcelona de 1900, Madrid, Sílex, 2005, p. 86-87. 

16. Teresa-M. Sala (Dir.), Barcelona 1900, Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum, 2007. 

17. Regarding the valuation of toys as “cultural media”, see Gilles Brougère, “Le jouet entre industrie et culture”, in Le jouet. Valeurs et paradoxes d’un petit objet secret, Paris, Autrement, 1992, pp. 16-27. Regarding methodology, see Michel Manson, “Écrire l’histoire du jouet: un défi scientifique”, in Jeux et jouets dans les musées de l’Île-de-France, Marie-Pierre Deguillaume and Pascale Gorguet Ballesteros (Coord.), Paris, Parismusées, 2004, pp. 72-80. 

18. Manuel Saurí and Josep Matas, Guía de forasteros en Barcelona. Judicial, gubernativa, administrativa, comercial, artística y fabril, Barcelona, Manuel Saurí, 1842, p. 8. 

19. The first documented use of the Spanish word for toy, “juguete”, is found in an exhibition catalogue in Francisco José Orellana, Reseña completa. Descriptiva y crítica de la Exposición Industrial y Artística de Productos del Principado de Cataluña, Barcelona, Jaime Jepús, 1860, p. 13. 

20. Artur Masriera, “De la Barcelona ochocentista. El Pasaje de las columnas”, La Vanguardia, 14 November 1922, p. 16. 

21. Regarding the development of the modern toy industry, a primary reference is the study of the Parisian industries by Pierre du Maroussem, La question ouvrière, Vol. 3, Le jouet parisien, Paris, Arthur Rousseau, 1893. 

22. Luciano García del Real, “Notas útils. Joguinas de metall”, La Ilustració Catalana, No. 174 (15 October 1887), p. 10. 

23. Ibíd. 

24. Luciano García del Real, “Notas útils”, La Ilustració Catalana, No. 153 (31 November 1886), p. 447. 

25. Luciano García del Real, “Notas útils. Los jochs de Napoleó y las joguines”, La Ilustració Catalana, No. 184 (15 March 1888), p. 14. 

26. Application No. 3364: Josep Cruset, “A process for manufacturing dolls from composite”, 16 May 1883, AH/OEPM. 

27. “Joguines”, Garba, No. 7 (5 January 1906), p. 10. 

28. Soler included various references, for example, the comparison “com ninots de can Fradera / que rodant fan clinch, clinch, clinch” (like the dolls of Can Fradera / that roll with a clink, clink, clink): Frederic Soler [Serafí Pitarra], Singlots poètics, Barcelona, López (Ed.), 1867, p. 14. Listed as “Fradera, Lorenzo. Titulada la Villa de Madrid. c. Fernando VII, 44” in J. A. S., El Consultor. Nueva guía de Barcelona. Obra de grande utilidad para todos los vecinos y forasteros, y sumamente indispensable á los que pertenecen á la clase mercantil é industrial, Barcelona, Imprenta de La Publicidad, 1857, p. 352. 

29. “Joguines”, op. cit., p. 11. 

30. This aspect was also described by Josep Corredor-Matheos, La joguina a Catalunya, Barcelona, Edicions 62, 1981, pp. 80-105. 

31. Merche Fernández Sagrera (Coord.), Brangulí (fotografies 1909-1945), Barcelona, Fundación Telefónica, 2010, pp. 46-49. 

32. Regarding the installation of Éden-Bébé in Barcelona, see Pere Capellà Simó, Les joguines . . ., op. cit., pp. 537-622. 

33. Luciano García del Real, “Notas útils. Joguinas . . .”, op. cit., p. 11. 

34. This notice was published in El Siglo. Órgano de los Grandes Almacenes de este título, No. 153 (30 December 1887), p. 1. 

35. Francesc Miquel i Badia, “Al discret lector”, in Eduard Vidal Valenciano, Jochs y joguinas. Recorts de la infantesa, Barcelona, López (Ed.), 1893, p. 10-18. 

36. Ramon Suriñac Senties, “Els Reys del noy del porter”, La Ilustració Catalana, No. 566 (12 April 1914), p. 12. 

37. Carme Karr [L. Escardot], “Els reys d’en Marianet”, Joventut, No. 153 (15 January 1903), pp. 50-51. 

38. Ramon Garriga, “Joguines”, Feminal, No. 21 (27 December 1908), p. 8. 

39. Santiago Rusiñol, Les hortènsies de la sabatera (1891), oil on canvas, 130 х 65.90 cm, Andorra, Crèdit Andorrà Collection. 

40. Lluïsa Vidal, Retrat de Marcel de Montoliu i Vidal, nebot de la pintora (c. 1907), oil on canvas, 44  59cm, Catalunya, Private collection. 

41. Pablo R. Picasso, Lola amb nina a la falda (1896), oil on board, 35.5 х 22.5 cm, Malaga, Museo Picasso Malaga. 

42. Ricard Canals, Nen malalt (Octavi, fill de l’artista) (1903), oil on canvas, 53 х 70 cm, Barcelona, Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya. 

43. Narcís Oller, “El vailet del pa”, in Croquis del natural, Barcelona, Impremta de la Renaixensa, 1879, p. 13. 

44. Narcís Oller, “El vailet del pa”, op. cit., p. 9. 

45. Paul Leclerc, “La cambra de l’infant”, Catalan trans. Santiago Rusiñol, “De l’àlbum de París”, Art Jove, No. 19 (15 September 1906), p. 301. 

46. An 1886 notice stated: “In the shop of cabinetmaker Don Esteban Canals, artistic furniture is to be found, intended for toy storage, that, by its novelty and tasteful design, is a great credit to the craftsman”; El Correo Catalán, 26 August 1886, p. 2. 

47. Ferran Girbal Jaume, “Santa ignosensia”, Cu-cut: Setmanari de Gresca ab Ninots: Surt els Dijous, 1903, p. 86. 

48. Narcís Oller, Vilaniu, Barcelona, La Renaixensa, 1885, p. 148. 

49. Gabriel Alomar [Biel de la Mel], “El Ram”, La Roqueta, No. 312 (7 April 1900), p. 1. 

50. Maria Teresa Vernet, Estampes de París, Barcelona, La Rosa dels Vents, 1937, p. 53. 

51. Walter Benjamin, Parigi capitale del xix (Paris, Capital of the 19th Century), Turin, 1986. From Teresa-M. Sala, “La classificació estilística de les arts decoratives del segle xix”, Matèria. Revista d’Art, No. 1 (2001), p. 214. 

52. Lola Anglada, Les meves nines, Barcelona, Alta Fulla, 1983, p. 77. 

53. Maria Lluïsa Borràs, Mundo de los juguetes, Barcelona, Polígrafa, 1969, p. 1. 

54. Alexandre Ballester, “Realitat i fantasia de les juguetes”, in Museu de la jugueta Can Planes, Sa Pobla, Santa Maria del Camí, Can Planes, Espais d’Art i Cultura, 1998, p. 83. 

55. For more on the history on the beginnings of toy collecting, see Josep Corredor-Matheos, La joguina..., op. cit., pp. 266-273. 

56. Léo Claretie, Les jouets . . ., op. cit., p. 285. 

Picture card collecting

Fàtima López Pérez

For Joan Ral – in memoriam 

Throughout childhood, my favourite toys were always my first collections of picture cards, and it was later finding them at home that brought back so many memories of the days when I took to visiting the Sant Antoni market every Sunday in search of the ones I was lacking. There, amongst all the stalls, and particularly that of Joan Camps i Guàrdia, was where it all started. I remember the day when I found some of the cards I was missing, and many others I hadn’t known of, and they fascinated me. My hobby began by accident, but over time became a true passion.¹  

With these words, Joan Ral i Bolet (Barcelona, 1922-2010) recalled in an interview the beginnings of his collection of vintage picture cards, or “chromos”, which is undoubtedly the most exceptional in Catalonia. It is from this extensive collection that our study draws its focus. This chapter is a result of the discovery of the world of chromos and direct contact with a man who dedicated his life to the singular hobby of collecting picture cards.²  

Within the graphic arts, to date there has been no in-depth study of chromolithographic picture cards, although some interesting observations have been made.³ Firstly, their origins have been traced to Paris in the second half of the 19th century. During the time of the Second French Empire, the French merchant Aristide Boucicaut managed to convert his store into the most significant department store in Paris, under the name of Au Bon Marché. In 1883, naturalist writer Émile Zola made Boucicaut the protagonist of his novel Au bonheur des dames. Therein he told of how the entrepreneur realized how he could win over the custom of mothers through their children, and he began to do so between 1852-1867 with the release of the “image of the week”, which allowed for the production of various series of cards with the object of generating customer loyalty. These were small cards of 9х12cm printed using the technique of chromolithography (hence the name “chromo”), which allowed for up to 15,000 prints from each template. The images were lithographed by Parisien printer J. Minot, who on occasions also printed them for other retailers. Some of the chromos for Au Bon Marché reproduced scenes from Don Quixote, a novel that inspired numerous series.⁴ Needless to say, on the back of the cards appeared an image of the chain’s flagship store. This became the conventional practice for commercial publicity at the time. 

The cards, from the time of their conception, were primarily aimed at children. Collecting them is closely tied to personal memories evoking childhood, as Joaquim Maria de Nadal said: 

All children are collectors and, if you observe them closely, you’ll see that all collectors have the soul of a child.⁵  

And, as collector Joan Ral’s daughter Anna Ral recalled: 

Fot all the collectors to have been able to gather together so many antique picture cards, children of past ages had to keep all those images, and dealers had to appear that were prepared to find them and sell them; of the latter, with emotion and respect, I must mention Mr Joan Camps i Guàrdia, who had a stall in the Sant Antoni market.⁶  

This Sunday morning market,⁷ which Joan Ral visited so many times, was a reference point for lovers of small objects. Running into other collectors there was a pleasure and a shared necessity; Ral was often to be found there with his friend Vicente Llorente Cháfer, also a passionate fan of chromos. 

These picture cards are documents of considerable sociological interest in the study of culture in the 19th and 20th centuries. Form, content and size are all aspects of their appearance that have to do with advertising, amusement, pleasure, instruction and collecting.⁸ As Francesc Fontbona indicated, “The chromo is an authentic genre of the late 19th century.”⁹ They were, simply, small prints of preferably colour images, initially made chromolithographically (in the early 20th century photogravure became the typical method), designed to be collected. 

The collector, as an expert in the material, becomes the creator of history for collected objects. Along this premise, Joan Ral was able to define the two periods of antique picture cards. The first ran from the end of the 19th century until 1922, with the African wars, and the second from 1922 to 1936, when the Spanish Civil War began. Given our timeframe of interest, around the turn of the 20th century, this text focuses on the first period. Also, the collectors often coined the titles for different card series, which became established through general consensus. 

Over more than 50 years, Joan Ral collected around 1,900 series of picture cards, which he arranged in meticulous and perfectly ordered fashion in albums, classified by Roman numerals. The last catalogue he published, Cromos para recordar (2007),¹⁰ detailed a total of 1,801 series corresponding to 462 commercial brands. Looking at these, there is a marked predominance of chocolatiers from Barcelona, although others from different Catalan and Spanish cities are also represented. The main function of these cards was advertising: they were promotional gifts designed to make products more attractive. Secondly, of course, the desire to collect a complete series motivated the consumer to keep buying the same product. In this respect, blocks of chocolate were the main products offering picture cards, but other businesses and merchants also promoted their products and establishments with the distribution of chromos. These largely included chemists and their medicines, beverages, cigarettes, general stores, publishers, bookshops, bakeries, sweet shops, markets, cafes and restaurants, among others. 

Given their significance, this study devotes most attention to the picture cards released by the chocolate houses of the Barcelona of 1900 in Ral’s collection. Within this category, the firm Juncosa produced the most series, followed by Amatller, Boix and Pi. 

These chocolate houses circulated advertisements for their new chromos in the local press, a primary source of great importance that allows us to date some series. Looking at a collection of these ads shows that sometimes, due to success largely dependent on novelty value, a series would be extended and identified by the letters A, B, C and D. The chocolate house that launched a new series first had to ensure that their cards would not be confused with those of other brands that copied the series. Thus, the cards represented a new area of rivalry within direct competition for the same product. 

Specifically, regarding Amatller chocolates, the company was founded at the end of the 18th century with a factory in Sant Martí de Provençals.¹¹ It appears that the cards promoting their products were printed directly in a lithography studio at the same factory.¹² In 1898 Antoni Amatller commissioned the architect Josep Puig i Cadafalch to build him a house on Passeig de Gràcia. The interior design includes references to the owner’s area of business, with various decorative elements of animal figures making and holding chocolate. It has also been speculated that the form of a block of chocolate possibly inspired the shape of the roof. 

The absence of artists’ signatures on the picture cards makes it considerably difficult for art historians to attribute the works. Looking at the chromos of Amatller, of 138 collections just 48 are signed. This may seem a small number, but becomes more significant considering that of Joan Ral’s total of 1,801 series, only 243 include annotations by the artist. 

 Picture cards from the Coches series by Apel·les Mestres for the Amatller chocolate company. Joan Ral collection, Barcelona.

Taking the analysis further, the signed card series from Amatller correspond to 25 artists, foremost among which are I. González, who authored 14 series, and Apel·les Mestres with 10. 

González is an unknown figure and has not been studied in depth. His series, such as Aventuras de Dick en África Central and El detective Bobby, cards telling of adventure, demonstrate a personal style with excellent rich colour and rounded forms denoting a childlike sweetness within creative compositions. 

The lack of data on González contrasts with that available on Apel·les Mestres, one of the leading figures of modernisme (Catalan art nouveau movement). The multifaceted Mestres had a tremendous creative capacity that manifested itself in many fields of art. His cards, which were always signed, are a very interesting part of his vast output. They are characterized by a naturalistic style full of wit and humour, and there is no qualitative difference between his work as an illustrator of books, as a cartoonist for chromolithographs or as a caricaturist for satirical magazines of the time; all show the same care and attention to detail. The series he made for Amatller were well known and recognized, especially El Conde Arnaldo (1902), Mitología (1906-1907), Proverbios en acción (1908-1909), La escala de la vida (1909), Antes y después de la lotería, and La gloria de los Austrias. The series of Animales, Coches and Meses had the peculiarity that three cards made up each single composition, providing an added difficulty to assembling a complete collection.¹³  

Between the chocolatier and the artist, apart from their professional relationship, there was a bond of friendship. This is evident from postcards kept in the Apel·les Mestres personal document archive currently held in the Arxiu Històric de la Ciutat de Barcelona. Amatller sent him postcards from an excursion to Ripoll in 1908 and a trip to Egypt the following year. This friendship extended to Amatller’s daughter, Teresa, who gave the artist a gift in appreciation of his participation in the chocolate house’s poster competition.¹⁴  

Another of the most significant artists that worked on the Amatller chromos was Alexandre de Riquer, a cartoonist, painter and poet who played a significant role in the development of bookplates and posters. With respect to cards, he drew the series entitled Cromos anuncio and Aves, which showed birds hatching out of their eggshells or singing in natural landscapes. 

The other illustrators that worked for Amatller were not renowned figures like the two abovementioned artists and have generally received little attention from art historians. Even so, listing some of them exemplifies the range of illustrators dedicated to the enormous production of the chromolithography industry. They included Carvalló, of whom all that is known is that he illustrated chromos and handheld fans and drew the series Viviendas de todo el mundo. Also Joaquim Coll Salieti, a cartoonist and water-colourist who devoted himself to photogravure and established one of the leading studios in Barcelona in the early 20th century, illustrated the series Cantares ilustrados and Caza y pesca. The painter J. Ibáñez Arellano drew Aventuras de Paquito and Carbonilla. Joan Llaverias Labró, water-colourist, comic illustrator and founder of the Centre d’Aquarel·listes de Barcelona, created the series Abecedario zoológico. Albert Mestre Moragas, an illustrator who specialized in sports themes, made a geographic series for Amatller entitled Las 49 provincias de la República española. Lluís Mallafré Guasch, cartoonist and water-colourist, illustrated Las razas de color. The Madrid cartoonist and painter Gumersindo Sainz de Morales drew Postres de chocolate. Josep Segrelles Albert, a cartoonist, poster designer and painter from Valencia, illustrated the mythical novel Don Quixote. 

 Picture cards from the Aves series by Alexandre de Riquer for the Amatller chocolate company. Joan Ral collection, Barcelona.

 The cromo artists who illustrated for Amatller, and for other companies, did not work exclusively for one company and it is known that I. González and Apel·les Mestres also did illustration for other brands in the same business that were in direct competition. González did so for Juncosa with a series called Las manchas de la Luna and also worked for chocoloatiers Boix and Prat; Apel·les Mestres illustrated the comic strip Rodolins for wrappers of Angelical chocolates. There were similar instances involving other illustrators of the Amatller chromos, including Carvalló, Coll Salieti, Ibáñez and Mestre. 

Another curious concept worthy of attention, being somewhat incongruous, is that occasionally different chocolate companies, changing only the brand stamp, repeated certain series of cards. This was the case with the series Les estampes de cel·luloide, which was published by several chocolate houses including Amatller, Juncosa, Boix, Poblet, Ferrer and Gili; Instantáneas appeared under Amatller, Juncosa and Companyia Colonial La España; the chromos Flores, personas y pájaros were reproduced by Amatller, Juncosa and Colonial M. López, and Instantáneas varias was distributed by Amatller, Juncosa and Boix. This practice is justified by the fact that after initial printing of the images, the different brands could simply add their own stamp to the cards. 

One of the great difficulties presented by the study of antique cards, and on which researchers have not loitered, is subject classification from an iconographic perspective. In his catalogue Cromos para recordar (2007), Joan Ral presents his collection alphabetically by subject. From studying this, what follows is a rough outline of the themes considered to be most interesting and significant in relation to the turn of the century. 

As previously mentioned, the cards were mainly aimed at children, making it logical that various themes focussed on collectable toys. Similarly, the alphabet often features, where a common approach was to present animals adopting the forms of the letters, as in Abecedario zoológico (Amatller), demonstrating how the cards took on an educational nature so as to be used for learning-based fun. 

One truly exceptional format was used for the series El pequeño artista (Juncosa chocolates, El Niño condensed milk and Soler i Mora general stores), in which the cards incorporated small samples of pigments for colouring in the picture on the card, with the smaller-sized example image presented in colour as a guide. This was evidently a very successful concept, as it ran to three series. 

Originality also abounded in cards shaped like elements for games, such as dominoes or playing cards. Other types of children’s entertainment included fables, riddles, rhymes and puzzles. The tales of adventure must also have been well received by children,¹⁵ with stories like Juanito el valiente, Aventuras de Dick en África central or El detective Bobby (all three from Amatller), which captured the imagination of youngsters by creating new characters for the children’s world. The format generally adopted for these chromos, and for others of different themes, was to have the illustration and its corresponding number in the series on the front, and, on the back, an explanation of the scene depicted accompanied by the company’s logo. Thus, the cards presented small stories, the novelty being that it was necessary to collect an entire series to know the whole story. Each individual chromo was a unique and necessary piece, functioning as a sales concept that increased consumption of the product concerned. 

Cards representing historical episodes became very widespread, mainly those depicting wars and related military themes, such as aviation or flags. In Josep Maria de Nadal’s childhood memories they were very present: 

When I was a boy, we collected chromos; chromos of all kinds; from those that were embossed and had vibrant colours, [. . .] to those that could be called historical: the First Melilla campaign, those in Cuba and the Philippines, the United States, the Boer Wars and the Russo-Japanese War, and the Chicago World Fair and other momentous events in life from around the world or here at home, which were more modest, but more interesting for us.¹⁶  

The chromos depicting the Russo-Japanese War that Nadal refers to have illustrations by Apel·les Mestres in collaboration with Joaquim Coll Salieti. They were promotional gift cards that the chocolate house Juncosa began to distribute in late March 1904. Apparently their success spread rapidly¹⁷ and other chocolate houses, such as Condal and Sagrada Familia, obtained cards of the same war images in an effort to compete and boost sales of their own products. 

Likewise, popularity among young girls was won over with cut-out dolls given away with Jaime Boix chocolates at the end of 1895. These chromolithography printed dolls came with interchangeable dresses and hats, allowing for a wide variety of models. 

The female figure surrounded by flowers, given the close relationship between woman and flowers at the time as essential elements of modernisme, was another of the most common themes for cards of the period. Women represented the female ideal that artists identified with Mother Earth, a symbol of fertility, but also abundance, as they were associated with the consumer boom of the late 19th century,¹⁸ and, therefore, fitted perfectly with the commercial distribution of printed chromos. Notable examples within this theme include Mujeres modernistas (Amatller), a series of 25 cards on which each woman represents a different flower, among which can be identified those that were common in representations of the time, such as roses, irises, poppies, daffodils, daisies and cornflowers. Women appear as nymphs adorned with precious jewels and diaphanous dresses, with coup de fouet lines creating an Art Nouveau aesthetic. Another series sharing these same characteristics is Señoritas con flores (Eliozondo perfumers). 

As mentioned, chromos are documents of considerable sociological interest in the study of culture, and provide good examples of the “languages” that were part of popular culture. The chocolate house Pi made three series addressing this theme: El lenguaje del abanico (1904),¹⁹ El lenguaje del pañuelo and El lenguaje de la sombrilla, which is to say, three accessories used by women that allowed them, simply by their positioning, to send loving messages without the use of words. The concept also appeared in El lenguaje de los ojos (Padrosa chocolates). One of the languages most commonly found on the cards is evident from numerous series on the symbolic meaning of flowers. A notable example is El emblema de las flores (Boix chocolates), with a total of 100 cards that depicted 100 flowers accompanied photogravure images of women. With a capacity for observation honed by experience, Joan Ral counted 20 variations on the female figure in the series, meaning it consisted of multiple versions of the same images. 

The language theme was also used to target male consumers, with El lenguaje del bastón (Pi chocolates), in this case based on the men’s accessory of a walking stick. 

Beliefs materialized in religious themes, primarily focussing on the figures of saints, and esoteric themes, like Sueños y visiones nocturnas (Pi and Boix) and Los signos de la mano (Amatller). 

The cards were also found suitable for interrelated themes. In this way, advertising within advertising appeared, with posters printed as chromo cards, such as the 8 carteles premiados (Anís del Mono) series, satisfying a dual commercial initiative. 

Another example of this was chocolate being illustrated on the cards of chocolate houses, with chocolate making becoming the subject for the series Enseñanza gráfica de las industrias (Torras), and Postres de chocolate (Amatller), which displayed recipes to be made using the chocolate that the card accompanied. 

Especially interesting is the depiction of leisure within leisure, as the cards, a reflection and chronicle of society, depicted various scenes of leisure. Some presenting fashion iconography were dedicated to figures from show business, including singers, actors, actresses and famous bullfighters, who found ways to boost their public image with the emergence of new techniques of photomechanical reproduction. A good example of leisure spaces are the chromos that illustrate a mother with her children walking in the park or a group of youths watching movies in a cinema; these both incorporated a wheel mechanism to change the landscape or scene by interacting with the object. The range of possibilities expanded greatly with, for example, cards illustrating shadow games and magic tricks. 

Ultimately, with picture card collecting, the real point is this: the passing enjoyment of moments of leisure can be extended to comprise a lifelong hobby.

1. Rosa Garcés, “Joan Ral”, Paperantic. Cuaderno de Coleccionismo, No. 2 (March 2004), p. 22. 

2. This text takes as a starting point the lecture “Col·leccionistes i col·leccions de cromos. Homenatge a Joan Ral” delivered by Teresa-M. Sala and Fàtima López as part of “Aficions de la Barcelona del 1900. Cicle de conferències, lectura dramatitzada i audició de música d’època”, 9 March 2010, held at the Casa Amatller and organized by Gracmon. 

3. Eliseu Trenc was the first historian to denote chromos as an artistic category within the graphic arts: Eliseu Trenc, Les arts gràfiques de l’època modernista a Barcelona, Barcelona, Gremi d’Indústries de Barcelona, 1977, pp. 195-196. Other studies later appeared: Francesc Fontbona, “El cromo, un gènere genuí de les acaballes del segle  xix”, Serra d’Or, No. 349 (December 1988), pp. 67-74; Rosario Ramos, Ephemera: la vida sobre el papel. Colección de la Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, 2003; Xavier Soler, “El gravat popular”, in Francesc Fontbona (Dir.), El Modernisme, Vol. v, En paral·lel al Modernisme, Barcelona, L’Isard, 2004, pp. 180-185; Pilar Vélez, “ El cromo vuitcentista a Catalunya. Origen, tècniques i artistes”, in Eloi Bergadà and Pilar Vélez, El cromo a Catalunya: 1890-1936. Catàleg de l’exposició, Molins de Rei, Ajuntament de Molins de Rei, 1998, pp. 9-27.

4. Iconografía popular de El Quijote. Catálogo de la exposición, Toledo, Empresa Pública Don Quijote de La Mancha, Centro de Estudios and Universidad de Castilla La Mancha, 2005. 

5. Joaquim Maria de Nadal, Cromos de la vida vuitcentista. Memòries d’un barceloní, Barcelona, Llibreria Dalmau, 1946, p. 10. 

6. Anna Ral, “Prólogo”, in Joan Ral, Catálogo del cromo antiguo en España, Barcelona, CopiArt SA, 1986, p. 7. 

7. For a depiction of the atmosphere of collecting generated by the Sant Antoni market, see the personal perspective of another collector: Lucía Capdevila, “Cromos. La magia del mercado”, Paperantic. Cuaderno de Coleccionismo, No. 1 (October 2003), pp. 13-15. 

8. Javier Conde, Lo tengo no lo tengo, Madrid, Espasa, 1998. 

9. Francesc Fontbona, “El cromo...”, op. cit. 

10. Joan Ral, Cromos para recordar, Barcelona, Creaciones Graf. 32, 2007. Years earlier, Ral had published Catálogo del cromo antiguo en España (1986). Regarding more modern chromos, see Juan Damián  Hernanz, Catálogo del álbum de cromos en España: 1900-1960, Madrid, (Author’s edition), 1995. 

11. For more on the industrial history of Amatller, see Maria Antònia Martí, El plaer de la xocolata: la història i la cultura de la xocolata a Catalunya, Valls, Cossetània, 2004, pp. 140-148.

12. Maria Antònia Martí, El plaer de la xocolata..., op. cit., p. 127. 

13. Examples of these series are held within the collection of the Unitat Gràfica de la Biblioteca de Catalunya, having been donated by the family of Carles Llobet Busquets. 

14. AHCB, Personal documents of Apel·les Mestres, Letters, Postcards 5D.52-20. AM.P 67-69 Amatller, A. 1908-1909, and Correspondence 5D.52-11. AM.C 137 Amatller, Hija de A. 1914. 

15. Regarding the stories printed on chromos, see Montserrat Castillo, “Cromos”, in Grans il·lustradors catalans del llibre per a infants (1905-1939), Barcelona, Barcanova and Biblioteca de Catalunya, 1997, pp. 15-16. 

16. Joaquim Maria de Nadal, Cromos de la vida . . ., op. cit., p. 10. 

17. La Vanguardia, No. 10080 (8 May 1904), p. 2. 

18. Maria Antònia Martí, El plaer de la xocolata..., op. cit., p. 127. 

19. Dated according to news items published in La Vanguardia, No. 11403 (30 November 1904), p. 3 and No. 11409 (3 December 1904), p. 3. 

Dressing leisure

Cristina Rodríguez Samaniego

Fashion in 1900

In the Barcelona of 1900, leisure was being worn. Access to free time and leisure spaces was democratized over the course of the 19th century and this sparked a series of changes and new needs associated with leisure, with regard to clothing in particular. At social and political levels the industrial revolution enabled the consolidation of a new social class, the bourgeoisie, which would become a great consumer of leisure-related clothing. The bourgeoisie yearned to live and dress with the luxury and ostentation of nobility, the class that had traditionally held a monopoly on fashion, but with styles and solutions adapted to their own tastes and possibilities. This transformation was also stimulated by new equipment born of the industrial revolution, thanks to which it was possible to make all kinds of fabrics, embroidered designs and tulles in large quantities and, therefore, at reduced costs. In short, the second half of the 19th century witnessed the popularization of access to fashion, which ultimately rendered void the long-standing institutionalized conventions that had determined how members of each social stratum should dress. 

While the raw materials for clothing were being industrially manufactured by the turn of the century, garments were still designed, sewn together and decorated by hand.¹ Within affluent circles in the city, garments were made available to customers in distinguished and personalized settings, in which attention to detail and knowledge of the clientele were fundamental factors. It was from this structure that what we know of as haute couture was born, and whereby the fashion industry took shape. Looking at the concept of fashion around 1900, it should be understood almost as a way of life, a way of behaving and dressing of limited validity that would expire sooner or later. Fashion, then, was a term defined more by the possibilities of the individual rather than those of the object. Fashion would represent a way of being, a choice, an action. Thus, as the authors of Distinción social y moda² state, fashion is not a specific place but the act of frequenting that place; fashion is not a specific painter, but the act of appreciating that painter; it is not a dress but the act of dressing a certain way. Fashion is and was, therefore, an eminently social function, born of the choices of the individual. 

If we accept that fashion is not a piece of clothing, but rather the act of selecting and wearing a specific garment, then the choice of one outfit or another must be meaningful. On the other hand, the elements comprising an outfit may speak for the individual and even indicate economic status, as well as social class, conditions and aspirations. Ever since the theorization of this concept began in the 18th century, fashion has been understood as a symbolic form of social distinction and assimilation, by which an individual manifests and reinforces their identification or differentiation with respect to a defined group. This idea brings into play feelings of possession and belonging for individuals living in a group. Fashion is, ultimately, a social phenomenon with implicit social ends: indicating the differences and affinities between people. 

In the 19th century, sociologists dedicated to the study of fashion explored this relationship between the choice of apparel and different socioeconomic strata. Their perspective was coloured by Marxist and capitalist presuppositions and theories on class distinction. German sociologist Max Weber was a pioneer in this line of thought. He showed disenchantment towards the capitalist system and modernity, elements that he considered the foundations of the economic stratification of society, which in turn was responsible for variations in manner of dress.³ Weber’s ideas were compiled by his colleague Georg Simmel, who fully subscribed to the most widely accepted view of fashion in the 19th century: that it was a means by which a group could clearly distinguish and distance themselves from the rest, in accordance with their financial capabilities and the destination and nature of their investments.⁴  

Leisure, conspicuous consumption and fashion

One of the thinkers who most deeply explored these theories was the American economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen, whose lifetime straddled the 19th and 20th centuries. Veblen is of particular interest because his ideas are easily applied to the Catalan context and because they embody a very interesting reflection on feminine dressing and leisure. He interpreted social history from an economic point of view, and his most significant contribution was undoubtedly an analysis of habits of consumption. Critical of the capitalist system and progress, Veblen was one of the first to claim that the phenomena of human consumption were dependent on social structure and, therefore, were not consequences of natural needs or freedom of choice. According to Veblen, consumption in the late 19th century was stimulated by social status. Thus, in his opinion, most people wished to consume in an ostentatious manner, to make their purchasing power clear to others. This type of consumption, primarily calculated to exteriorize and display wealth, is what Veblen called “conspicuous consumption”. As he defined it, conspicuous consumption concerned all levels of society. The least wealthy try to imitate those who have greater resources, in order to distinguish themselves, provoke envy and acquire a particular social reputation. In respect of this, the author’s own words are very interesting: 

In modern civilized communities the lines of demarcation between social classes have grown vague and transient, and wherever this happens the norm of reputability imposed by the upper class extends its coercive influence with but slight hindrance down through the social structure to the lowest strata. The result is that the members of each stratum accept as their ideal of decency the scheme of life in vogue in the next higher stratum, and bend their energies to live up to that ideal.⁵  

Therefore, around 1900, the status and respectability of a family depended, according to Veblen, on its capacity for conspicuous consumption. Expenditure itself was not the goal, but the demonstration of financial capacity and, thus, the appearance of expenditure. An effective way of achieving this was, precisely, spending money on clothing. Women were the main targets of conspicuous consumption in the 19th century, because, according to Veblen and many other authors and citizens of the time, it was on the female body that pomp and luxury better expressed a family’s or husband’s wealth. Fashion is crystallized here as a strictly urban act associated with conspicuous consumption. In 1894, Veblen published an interesting and in-depth article on the subject, entitled “The Economic Theory of Woman’s Dress”⁶ Faithful to his ideas about women’s dress as a means of conspicuous consumption, the article explained how fashion could be an effective indicator of social status. On the one hand, Veblen confirmed how tastes in clothing changed constantly and that what was liked today, tomorrow would be demodé. As a consequence of this, only the richest households could afford the latest thing. On the other hand, the less practical and comfortable any chosen outfit was, the clearer it became that the wearer did not work and, subsequently, did not need to work in order to be able to spend money. The absence of utility as a status symbol could be applied to both garments and accessories; it was demonstrated through men’s very tall top hats and decorated walking sticks and women’s corsets. 

Women’s clothing around 1900, in Barcelona and the rest of the Western world, was something that went far beyond the primary need to cover the body and protect oneself from the cold. Veblen’s insights draw together fashion and consumption habits and give meaning to the extreme luxury and pomp that characterize some items of clothing –dressing in leisure, literally– from the period. While not all authors who were  contemporaries of Veblen shared his conviction of living in a society with such pecuniary rivalry between people, they acknowledged the need for singularization and for belonging obtained through distinction, a feature inherent in society at the turn of the century. 

The extravagance, opulence, taste for adornment and spectacle of some items of women’s clothing was not at all matched in men’s fashion of the 19th century, which became simplified following the French Revolution. Throughout the century, clothing for men maintained similar characteristics and very little variation, which was mostly limited to accessories such as waistcoats, boots, buttons, ties, etc. The inspiration was largely British. Around 1900, the typical attire of a Barcelona gentleman consisted of trousers, shirts with starched collars, a waistcoat and tie or bowtie. Over this, a frock coat or morning coat for important occasions, a jacket for everyday use and a tailcoat for parties. The crease in trousers was not introduced until 1895.⁷  

Queen for a day

Within the feminine world of well-to-do Barcelona around 1900, clothing and accessories were tailored to each specific event or activity. The trotteur dress was particularly suitable for promenading, as it allowed freedom of movement, and was mainly worn in the morning. “Visiting” dresses, especially practical, were worn in the afternoon and served, as the name indicates, for visits to private homes as well as for any public occasion with no formal dress code. In this sense they differed from “ceremonial” dresses, reserved for more demanding social gatherings such as receptions, recitals, the opera, key religious events, and so on. In general, the fabrics from which dresses were made indicated their usage. For instance, that known as the “woollen dress” was used for attending church or for visits to family and the most intimate of colleagues. Dresses of velvet, silk or taffeta were perfect for visits made out of obligation or commitment. The colours were also of significance. For the morning, dark colours were considered more suitable, while lighter ones were used for afternoon wear. Bourgeois and aristocratic brides were married in white, following the French fashion, which distinguished them from common and rural women, who on these occasions wore black dresses that could later be put to further use.⁸ At the same time, dressing for leisure demanded adherence to certain moral prescriptions that stipulated measurements and patterns. Guidelines for cleavage were a good example: at lunch, women of wealthy families were permitted to display a discrete cleavage, while at balls or in the box at the Liceu it could be much more pronounced. 

Trends fluctuated constantly and at the end of the 19th century conventional wisdom suggested that fashions were renewed in three-year cycles. As occurs today, public figures had an influence on the evolution of taste in clothes. In Barcelona, garments worn by the Queen or by female actors and singers were the subject of much debate and helped introduce novelties each season.⁹ One of the most interesting historical sources of information relating to the incessant changes in women’s clothing in Spain in the 19th century is the Marquis of Lozoya, a historian who wrote the prologue to the eighth volume of the Spanish  edition of Max von Boehn’s well-known book Die Mode, dedicated precisely to the period between 1879-1914.¹⁰ Lozoya wrote about the modifications in the width of dresses, about bows, appliqués and other decorations, and about accessories, such as headwear and bags, as well as designs for sleeves and the internal structures that gave shape to clothes and modified the female form. A similar evolutionary view was described by author Carles Soldevila in his books La moda ochocentista and Un siglo de Barcelona, 1830-1930.¹¹  

Teresa Amatller at the Simon family’s fancy-dress ball, Barcelona, February 1898. Photograph by Pau Audouard. Institut Amatller d'Art Hispànic, Barcelona.

The photograph of industrialist Antoni Amatller’s daughter Teresa Amatller i Cros (1873-1960), taken in situ at the Simon family’s ball by Pau Audouard¹² on 20 February 1898 (Fig. 1), shows in some detail the particularities of an outfit chosen for a very special event. Teresa, then 25, appears in profile against a neutral background. This was one of the most significant social events of the season: a ball to celebrate the Carnival, organized by the family of Francesc Simon in their mansion on the corner of Carrer de Mallorca and Pau Claris, a magnificent building by architect Josep Domènech Estapà, which sadly no longer exists. Teresa wore a dress with bodice and skirt in a light-coloured material, probably silk. The sleeves, to below the elbow, were voluminous and the cuffs decorated with ruffles. The skirt, very long, was also voluminous and the form it took at the rear suggested the use of a bustle. As accessories, a dark foulard with horizontal stripes at the edges, a fan and a dark hat, complementing the foulard, which was see-through and decorated at the top. Both the style of the hat and the fact that the skirt had a bustle, no longer in common use in the 1890s, combine to give the image a reminiscently romantic quality. Historical evocations were a constant in 19th century fashion, paralleling revivals in fine arts and architecture. 

As the press reported, the ball gowns worn by guests at the Simon’s party clearly expressed their wealth, originality and good taste; formal attire was the requisite for ladies, while the younger women went in fancy dress.¹³ Teresa, who would have fallen into the former group due to her age, must have been outstanding among the other guests for her beauty and the elegance of her attire. As would have been the case with many of the dresses worn to the Simon’s party in 1898, Teresa’s was probably tailored especially for the occasion and would never have been worn again. 

New forms of leisure

Apart from balls, visits, shows and social gatherings, usually indoor functions, the ladies of the Barcelona of 1900 had within their reach a number of outdoor leisure activities that also implied specific dress. Sport, which at the time was becoming popular amongst the wealthy, gave them the opportunity to wear a different type of clothing, more sober and less rigid, that had to adapt to the need for movement during exercise. Traditionally considered unsuitable for Catalan ladies for both physical and moral reasons, sport came to be seen in a more positive light at the beginning of the 20th century, especially among younger folk, and one activity that gained more followers was horse riding. Races at the Barcelona Jockey Club became very popular and women, who had previously only attended as spectators, now did so as participants. Clothing for female riders was simple, normally consisting of a shirt, bodice and straight skirt, often without a frame, a jacket or small coat and a plain hat with a ribbon in the Andalusian style. The skirts were shorter than party dresses, while still not revealing the ankles. Colours allowed for little fantasy, being mainly dark tones that contrasted with the lighter shirts. Of course, it was the practice of women to ride side-saddle. 

Tennis was another sport that became accessible to women of rich families. The tennis outfit was very different from that worn for riding, in light colours and allowing much more movement, due to the more intense physical demands of the activity. A hat was not required, sleeves were wide and of light fabric and fastened at the wrist; the bodices and skirts gave freedom of movement. The shoes were coordinated with the dresses and, while they had a heel, were made from softer leather for greater comfort. The Barcelona Lawn Tennis Club, established in 1899, brought the city this English sport that would soon be practised widely; there was even an area allocated for the game at the Casino de l’Arrabassada, a famed centre of leisure today destroyed, the memory of which is currently being re-established.¹⁴  

Hunting was another of the activities in which affluent ladies of turn-of-the-century Barcelona were becoming involved. Photographs of the time show¹⁵ that women’s hunting attire consisted of two pieces, a bodice and skirt, although as the century progressed, the latter was sometimes substituted with culottes. The essentials also included gloves, a simple hat, a thin belt and a bag, often carried across the shoulder, for ammunition and other items. Lastly, driving trips also provided the perfect opportunity to wear more simple clothing, especially skirts. 

The dressmakers and seamstresses of 1900

In turn-of-the-century Barcelona, as in many European cities, tastes and trends were dictated by the world capital of fashion at the time: Paris. Reputable couturiers, like Charles F. Worth and later Paul Poiret and Jacques Doucet, helped create this context. The acceptance of French patterns in the Catalan city was facilitated in part by the distribution of specialized press among the female members of the public¹⁶ , as well as trips to the French capital made by some of the more prestigious dressmakers from the city and certain customers to acquire dresses, patterns, fabrics and embroideries, to absorb the designs of their Gallic colleagues, discover new and exciting fabrics and needlework, and to re-contextualize them for the Catalan industry. 

One of the Catalan dressmakers who made this trip with a certain frequency was Carolina Montagne, reputed creator of fashion for a very select clientele of high purchasing power, who had become one of the more outstanding designers in respect of the genesis of haute couture in Catalonia. Of French descent, Carolina Montagne and her sister Maria Berta were born in Paris in the mid-19th century and arrived in Barcelona as young children. They had learned the trade from their mother, as was typical in those times, a training method undertaken in parallel with other more specific education acquired either in workshops or private schools. Their heyday was in 1880-1890, although they continued working in the business into the next century.¹⁷ There were few dressmakers of the professional category of the Montagne sisters in Barcelona at the turn of the century. Probably the only others worthy of comparison would have been Maria Molist, popularly known as Maria of Mataró, and Anna Renaud, an extraordinary creator about whom unfortunately little is known.¹⁸ Their names appeared in commercial listings and, frequently, in press advertisements. All of them, around 1900, began to label their creations, normally with a motif and their name inside the waistband of their designs, in an effort to distinguish themselves from the rest and emphasize their exclusivity. In general, they have been associated with modernista (Catalan art nouveau)  plastic arts, mainly for the printed designs and combinations of fabrics with which they worked and the undulating shapes of their creations. 

Photographs of Teresa Amatller, like the one taken at the Simons’ party, show her taste for dresses by great dressmakers. The clientele of these professionals were of the nobility and haute bourgeoisie of the city. However, very few garments have survived with any indication of their original owner. Specialized museum collections in Barcelona and Terrassa have preserved dresses and accessories that belonged to ladies of the high society of the time, aristocrats such as the Duchess of Bailén and the Marquise of Nájera and notable members of the Barcelona bourgeoisie including Isabel Llorach and Anna Vidal i Sala.¹⁹  

The celebrated dressmakers had their own establishments, many of which relocated to the Eixample district, where they managed production and attended clients (Fig. 2). They were elegantly decorated spaces, prepared to receive and attend to a distinguished clientele with individual and discrete personalized treatment, which was not even available in the most select stores, such as Santa Eulàlia or El Dique Flotante. This type of shops initially imported products made in Vienna and Paris, and later went on to manufacture their own. However, in the Barcelona of 1900, leisure was not only dressed by the great dressmakers and luxury boutiques; ladies with moderate resources had the option of making their own clothing following patterns,²⁰ or else buying ready-to-wear products retailing at shops and department stores. Initially, department stores in Barcelona were oriented exclusively to the masculine and children’s markets, but gradually they broadened their horizons. Traditionally they also sold home wares, fabrics, towels and linen, and so on. The origin of these establishments is also to be found in France, where many had been opened in the second half of the 19th century. Among the most popular in Barcelona were El Siglo, El Águila, La Victoria, Colom and, later, Casa Jorba. 

Not all department stores or important dressmakers had their own workshops. Many relied on seamstresses who would collect the materials required from a department store, sew the ordered garments and deliver them to the respective establishment. Others would order garments from specialized workshops where they were made in series. The daily life of seamstresses that sewed in their homes or in workshops was often very hard, to the extent that they became known as “workers of the needle”, to liken their conditions to those of industrial workers (Fig. 3). In general, these seamstresses were of very humble origins, becoming in the second half of the 19th century a very stereotyped figure. Characters of this profession featured in many works of theatre, zarzuelas and particularly novels, both in Spain and France, where they were known as grisettes, using the name made popular by Alfred de Musset. In this sense, La modista de Madrid published by Ramón Luna in 1864 is an interesting work, as it relates the misfortunes and amorous adventures of a seamstress: 

Condemned from the break of day until nightfall to working the needle, indefatigably, there was no other school that would teach them more rigid customs than the clumsy and obscene gossip of the workshops. They read nothing, as no book was in reach of their pocket, and if they did acquire any, they were of such a kind that instead of improving their habits they worsened and twisted them further; showing them the imperfect school of coquetry, which was imperfect since to be a coquette a woman must know the ways of the world, its customs and weaknesses, and these poor children knew everything but the heart of a man. ²¹  

The paternalistic gaze of Ramón Luna serves as a reminder that at the time some sectors of wealthier Catalonia were dedicated to making improvements in life and labour conditions for collectives of workers such as this one. This is evident from the considerable number of publications addressing the issue, various instances of social work carried out by ladies of the high bourgeoisie and, ultimately, the creation of trade unions and management associations to defend the interests of needle workers, by around 1910. In this respect, hygienist doctor Joan Paulís Pagès, published a book with a title clearly revealing his intentions: Las obreras de la aguja (Workers of the Needle).²² The work sought to shake up the conscience of the Barcelona leisure class, informing readers of the darker side to the sumptuous dresses they wore with an approach not so far removed from that of Thorstein Veblen. Paulís wanted to paint a portrait of the women who sewed and gave shape to the garments that Catalan ladies wore, warning of the moral dangers young seamstresses had to face when they went to work at a workshop, the professional illnesses they could develop due to a lack of hygienic conditions and overlong hours, the unhealthiness and difficulty of their lives outside the workshop, and so on. 

Needleworkers. Booth in the “Pati de l’Alcalde”, in the present-day Plaça d’Espanya, Barcelona, c.1900. From the book by J Paulís, Las obreras de la aguja, Barcelona, Ibérica, 1913. 

Paulís’s approach to feminine attire and leisure was, most definitely, opposed to that of many European ladies who wrote about the subject from the perspective of the affluent classes. Publications of this nature, with advice and suggestions on fashion and beauty, written by European women of wealthy families proliferated around 1900, particularly in France, and were avidly followed by many Catalan women. The contribution of one of these authors, the Baroness d’Orchamps, provides a fitting conclusion to this text. She was a mysterious and extravagant character, who published a handbook for the elegant lady with the rather suggestive title:  Tous les secrets de la femme.²³ The Baroness outlined the essentials of any elegant lady’s wardrobe, which, in her opinion, comprised a trotteur or walking dress, a serious veil for visits, a velvet or silk dress for special occasions and a linen dress for summer. Moreover, for the Baroness a dress for lunching and one for dancing were also necessary, as were a minimum of ten shirts to accompany all. . . The bare minimum required for dressing leisure. 

1. This duality inherent in 19th century fashion has been studied by Rosa M. Martín. See Rosa M. Martín, “La industrialització. Moda, indústria i artesania”, in Art de Catalunya, Vol. 12, Disseny. Vestit, moneda i medalles, Barcelona, L’Isard, 1997, pp. 21-246.

2. Ana Marta González and Alejandro Néstor García (Ed.), Distinción social y moda, Pamplona, Eunsa, 2007.

3. See Max Weber, La ética protestante y el espíritu del capitalismo, Barcelona, Península, 2008. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, London & Boston, Unwin Hyman, 1930

4. See, among others, Georg Simmel, De la esencia de la cultura, Buenos Aires, Prometeo Libros, 2009. For more information on Simmel and his reflections on culture, see David Frisby, Mike Featherstone, Simmel on Culture, London, Sage Publications, 1997

5. Thorstein Veblen, Teoría de la clase ociosa, Mexico, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2004, p. 98. [T.N.: English version from The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions, New York, Macmillan, 1915 [1899], p. 84.]

6. Appeared in The Popular Science Monthly (New York), Vol. 46 (November 1894), pp. 198-205.

7. For more information on masculine dress of the period, see Rosa M. Martín, “Indumentària modernista”, in El Modernisme. Les Arts Tridimensionals. La crítica del Modernisme, Barcelona, L’Isard, 2003, pp. 198-200.

8. For a history of bridal wear, see Rosa M. Martín, “El vestit nupcial en la cultura occidental”, in Vestits nupcials, 1770-1998, Barcelona, Anells d’Or, 1998, pp. 6-7. 

9. For more detail, see 1881-1981, Cent Anys d’Indumentària, Barcelona, Ajuntament de Barcelona, Serveis de Cultura, 1982, p. 9.

10. Max von Boehn, La Moda. Historia del traje en Europa. Desde los orígenes del cristianismo hasta nuestros días, Barcelona, Salvat, 1929. English version, Max von Boehn Modes and Manners, London, Harrap, 1932.

11. Carles Soldevila, La moda ochocentista, Barcelona / Buenos Aires, Argos, 1950; Carles Soldevila, Un siglo de Barcelona, 1830-1930, Barcelona, Argos, 1946.

12. For more on Pau Audouard, see the doctoral thesis by Núria F. Rius, Pau Audouard, fotògraf retratista de Barcelona. De la reputació a l’oblit (1856-1918), Online,
http://tdx.cat/bitstream/handle/10803/32063/11.NFR_11de12.pdf?sequence=11 (7-3-2012).

13. See Floridor, “Ecos de Barcelona”, La Dinastía, No. 6463, 27 February 1898, p. 2.

14. See “La Rabassada. La utopia de l’oci burgés”, Online,
http://issuu.com/turiscopia/docs/la_utopia_de_l_oci_burges (7-3-2012).

15. See Carles Soldevila, Un siglo de Barcelona . . ., op. cit.

16. The content of these magazines was designed to appeal to the women of Barcelona of the day: decorating, family, home economics, music, needlework and, often, cultural articles on Paris and French fashion, with illustrations and patterns. In this category, before the very well-known Feminal appeared in 1907, notable publications included La Ilustración de la mujer, from 1883, and El Salón de la Moda, launched in 1884 with the subtitle Periódico quincenal indispensable para las familias, ilustrado con profusión de grabados en negro y figurines iluminados de las modas de París. A special case was El Eco de la moda, which appeared in Barcelona in 1899, as a Spanish version of Le Petit Écho de la Mode, founded in 1880 in Paris.

17. The work of the Montagne sisters has been studied by Rosa M. Martín and Hèlios Ruiz, “Carolina i Maria Montagne”, L’Avenç, No. 295 (November 2004), pp. 22-27. The article portrays them as creators of a concept, “the high fashion of Barcelona”, key to the later development of haute couture in the city.

18. For a more extensive list of notable Barcelona dressmakers, see the excellent study by Sílvia Carbonell Basté and Josep Casamartina Parassols, “El mirall i la imatge”, in Les fàbriques i els somnis, Terrassa, Centre de Documentació, Museu Tèxtil de Terrassa, 2002, p. 373. 

19. See Manuel Rocamora, Un siglo de modas barcelonesas. 1750-1850, Barcelona, Aymà, 1944. 

20. Carmen Martí’s method, known as the “método parisien”, became very popular, and many repeat editions of the book in which it appeared were published. See El Corte parisién: Sistema especial Martí: Arte de cortar, confeccionar y adornar toda clase de prendas de vestir, basado en el último procedimiento de transformación, Barcelona, Impr. J. Collazos, 1902, unnumbered. 

21. Ramón R. Luna, La modista de Madrid, Madrid, Murcia y Martí, 1864-1865, p. 7. [T.N.: English trans. from the Catalan version of this book.] 

22. Joan Paulís, Las obreras de la aguja, Barcelona, Ibérica, 1913. 

23. Baronessa d’Orchamps, Tous les secrets de la femme, Paris, Bibliothèque des Auteurs Modernes, 1907. Also of interest by the same author, La bonne manière, Paris, Bibliothèque des Auteurs Modernes, 1909. 

ENTERTAINMENT AND SPECTACLE

Collection: Biblioteca de Catalunya

The affirmation of the body in early modern stage language

Carmina Salvatierra Capdevila

The hegemonic condition of dramatic text in Western theatre has been questioned at certain historical moments, prompting a revaluing of the body as opposed to the word in crisis. At the end of the 19th century, the actor’s body on stage became a focal point for the theory and practice of theatre that understood the concept of theatre as a totality. The cornerstone of this change can be found in Richard Wagner’s (1813-1883) concept of Gesamtkunstwerk (“total artwork”): the artwork as a synthesis of all the arts. The renewal that started then would be prolonged throughout the 20th century and affect all artistic languages. This crisis of language became manifest from the moment that bourgeois theatre was unable to represent the deepest desires of human nature, which were unrelated to its class concerns, and, furthermore, from its incapacity to satisfy impulses that had driven a significant part of the process of human evolution. 

The idea of theatre associated with dramatic text and as a literary genre was imposed upon the Western stage, according to María José Sánchez Montes, following an ideology that, between the 18th and 19th centuries, was presented as universal and ahistorical.¹ The recovery of Aristotle’s Poetics during the Age of Enlightenment brought acceptance, as a natural and universal fact, of the link between theatrical spectacle and dramatic text, to ultimately establish reference points based on reality and the rational comprehension of spectacle to the detriment of sensorial experience. The subordination of mise-en-scène to dramatic text separated theatre from its origins as spectacle to the benefit of intellectual comprehension. Romanticism, Realism and Naturalism eventually all adopted this idea, relegating the spectacle aspect of theatre to second place. This model began to be questioned in the mid-19th century, with general disenchantment growing around the bourgeois promises raised by the French Revolution. In this context, not only were the social and spiritual universality of the promises of the bourgeois democracy called into question, but also its methods of representation and the thinking that justified them. The communicative and rational value of words relating to realistic forms of artistic expression was drawn into crisis with the birth of the revolutionary movements of the second half of the 19th century. In theatre, this translated into the revaluing of the actor’s body on stage, where its function was no longer simply to support dramatic text. Other media, such as music, scenography, costumes and lighting, were also integrated into theatre, now beginning to be considered an autonomous form. Text, considered as just one more element, would cease to prevail in the mise-en-scène. From this moment, the body was understood as a three-dimensional volume and plastic entity. 

Sarah Bernhardt photographed by Nadar in the play by Jean Ripechin, Pierrot assassin de sa femme, 1883. 

The possibilities arising from the reconsideration of the role of the body on stage were to irreversibly change the forms and trends through which dance, theatre and mime would travel. Pioneers Adolphe Appia (1862-1928), Edward Gordon Craig (1872-1966), Constantin Stanislavski (1863-1938), Jacques Copeau (1879-1949), Loïe Fuller (1862-1928), Isadora Duncan (1878-1927) and Ruth Saint Denis (1878-1968) started to rethink the stage from the perspective of their individual options and interests. References for creation and perception shifted from the logos to the senses. Nature, a source of inspiration for art, expressing life as a living organism, became the model in the quest for free movement. The rejection of realism and discursive language directly opposed the suggestive power of moving images, which demanded the participation of the audience’s imagination in the final understanding of a work. Looking back on Greco-Roman culture and other, non-Western traditions was the source of research for this regenerative movement; and especially significant to this transformation was the participation of women, side-by-side with their male colleagues. 

La nature est notre guide, et notre maître le plus grand.

Mais nous ne l’observons pas.

Il n’existe pas deux choses qui soient de la même nature, et exactement pareilles; l’esprit qui les meut est le même, mais chaque chose répond à sa façon à la grande force motrice dans la nature, cette part de nous-même qui est divine!

Les feuilles se meuvent en harmonie avec le vent, mais chaque feuille se meut à sa façon.

Les vagues de la mer ne sont jamais égales, et pourtant elles sont toutes en harmonie.

[...]

C’est la perfection dans l’unité du mouvement que l’on pourrait appeler «musique de vision ou musique pour l’oeil» car l’harmonie dans le mouvement est pour l’oeil ce que la musique est pour l’oreille. — Mais perfection, veut dire absolument pareil à la nature. — Afin que l’instinct et la spontanéité soient les seules maîtres.²  

The exaltation of nature and its reclamation for a living and expressive art would be present in the new languages arising, from figurative through to abstract forms. This call for instinct and spontaneity to guide creation required the spectator to modify his or her references for perception. 

The public reaction to a joint performance by Loïe Fuller and Sada Yacco at the Teatre Novetats in Barcelona in May 1902 illustrated very well how the references for textual theatre still dominated in so-called serious theatre, while other forms of expression remained minor genres. In the late 19th and early 20th century, the grand figures of European theatre would include Barcelona in their international tournées. Artists that were celebrated and acclaimed throughout Europe and America were received with admiration by the illustrious Barcelona public, eager to show off its cosmopolitan nature by enjoying declamatory theatre in foreign languages. This was the case with Eleonora Duse (1858-1924), Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923) and Gabrielle Réjeane (1856-1920), whose interpretations in dramatic theatre of a realist aesthetic were highly acclaimed. An article in the magazine Pèl & Ploma, edited by Ramon Casas (1862-1936), claimed the public did not like the performance by Fuller and Yacco and, except on a few occasions, “Took the artistic work of the great Japanese actress and her admirable colleagues as a joke.” The article continued with a defence of the show, qualifying it as “memorable”, and with irony criticized the reaction of the public, supposedly of “the culture and ‘good manners’ of the level of it and them displayed by anyone from Santa Perpètua de la Moguda; which is to say, no level at all, as there were no ‘manners’, no culture, no common sense, and no-one capable of repressing all the sorts of nonsense and disturbances that one would have thought impossible from so many splendid-looking people, gathered in a theatre and amongst members of the cream of the aristocracy, by both blood and pocket.”³ This comment, signed by “One from the stalls”, is thought to have come from Miquel Utrillo (1862-1943); another exception among the attendant audience, found ardently applauding, was Isidre Nonell (1872-1911). The words of this anonymous witness show the clear indignation and disappointment felt at the general incomprehension of something hailed as a memorable event by artists and intellectuals of the city. Apparently, to make amends for this terrible reception, the performers were invited to dinner at Els Quatre Gats and Casas gifted them some “lovely” portraits in charcoal. 

Was it too much novelty? What relationship could there be between the flowing movement of Fuller’s silks and the codified language of Japanese theatre to warrant uniting them in a single programme? Fuller, who had triumphed at the Folies Bergère in Paris in 1892, had discovered Sada Yacco performing at a modest company in San Francisco and contracted her for an inaugural appearance at the pavilion she had built for the Exposition Universelle of 1900 in Paris. The elements common to their performances lay in the fact that they both used the body as a means of expression, over and above the word and in a non-realist way. Sada Yacco overcame the language barrier with her capacity to communicate drama through movement. The audience could follow the action without understanding a single word of Japanese, thanks to the poetry of her expression and gestural precision. Breaking from her country’s tradition, where women were prohibited from performing and female characters were played by men, Sada Yacco showed the expressive and communicative power of the body through a very stylized language. In the same way, Fuller constructed a whole poetic through the play of coloured light projected onto the voluminous silk veils extending from her arms, suggesting feelings and emotions completely new to the public. They might have found this fascinating, but they were, along with many experts, far from understanding the force and transcendence of the change that was occurring in artistic languages. With respect to Yacco, while Japonism as a cultural phenomenon had come to Barcelona from Paris in 1880, within artistic circles and the modernista (Catalan art nouveau)  movement, on stage she was simply perceived as something exotic.  

Fuller was an unclassifiable figure for the audience of the time, which, having no point of reference, wondered whether what she was doing was dance or not. Clearly she was not a ballerina in the conventional sense, where the body is the vehicle of expression, but that was of little matter. Her popularity as the “inventor of the serpentine dance” seems anecdotal now, at the start of the 21st century, in contrast to her audacity and intuition. Although her name was gradually forgotten over the years, today Loïe Fuller occupies the place she deserves in the art world, alongside Craig or Appia, pioneers of a dramatic renewal that was yet to come. She was the first to use coloured electric light on stage, the most notorious artistic dimension of the moment. She understood the suggestive capacity of movement for evoking feelings and images that the audience’s imagination would identify with nature and that beyond the real. Despite the physicity of her dance, she was never associated with eroticism, “However, this luminous flower that vibrates in the space, opens and closes like vaginal lips in flames of passion, suggests a whole other story.”⁴ In the article “La danza sacra” published in 1908 in the magazine Poesia directed by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944), the poet Gian Pietro Lucini (1867-1914) is the first to enigmatically eroticise the sacred dimension “of this carnal being that from the very beginning never concealed her homosexuality”. Fuller, who also exchanged information on the phosphorescence of radioactivity with Marie and Pierre Curie and about radium with Thomas Edison (1847-1931), still seems as unusual as she would have 100 years ago. Looking at her research, it is not surprising that at the end of the 19th century, rather than from within the arts, the transformation of aesthetic languages was to come from the worlds of science, technology and sport. Of paramount significance were the revaluing of physical exercise and the inventions of chronophotography and cinema. 

Rediscovery of the body: sport, chronophotography and cinema

The body began to bare itself in stadiums, freed from the moral conditioning in which it had been enclosed by Christian religion, abandoning the clothing that suffocated it. Dance broke away from the strict rules of classical academic forms to reencounter a natural expressivity. This return to nature and gestural spontaneity occurs when the constrained body can no longer express life, or when this capacity is weakened; a phenomenon that manifests according to the aesthetics and ways of feeling particular to each time, and on which theatre reflects. Community life in nature was one of the ideals, and was practised by many groups outside the normal channels and with an explorative spirit that kept them going well into the 1970s.

The rediscovery of the free body brought to light its flexibility and the essential function of the dynamic possibilities of the torso, which completely changed the physiognomy of the actor and the theatre. With Isadora Duncan, bodices that kept the body rigid disappeared from dance. Bodies were no longer concealed under large, heavy dresses, and hands and faces ceased to be the only means of visible expression. Mime and pantomime, which had been limited by these parameters, moved towards whole body expression. The exposure of the uncovered body was morally scandalous at the time, with ballet dancers appearing shoeless and almost naked, or painters and sculptors, such as Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), using nude models instead of moulded plaster figures as the academic rules demanded. Years later, mimes, such as Étienne Decroux (1898-1991), also wore close fitting tights to reveal the body’s movement.

Meanwhile, chronophotography, invented in 1882 by the French Étienne Jules Marey (1830-1904), and the photographic studies of Anglo-American Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) added a new dimension to the analysis of movement and physical action by allowing its deconstruction through a series of images with a newfound precision unachievable with the human eye; these techniques allowed movement to be encoded in time and space. Muybridge’s studies of human locomotion and gestures are well known, as are the photographs of horse races taken to establish whether all four hoofs were in flight at any one time. Marey used a new technology to analyse the movement of humans and animals through series of images, such as those of birds in flight.

Cinema, invented by the Lumière brothers, was an extension of these experiments, with the development of the continuous moving image and slow motion filming. These inventions put paid to the classical pantomime of the 19th century, and silent cinema opened its doors, from 1895 onward, to new actors and mimes that found inspiration in the technical limitation of a lack of sound, including Charles Chaplin (1889-1977), Buster Keaton (1895-1966) and many others. 

As for sport, gymnastics was developed to improve soldiers’ physical condition, first in Germany with Ludwig Jahn (1778-1852) and then in France with the Spanish-born Colonel François Amoros (1769-1848), who established the foundations for physical education in this country around 1814, introducing apparatus to gymnasiums that included the vaulting box and horizontal bar. Health was another motivation that drew attention to the human body. In 1814 the Swedish Henrik Ling (1776-1839) invented a method of gymnastics based on analytical exercises and strict attitudes to physical recovery. 

From the first half of the 19th century, various personalities focussed their interest on the immense expressive potential of the human body and the need for systematic study to make it the basis of theatre teaching. Their research was to influence all later teaching of mime, theatre and dance. François Delsarte (1811-1871) was a pioneer of dramatic art teaching, and his methods gained numerous disciples throughout Europe and the United States. Delsarte, who had lost his voice as a consequence of bad training at the Conservatorium of Paris, set out to find a science and theory that would give actors a basis on which to develop their art. This he achieved when he returned to the Conservatorium as professor of voice and oratory from 1839 until his death. Delsarte’s contribution was to establish the connections that existed between feelings and movements, laying the foundations for a scientific understanding of breathing, muscle activity and the physical journey of emotions. The influence of his art and his teaching was felt years later in the modern dance of Isadora Duncan, Ted Shawn (1881-1972) and Ruth Saint Denis, 25 years before the dancers of the Paris Opera were liberated from the rigidity of classical dance. Delsarte is, in this sense, a forerunner of modern dance, and also of modern mime. His work regarding natural gesture and its expressive qualities are at the heart of the modern theatrical body. 

In the Hungarian Rudolf von Laban’s (1878-1958) pursuit of pure dance, Delsarte’s theories were decisive. He created a notation for movement (Labanotation) and was the first to use the term Tanztheater (“dance theatre”). Von Laban founded modern dance in Germany, with the help of his students Mary Wigman (1886-1973) and Kurt Joos (1901-1979), who would go on to create their own school, later continued by Harald Kreutzberger (1902-1968). 

Another key figure is the Swiss musician and composer Émile Jacques-Dalcroze (1865-1950). First in Geneva and then at the institute he created in Hellerau under his own name, he developed new experiences of dance in search of the natural expression of the body and the life of movement to integrate them into a system he called rítmica or eurítmia, establishing immediate communications between the brain that conceives and analyses and the body that executes. The involvement of the whole body produced rounded, continuous and geometric gestures. Mary Wigman was a student of Jacques-Dalcroze, and his teachings also attracted the interest of such dancers as Sergei Diaghilev (1872-1929) and Vaslav Nijinsky (1890-1950). Paul Claudel (1868-1955), Appia, Stanislavski and Copeau saw in these studies, mainly addressed to dance and opera, the practical correspondences they could have with the theatre space and the work of actors. In a Dalcrozian sense, Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), with the Anthroposophical Society, and George I. Gurdjieff (1866-1949), in a more esoteric area, also developed movement, gymnastics and dance as a means of freeing the individual emotions. 

Finally, mention should be made of Lieutenant Georges Hébert (1875-1957), a key figure in the development of gymnastics and sport that would influence corporal preparation and theatre. Following in the footsteps of François Amoros, in 1907 he invented “natural gymnastics” for the physical training of marines, which consisted of reproducing the actions of a soldier in combat. His motto was, “Be strong to be useful.” Throughout his travels, Hébert observed the physical harmony of peoples that maintained a way of life in nature, where walking, climbing, running, jumping, attacking, defending, lifting, carrying, swimming and crawling were daily activities. His method, which advocated a return to the natural body, established a series of exercises that allowed the performance of movements and actions with a minimum of energy and maximum economy. 

Later, in 1922, Jacques Copeau would adopt Hébert’s method for the acting school at his Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier, displacing the Dalcroze method that he had used since 1915, which he thought led to personal idolatry of the body. Hébert’s analysis of movement was based on the deconstruction of physical actions into precise attitudes, the same way that Muybridge had done frame by frame. This analysis of movement would also serve Jean Dasté (1904-1994), Decroux and, in the mid-20th century, Jacques Lecoq (1921-1999). The latter two teachers took the body as a primary means of expression and each renewed the role of mime in the theatre: the former by creating a strict technique that, excluding words, became an art in itself; the latter by opening it to the theatre and restoring to words the lost value of silence. 

Pierrot and the imagery of ambiguity

The transformation of the conception of the body in the practical aesthetics of theatre at the turn of the century can be seen not only in what was emerging, but also in what was passing. The masks, characters and archetypes of theatre travel through time, which impregnates them with the spirit and imagery of each period. The Pierrot mask is a good example. As with other characters of Italian comedy, its origin is obscure. In the 16th century it was called Pedrolino, and embodied the honest servant, who was also a joking, boastful and cowardly character. In the hierarchy he came below Harlequin and, in Italy, was one of the zanni, servants that were mischievous yet always ready to serve the lovers. It was in France where Pierrot, by now with his celebrated name, would really take off and find glory through the creation of Jean-Baptiste Gaspard Deburau (1796-1846). The fragility of his silhouette and his crazed visage permanently unseated the Bergamesque Harlequin. This image, however, had already existed a century earlier, when Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) painted his enigmatic and melancholic Pierrot-Gilles between the years 1718-1719, with his particular hat à-la-Colin, his white smock, pleated ruff, baggy trousers and pumps, and the innocence of one just fallen from the Moon.  

While Goldoni had transformed the dying Commedia dell’Arte in the preceding century, Deburau created the romantic pantomime of the 19th century with the rebellious Pierrot, friend of the people and revolutionary, which triumphed in the Théâtre des Funambules on the popular Boulevard du Crime in Paris. The saga that began in 1811, when it arrived in France from Bohemia, came to an end in the period between 1920-1925. Throughout the century, the white pantomime gradually lost vitality –isolated from dance, music and poetry– and fell into decline through decadent stylization and the loss of its popular roots. This pantomime, which in its origins was based on action and spontaneity, evolved into a more complicated language that translated words into hand and facial gestures, to meet its end as a collection of stagnant codes. Georges Wague (1874-1965), the last pantomime actor, lamented the reduced and increasingly codified means of expression his art had become and demanded a return to the expression of emotion and feeling. 

Apel·les Mestres, Pierrot lo lladre, with music by Celestí Sadurní, which opened at the Teatre Principal de Barcelona in 1906. 

Pierrot ended up having no body, absent beneath the wide white skirts. He incarnated many of the ghosts of 19th century decadence in its transformation to modernity: in sexual ambiguity, the whiteness that was more a symbol of impotence than purity, and morbid sadness. The behaviour of this mask could be very varied and contradictory: from that of the lover to the bloodthirsty assassin, he manifests his death wish and sadism; cruel and violent, he steals, burns, rapes and kills: an inversion that binds him to the darker forces of the human soul. Pierrot shapes the landscape of the night, the Moon and the winter. His capacity for transformation and his mobility, and also his androgyny, explain the fascination he awakened in the decadent imagination. For Professor Jean de Palacio, Pierrot could be the figurehead of the passing century. 

Writer Félicien Champsaur (1858-1934) changed the sex and renewed the character in his work Lulu, a pantomime in one act from 1888. Lulú, as a woman, maintained a close and strange relationship with the mask of Pierrot. She became the prototype femme fatale in the works Erdgeist (Earth Spirit, 1895) and Die Büchsce der Pandora (Pandora’s Box, 1904) by Frank Wedekind (1864-1919), the latter of which was adapted for the cinema by Georg Wilhelm Pabst (1885-1967) in 1928, with the character performed by actress Louise Brooks (1906-1985). Finally, Lulú, as a figure of decadence and modernity, introduced in the Commedia dell’Arte a profound subversion: the demolition and the defeat of all things masculine.⁵ In the 20th century, the film by Marcel Carné (1906-1996), Les Enfants du Paradis (Children of Paradise, 1945), pays tribute to this character and to 19th-century pantomime. Only Marcel Marceau (1923-2007), through the poetry of his work, maintained the tradition of the pantomime initiated by Deburau. 

While the ethereal Pierrot found a better life as a decorative figurine in the living room, another mask appeared on the scene: Père Ubú. On the night of 10 December 1896, at the Théâtre de l’Oeuvre, this character provoked one of the most outrageous scandals in the recent history of the theatre. With his fat belly and conical head with two holes, this degraded-looking puppet, vulgar and grotesque, destroyed with his body image and his “Merde!” the conventions of 19th-century theatre.

1. María José Sánchez Montes, El cuerpo como signo, Madrid, Biblioteca Nueva, 2004, p. 43. 

2. “Nature is our guide, and our greatest master. / But we don’t observe it. / There are no two things of the same nature, and exactly equal; the spirit that moves them is the same, but each thing responds in its own way to the great motive force in nature, this part of ourselves that is divine! / The leaves move in harmony with the wind, but each leaf moves in its own way. / The waves of the ocean are never the same, but they all exist in harmony. / [...] / It is the perfection in the unity of movement that we could call ‘music of vision or music for the eye’ for harmony in movement is to the eye as music is to the ear. – But perfection means being absolutely equal to nature. – So that instinct and spontaneity are the only masters”; Loïe Fuller, Ma vie et la danse, suivie de Écrits sur la danse, Paris, L’Oeil d’Or, 2002, p. 171. 

3. Enric Jardí, Història dels 4 gats, Barcelona, Aedos, 1972, p. 163. 

4. Adrien Sina and Valentine de Saint-Point, Feminine futures, Paris, Les Presses du Réel, 2011, p. 149. 

5. Jean de Palacio, Pierrot fin-de-siècle, Paris, Librairie Séguier, 1990, p. 50. 

The topography of Barcelona theatre: 1860-1900

Enric Ciurans

This piece gives an account of the profound transformation that occurred in Barcelona theatre during the second half of the 19th century. Our concern is, specifically, the impact of the displacement of theatres that took place during this period, from the times of great splendour in the theatres and entertainment venues on the Passeig de Gràcia, especially following the demolition of the city walls, until the end of the century when construction began on the grand theatres of the Paral·lel, conceived as an avenue for entertainment, and, more specifically, the theatre as a paradigm of entertainment at the time. It will become evident that, from a sociological perspective, there was a major change in this relocation of theatre spaces and metropolitan leisure from one place to the other. During this interval of four decades, the theatre scene in Barcelona experienced many and varied phases and influences, from the emergence of the Teatre Català, as a designation of theatre written and performed in the Catalan language, to the introduction of foreign aesthetic trends such as the romantic pastiches, realism, naturalism and modernisme (Catalan art nouveau movement), which were newly interpreted by the Catalan playwrights and on stage in Barcelona.  

In any case, theatre and the whole gamut of stage shows, which included zarzuelas, lyric theatre, circus, variety shows and many other genres, were a major factor in the transformation of public life in the late 19th century. Our aim is to sketch out the role played by theatre in Barcelona society during this period, with a view to developing these ideas in a more comprehensive study. 

The bibliographical sources on which our research is based can be grouped in two types. On the one hand, there are books from the period that provide information and reflections on spectacles in a sparse and subjective manner; while on the other hand, studies by historians of theatre and literature, a posteriori, offer more of an overall view and synthesis. Both types are critical to understanding the theatre of the second half of the 19th century, a time when the performing arts were living a stellar existence in Barcelona, as Carmen Morell summarized rather concisely when she said, “Theatre was the television of the 19th century.” ¹  

So many and diverse are the themes that could be drawn upon to explain the role of theatre and the performing arts in 19th-century Barcelona society that it is necessary to focus on those most crucial to the social changes that occurred at that time. 

There are two crosscutting ideas that are useful for developing an in-depth understanding of the reality of Barcelona theatre in the second half of the 19th century. Firstly, on a strictly geographical level, with the demolition of the city walls, theatre found in the Passeig de Gràcia an area in which to expand, with small theatres erected in the gardens that served for public recreation. Meanwhile, in the city centre, theatres were consolidated and new venues were opened, thanks to the abundance of recreational societies and associations being founded by the bourgeoisie and the artisans. Towards the end of the century, the landscape changed substantially with the appearance of the first theatres on the Paral·lel, which was becoming the centre of public entertainment to the detriment of the Passeig de Gràcia area, which was already undergoing a process of urban transformation.²  

Secondly, on a cultural (and perhaps also spiritual) level, the theatre played a determining role in the blooming of Catalanist thought and culture in the 19th century. Of particular significance were two opposing aesthetic currents which appeared at that time of growth and consolidation for culture in the Catalan language, which, thanks to theatre, became popular and established the foundations for its future expansion throughout all literary and artistic disciplines. These currents, identified as jocfloralisme (‘floral game-ism’) and xaronisme (‘vulgarity’), help explain how the emergence of Teatre Català was essentially a popular phenomenon, linked to the theatre scene, which was transformed into a political instrument held together by the political thinking that came out of the cultural movement born of the Renaixença. 

Our discourse focuses on understanding and assimilating how theatre in Barcelona changed throughout the 19th century, looking at major issues such as the dialectic between xaronisme and jocfloralisme, the relocation of theatres from the Passeig de Gràcia to the Paral·lel, the emergence of the so-called Teatre Català and political obstacles that had to be overcome; the interaction of these elements helps elucidate the sociological perspective on the performing arts of this historic time, as variegated as they were exciting, as definitive as forgotten, as symbolic as real.  

Passeig de Gràcia, a vulgar look

Xaronisme emerged on the Passeig de Gràcia from the mind of one of the great men of Catalan culture: Josep Anselm Clavé. In 1850 Clavé founded the first choral society in Catalonia, which he called La Fraternidad –after the first newspaper of communist leanings published in Spain, La Fraternidad, founded three years earlier by the Catalan Jaime Pascrell– in reference to the republican ideals that motivated all his cultural, social and political activity.³  

The amusement park in the Tívoli Gardens in the Passeig de Gràcia, about 1870.

One of the more fascinating references is an excellent essay by Àngel Carmona,⁴ an idealist who, a century later, followed in the footsteps of Clavé, whom he greatly admired, in founding the theatre group La Pipironda, which performed for the marginal suburbs of “developmentalist” Barcelona. Carmona traces an aesthetic line starting from Josep Robrenyo, the illustrious father of modern Catalan theatre, to the main proponents of popular culture, such as Clavé and Pitarra. 

Carmona defines Clavé as a “man of the neighbourhood” –quoting the journalist Robert Robert, another of the implacable xarons– and a man who followed the social messianism advocated by thinkers like the Frenchman Étienne Cabet and who achieved what no one had ever previously achieved: getting the workers out of the tavern. Those workers were directed on Sunday mornings to the Passeig de Gràcia, where they would sing with one voice, the “voice of the people”. 

Cultural and social life in Barcelona revolved around the gardens on either side of the Passeig –constructed in 1821 at the behest of the Marquis del Campo Sagrado in order to unite the city with the then outlying town of Gràcia, initiating an urbanization project the ultimate goal of which was the end of the walled city– with balls, stage shows and musicals of many different types for audiences of all classes and conditions. The year 1853 saw the inauguration of this golden age with the opening of the Camps Elisis gardens, where Clavé assembled his choirs and where the different social classes of Barcelona mixed. Increasingly, however, the bourgeoisie made this incipient area of public entertainment theirs. Admission to the Camps Elisis cost the sum of two reals and, inspired by the original great Parisian gardens, they were filled with romantic groves, statues, waterfalls and garlands with lanterns, under the influence of the all-conquering romanticism of the time, as described by Victor Balaguer:⁵  

The Passeig de Gràcia one day so deserted and dejected, the Passeig de Gràcia where only old folks went to mourn their sorrows during the day and stray couples headed at nightfall to profess their love, today is the most crowded and lively of places. Fashion has chosen it, elegance has accepted it, and Barcelona society has decided to lay there its coin. The Rambla and the sea walls are in mourning. The Passeig de Gràcia has triumphed, and it is a triumph that seems not ephemeral but, on the contrary, rather durable. From the very day the stone belt that oppressed us, the city wall, fell not to rise again, the Passeig de Gràcia has no rival. 

Once the walls had been demolished, the city found a new impetus that propelled it to urban expansion, which in the hands of the providential Ildefons Cerdà proved a decisive success for the future of Barcelona as a great city. The Passeig de Gràcia, between the eighteen fifties and eighties, was the focal point for public entertainment, competing with the theatres and soirées of the old centre, taking its inspiration from the Parisian model and increasingly left in the hands of the bourgeoisie. 

Xaronisme, however, had another moment of splendour on the Passeig de Gràcia in the mid-1860s, thanks to Serafí Pitarra’s theatre. Despite the fact that his first major success, L’esquella de la torratxa, premiered at the Odeón in the Plaça de Sant Agustí, the real success –outstanding and unprecedented– of this work, so significant to an understanding of Catalan theatre, took place at the Teatre dels Camps Elisis. Here it played 25 times in the summer of 1864, then 26 times at the Tivoli, 18 at the Delicias and six at the Prado Catalán, totalling 75 performances in various theatres on the Passeig. This was unmatched, and drew popular audiences to these venues, keen to laugh at the brilliant parody written by the young dramatist, who made a decisive contribution to the paradigm shift in Catalan theatre. 

Even so, despite this boom of xaronisme, the fancy balls and increasingly exclusive theatres, as in the case of the Teatre Líric (also known as the Sala Beethoven), represented the peak of aristocratic predominance that continued with the famous modernista buildings of the late 19th and early 20th century. 

The Passeig de Gràcia passed from the hands of the emerging xaronisme, with Clavé’s choirs, excursions to the font de Jesús,⁶ and Pitarra’s sensational success, to embody the living expression of a wealthy and cultivated society, ready to applaud divas like Sarah Bernhardt and Eleonora Duse. Politician and journalist Joaquim Maria de Nadal described the appearance of the Passeig at the turn of the century: “And as there were no chronicles of society, people who wanted to know about the happenings in the lives of fellow citizens had no option other than to attend the living chronicle, which was the benches in the Passeig de Gràcia, the true and authentic centre of town gossip where one could easily learn of the Count Logotetti’s latest game of ‘charades’. . .”⁷  

In this climate, as will become clear, the jocfloralisme that had emerged as a literary movement with no great aspirations of becoming an agent of social or political change began its transformation with the foundation of institutions such as the Acadèmia de la Llengua (1881), wherein the major Catalan writers gathered to crystallize the process of patriotic self-affirmation from the most cultivated and politically pragmatic viewpoint possible. 

The new Barcelona evolved around the new Passeig de Gràcia, which set a tone of distinction and where theatres proliferated, such as the Tívoli and the Prado Catalán –these were first the names of gardens that later became theatres, the latter taking the name Teatre Novedades– and the Variedades, the Zarzuela, the Español, the Calvo Vico, and, of course, the Teatre Líric of Evarist Arnús. Citizens of all conditions attended these but, as mentioned, a social change was taking place that identified the new city with the wealthy classes and the old city (Ciutat Vella) with the artisans and workers who lived and worked there. Sources of amusement for each of these groups were different, and qualified as such by writers like Francesc Puig i Alfonso, who declared, “Both the Rambla and the Passeig de Gràcia, the former popular and democratic, the latter aristocratic, will be, and for all time, two very lively thoroughfares, finding themselves precisely in the middle of large urban conglomerations . . .”⁸  

The Passeig de Gràcia never aspired to be the Boulevard du Crime of Paris, nor had any desire to become the centre of popular and Catalanist culture, with its stalls offering elixirs, mysteries and other junk. Its future was to be another: to concentrate the architectural excellence of the city in a reflection of the great European cities at the hands of the haute bourgeoisie and aristocracy that shaped it, leaving behind its early days of fountains, gardens and precarious marquees that had lived in the shadow of the walls that prevented their fixed and durable construction. The vacuum this created was filled by another avenue that encompassed all that the Passeig de Gràcia never was and had not wanted to be: the Paral·lel. As Francesc Curet suggested, “The abundance of theatre halls –the word ‘halls’ in most cases being figurative– meant that the Passeig de Gràcia could be compared in this respect and, naturally, in its inferior quantity and quality, to the famous Boulevard du Temple in Paris, and was the precedent to the modern Paral·lel in our city.” ⁹  

Jocfloralisme and the Teatre Català

The year 1859 saw the birth of the modern Jocs Florals (‘Floral Games’), restored by a group of Catalan intellectuals who were proponents of the Renaixença, more as a return to their roots rather than a demand for the future.¹⁰ Professors, writers and politicians reasserted the language as an instrument of national affirmation, but more in a rhetorical than a combative sense, feeling like medieval troubadours and wishing to return to the golden age of Catalan poetry. Even though the majority of the population spoke Catalan, regulations from Madrid made schooling in Spanish obligatory,¹¹ establishing a duality between popular speech and an imposed official language, which gave access to the public service and the worlds of politics and business. 

The push of jocfloralisme was fundamental to the arrival of a new age of Catalan culture, which produced men of letters and science as notable as Milà i Fontanals, Verdaguer and Guimerà. The defence of the language, patria and religion defined the principles that sustained this push, which would ultimately lay the foundations of nationalist political thought; but in the decades of the 1860s and 1870s, the position of this illustrious bourgeoisie was nothing more than a purely rhetorical stance. 

In parallel to the creation of a high culture, by mimesis, a popular response developed, led by self-taught young people with republican and revolutionary ideals who based their manifesto on the wildest parody and humour. If the new troubadours were men of letters, these were men of action and, needless to say, the theatre was the action. Theatre and the Catalan “that is now spoken” were the ensigns of this populist movement that moved Catalan theatre and culture into the popular dimension and made it dominant. Francesc Curet defined this movement that shook up the culture of the time: “Xaronisme, the typical word used to describe the environment in which parody, jokes and tricks prospered, was born of the intimate expansions of the ingenious that linked their work with the reality of the people, who welcomed it and let it become their very blood.”¹²  

It was not that the jocfloralistes did not try to reach a wider public through theatre, as in the premieres of Antoni de Bofarull’s El darrer català and La Verge de les Mercès by Manuel Angelon, but their work simply did not meet the public’s needs for fun and entertainment. However, they clapped to the point of exhaustion at the works of the young Frederic Soler, also known as Pitarra, who laughed at the jocfloralisme of romantic roots and at Spanish culture in his celebrated parodies that, throughout the decade of the 1860s, changed the direction of Catalan theatre and popular culture. 

While the balls at the Liceu and in the elegant gardens of the Passeig de Gràcia were the territory of the bourgeoisie and aristocracy, the world of circus and theatrical spectacle entertained a general public that was evolving, as the Barcelona population grew with industrialization and urban development. Circus became one of the favourite entertainments of the people, even though it did not escape criticism from certain corners of the press, as Ferran Canyameres recalled with critic Josep Maria Valls i Vicens’ comment: “It is painful to see how many unthinking parents take their little ones to the circus, unaware of or indifferent to the education they should be providing for their innocent children. From the circus they learn barbaric and wild games that could cause irreparable misfortune given the natural and instinctive tendency of children to imitate all they see.”¹³  

The circus enjoyed great popularity throughout the second half of the 19th century, and as early as 1853 the equine circus installed in the Camps Elisis was the city’s first permanent circus. Later, the Portuguese entrepreneur Gil Vicente Alegría burst on the scene, first as a collaborator with the Circ Barcelonès (1857), one of the most emblematic of the era and which had a transformable stage that could be adapted to all kinds of shows, especially dramatic theatre. In 1877 he founded the Circ Alegria in Plaça de Catalunya, giving the Barcelona public the opportunity to see some of the greatest artists of the genre, such as the celebrated clowns Footit, Grock, Seiffert and Tony Grice, thanks to the good relationship he maintained with the Parisian entrepreneurs, in particular Josep Oller from Barcelona, a veritable institution of the fabulous Parisian nightlife. Towards the end of 1895, the circus in the plaça was demolished, but the Teatre Tívoli took its place from 1897, under the direction of Micaela Alegría, and operated through the first decade of the 20th century. In the Paral·lel, which was just starting to become the centre of entertainment, the Circ Olympia was founded at the Ronda de Sant Pau, giving continuity to the Barcelona public’s passion for the circus.¹⁴  

Of course, one must reflect on the audiences of the time in order to understand how transformation occurred as a result of theatre. Carme Morell best studied the origins of Serafí Pitarra’s theatre in a volume that probably provides the most comprehensive look at Catalan theatre of the time, wherein she compiles an exhaustive amount of information that permits both a reconstruction of the Catalan stage during those years and a clear understanding of the nature of the audiences that attended the different theatrical formats. Furthermore, while the author suggests (in the quote below) that she was guilty of over-simplification, in the context it seems entirely valid: 

[. . .] the most common audiences at second-class venues prefer a theatre of strong emotions and clearly cathartic characteristics, equivalent to the tearjerker television films of today. Audiences at the Principal and the Liceu tend toward lyrical drama, which is always easier to follow while discussing business, the stock and kerb markets or the latest high-society scandals, and comedy of the social type, as well as high comedy, with its aristocratic (or high bourgeois) characters with which they could identify [. . .] I speak of the validity of historical and sentimental melodrama, particularly among the more common classes of society. Soler would parody precisely those melodramas [. . .].¹⁵  

The figure of Frederic Soler is key to understanding the birth of a new era in the Catalan stage that prompted a shift in the predominant language of theatre and saw the first great success of Catalan ahead of Spanish in social use. Something the jocfloralistes had not even imagined was achieved by a generation of young playwrights formed in the workshops and flats of students and enthusiasts, like Soler, who gave himself the stage name of Serafí Pitarra and was accompanied by a long list of writers and lovers of words, the great majority of whom have been forgotten. But Soler’s desire from a very young age was to be fully integrated into bourgeois culture, and with time and the assistance of some of his more accomplished dramatist colleagues, especially Eduard Vidal i Valenciano, he ended up embracing a theatre completely removed from xaronisme, even if it was, as Morell states, due to pressure from the critics.¹⁶ The Frederic Soler who directed the Teatre Romea from 1867 was unrecognizable, he seemed not to be the same artist that had authored pieces as Pitarra, and was accused of monopolizing theatre premieres with his historical and costume dramas, such as the notable La rosa blanca and La dida, which were significant works, but far removed from the popular spirit of his beginnings. 

In the mid-1880s, there was an evident change in the world of jocfloralisme towards profound nationalism; from a bourgeois perspective, of course, while the working classes followed other paths. In this change, however, there were terribly obvious and unsolvable contradictions, such as in the case of the great writer, politician and intellectual Victor Balaguer, the first author of tragedies in the Catalan language –excepting the Minorcan Ramis of the 18th century– and who suffered personally this profound contradiction, as Carmona commented: “The singer of democracy, the irreducible Catalan of ‘Oh Castilian Castile! I would never have known you!’ was, thanks to the ‘Castilian Castile’, four times appointed minister.”¹⁷  

Towards a new era: From Passeig de Gràcia to Paral·lel

Theatre in Catalan proliferated rapidly in the last decades of the century, as if it had been waiting for a signal to rise to the hegemony of entertainment in 19th-century Barcelona. Examples of this are many, such as the remarkable Jaume Piquet, manager of the Teatre Odeón and author of numerous works, many of them bloody and horrific to the delight of popular audiences that renamed his venue “The Slaughterhouse”. There was also Adrià Gual, at the beginning of his career and fully immersed in a decadent and Wagnerian aesthetic, who founded Teatre Íntim, an elitist theatre group that played at the Lyric Theatre for a very particular audience: “The ‘gente bien’”, a South American expression newly in vogue, “went to the Teatre Íntim, dolled up as if for a solemn event, to contribute to the rebirth of theatre and at the same time –let’s be honest– to declare themselves intellectual.”¹⁸ Mirroring the Théâtre Libre of Paris, the Teatre Íntim was the first Catalan company that offered the great universal repertoire in the language, and made Gual the first true director of Catalan theatre. Audiences and sensibilities were often poles apart, but participated in a new and hitherto unheard-of perspective on entertainment or aesthetic enjoyment, and in the same language.  

The Avinguda del Paral·lel at one of its moments of greatest splendour, at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Naturally, there had been hurdles to overcome in developing theatre written and performed in Catalan. Explicit prohibitions already existed at the beginning of the 19th century, when Catalan language theatre did not yet exist beyond the sainetes performed in private homes. At that time, a regulation prohibited the presentation in Spain of dramatic works that were not in Spanish and performed by Spanish national actors.¹⁹ In the final decades of the century, however, and especially in the light of the wave of Catalan works performed by companies of all types and conditions and flooding the theatres after the spectacular breakthrough of Pitarra’s parodies, centralism tried to reduce this boom in Catalan theatre to a minimum by imposing a Spanish censor, the Madrid playwright Narciso Serra, who was charged with restricting this activity. The culmination of this effort was a Royal Order passed by the Governance minister in the Butlletí Oficial of 29 January 1867, No. 244, which stated:   

In view of the past communication presented by the interim censor of theatres of the kingdom to this ministry, dated the 4th of this month, from which is evident the great number of dramatic productions presented to censorship written in different dialects and considering that this development must necessarily contribute to fomenting the autonomous spirit of the same, destroying the most effective means of generalizing use of the national language, the Queen (Whom God May Preserve) has seen fit to provide that henceforth dramatic works written exclusively in any one of the dialects of the Spanish provinces will not be admitted to censorship. 

This order is to be inserted into the official bulletin or the purpose of compliance therewith. 

Barcelona, 26 January 1867 – The Governor, Cayetano Bonafós.²⁰  

These attempts, however, did not prosper, given the social and political juncture at which Barcelona found itself. The public favour shown towards works written and performed in Catalan led to the unprecedented dedication of a whole theatre to a repertoire of Catalan productions, the Teatre Romea, which was directed by Frederic Soler in an entrepreneurial capacity. This fostered the consolidation of works that were increasingly better written and finished, and witnessed the arrival of Àngel Guimerà on the scene, who brought a universal dimension to Catalan-language theatre with his great successes of the final decade of the century. The process was complete, and Catalan-language theatre was coming of age with respect to dramatic literature. Obviously, Guimerà was not the only author in this new generation of important playwrights; contemporaries included Ignasi Iglésias, Juli Vallmitjana, Santiago Rusiñol and Joan Puig i Ferreter, alongside many other writers, actors, directors and businessmen whose domination of the Catalan theatre scene ran through to the first decades of the 20th century. 

With the triumphant explosion of Guimeran theatre, jocfloralisme achieved its most significant and decisive success. Guimerá was at the same time a playwright and poet of the highest order and a Catalan intellectual committed to the defence of nationalist theses. His participation in high profile events concealed strong disagreements within Catalan society as it fought for freedom, which condemned to oblivion Valentí Almirall, the father of Catalanism and friend of Pitarra who was linked to an advanced Catalanism. Thus wrote Jaume Massó, founder of the magazine L’Avenç, comparing it to reactionary Catalanism and making up for the closure of the Diari Català, an organ of the Catalanism that they defended: “The first [reactionaries] wish for Catalanism to be a weapon of reaction to be used when most convenient; and the others [advanced Catalanists] wish to place it on the bandwagon of modern civilization. The former expound motives within the press and outside of it; the latter have just experienced a loss [. . .].”²¹  

Catalan society went through great changes in these decades, and in the cultural field the emergence of popular cultural centres and other associations allowed, for the first time, the spreading of knowledge and high culture to the less privileged classes, following the brilliant model of the great Clavé. However, the Ateneu Barcelonès, founded in 1872, remained an elitist cultural centre in the hands of the great intellectuals close to the bourgeoisie. Nevertheless, the working classes made progress and skilled workers attained political consciousness for the first time, through instruments like the popular editions, notably the Biblioteca Popular de l’Avenç collection, which made the great works of universal literature available to a wide audience, lending special attention to theatre and publishing the plays of Ibsen and other modern European authors, such as the symbolist Maeterlinck. 

This process of changes was translated, in the field of performing arts, into a profound transformation of the structures of public entertainment and leisure. This change, it seems, went hand-in-hand with the urban transformation of Barcelona and the displacement of leisure from the Passeig de Gràcia to the Paral·lel, ensuring greater popular access to the theatre and the other amusements on offer. 

The origins of the Paral·lel have been described by several journalists and researchers,²² who have proposed contradictory theories about the origins of its name that are not particularly relevant here. In spite of the splendour of the Paral·lel throughout the early decades of the 20th century, the Avinguda del Marqués del Duero was inaugurated in October 1894 by the mayor Collaso i Gil. Previously, for two years, a fairground stall known as the Circo Modelo Español had been operating in a vacant lot in the area, changing its name to Teatro Circo Español with the opening of the new avenue.²³ Others, like the Teatro Nuevo, also evolved from temporary stalls into more stable constructions (1901). These were the first among a score of theatres —among them the Teatre Arnau, where the cuplé singer Raquel Meller triumphed—  that gathered there over the following decades, together with cafes and other establishments that lent character to the wide street, which rivalled the great boulevards of Paris. Even from the very beginning, however, journalists and writers observed a great difference between this new zone of theatres and the public that gathered there and the old gardens and summer theatres of Passeig de Gràcia, evident in the following reflection by city historian Isidre Torres: 

It is a genuinely democratic avenue, which has been prostituted by all the cosmopolitan vainglorious housed in Barcelona. Its spacious pavements, its theatres and cinemas, its stalls and its cafes, from the early afternoon until the early hours are overrun with frenzied animation and movement. The gallant of the lower classes have installed themselves there; and together with honourable working families, in equality with the whores and con artists. The Paral·lel is the antithesis of the Passeig de Gràcia.²⁴  

This last reflection stresses the profound distance between the two areas, and how the Barcelona society that gravitated towards them was different in a similar way. Consequently, the opposing character of the two avenues that resulted from the urban remodelling of Barcelona shows an evolution worthy of analysis, particularly from a sociological perspective. We must ask ourselves how and what changed amongst the spectators who sought out amusement, entertainment and leisure in both places, how this affected the social classes that frequented the venues and, more importantly still, in what manner this contributed to shaping contemporary Barcelona.

1. Carme Morell, “Oci i diversió: teatre, meuques, toros i balls”, in Borja de Riquer (Dir.), Història. Política, societat i cultura als Països Catalans, Vol. 7, Barcelona, Fundació Enciclopèdia Catalana, 1996, p. 260.

2. For more information, see the research group’s online interactive map of leisure spaces in Barcelona in the period 1860-1900 at: www.ub.edu/gracmon/docs/mapaeob.

3. Clavé had to change the name to the more poetic Euterpe, due to political pressure that went so far as to prohibit some performances from being held in the early 1850s in the gardens on the  Passeig de Gràcia. See Josep M. Poblet, Josep Anselm Clavé i la seva època (1824-1874), Barcelona, Dopesa, 1973, p. 72.

4. Àngel Carmona, Dues Catalunyes. Jocfloralescos i xarons, Barcelona, Ariel, 1967.

5. Cited by Francesc Curet, Visions barcelonines. Muralles enllà, Barcelona, Dalmau i Jover, 1956, p. 50.

6. The font de Jesús, or ‘fountain of Jesus’, was on the right-hand side of the Passeig de Gràcia going up from the wall, between what are now the Carrers del Consell de Cent and Aragó. Surprising as it may seem in the early 21st century, there was an abundance of fruit trees in the area, and it was famed for the quality of its water. Dances were held there, and there was a large, umbrella-shaped marquee, which was later named the Salón de los Artesanos (‘The Artisan’s Salon’).

7. Joaquín María de Nadal, Recuerdos de medio siglo, Madrid, Cid, 1957, p. 40. 

8. Francesc Puig i Alfonso, Recuerdos de un sesentón, Barcelona, Librería Dalmau, 1943, p. 81. 

9. Francesc Curet, Visions barcelonines . . ., op. cit., p. 88.

10. The City Council of Barcelona agreed to re-establish the Jocs Florals and the first council for the festival was: Manuel Milà i Fontanals, President; Antoni de Bofarull, Secretary, and Joan Cortada, Josep Lluís Pons i Gallarza, Joaquim Rubió i Ors, Víctor Balaguer and Miquel Victorià Amer, Members.

11. The so-called Moyano Law, enacted in 1857, established mandatory primary education in Spanish and was followed by other laws affecting the profession of notaries, the civil registry and civil justice system, all demonstrating a clear thrust toward centralization.

12. Francesc Curet, El arte dramático en el resurgir de Cataluña, Barcelona, Minerva, 1917, p. 108. 

13. Ferran Canyameres, Josep Oller i la seva època. L’home del Moulin Rouge, Barcelona, Aedos, 1959, p. 145. 

14. See Sebastià Gasch, Barcelona de nit (El món de l’espectacle), Barcelona, Selecta, 1957, pp. 209-214. 

15. Carme Morell, El teatre de Serafí Pitarra: entre el mite i la realitat (1860-1875), Barcelona, Curial  / Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 1995, p. 165. 

16. Carme Morell, “Oci i diversió…”, op. cit., 211ff. 

17. Àngel Carmona, Dues Catalunyes . . ., op. cit., p. 63. 

18. Joaquim Maria de Nadal, Memòries d’un estudiant barceloní. Cromos de la vida vuitcentista, Barcelona, Dalmau i Jover, 1952, p. 122.

19. The regulation, included in the Novísima Recopilación de Leyes de 1805, stated the following: “In no theatre in Spain is the presentation permitted of theatre, song or dance pieces not in the Castilian language, and performed by national actors and actresses [. . .] Prohibited from this date are the comedic companies known as of the league, whose operation is commonly harmful to respectable behaviours . . .”. Cited in: Pep Vila, “La resurrecció del canonge Mulet, una comèdia sentimental del vuit-cents català”, in Josep M. Domingo and Miquel M. Gibert (Ed.), El segle romàntic. Actes del col·loqui sobre Àngel Guimerà i el teatre català del segle xix, Tarragona, Diputació de Tarragona, 2000, p. 536.

20. Cited in Josep M. Poblet, Frederic Soler. Serafí Pitarra, Barcelona, Aedos, 1967, pp. 105-107.

21. Cited by Àngel Carmona, Dues Catalunyes…, op. cit., p. 221. 

22. Principal sources of information on the origins and development of Paral·lel are: Luis Cabañas Guevara, Biografía del Paralelo (1894-1934), Barcelona, Memphis, 1945, and Miquel Badenas i Rico, El Paral·lel. Nacimiento, esplendor y declive de la popular y bullanguera avenida barcelonesa, Barcelona, Amarantos, 1993.

23. See Josep Cunill, Gran Teatro Español, Barcelona, Fundació Imprimatur, 2011.

24. Isidre Torres i Oriol, Barcelona histórica, antigua y moderna. Guía general. Descriptiva e ilustrada, Barcelona, author’s edition, 1900.

Music, leisure and sociability in Barcelona of 1900

Jaume Carbonell i Guberna

Leisure can take various paths depending on the objectives of a social group or community. Often these objectives are conditioned by the social make-up of these communities. During the 19th century and first half of the 20th century, leisure within the framework of sociability was greatly developed in Europe and also in Catalonia, and, in particular, socialization of the masses had a very important educational role, such that one often wonders if the term ‘leisure’, associated with determined habits, is adequate for denoting activities that require additional effort beyond the working day and that have a formative result. 

The function of leisure and sociability in a context such as that of 19th- and 20th-century Catalonia was clearly a determining factor in the musical development of the country, and had a direct effect on changes in musical tastes and the emergence of new trends, practices and aesthetic ideas. So much so, that one could hypothesize that possibly those projects which did not succeed in this age of such good intentions failed to do so specifically because they lacked the organized social base of support to facilitate and sufficiently develop them. 

During the years of modernisme (Catalan art nouveau movement) and those immediately prior thereto, Catalonia already enjoyed a rich musical tradition, with established infrastructures and facilities for the practice of music, some highly consolidated, that continued to play a very important role, and it was thanks to this rich associative tradition that new trends and changes were introduced that fostered the transformation of public tastes during this period. 

Barcelona, a city of opera

Looking at the Catalan musical panorama, and taking Barcelona as a paradigm, it is evident that by genre opera was the best established and had the strongest and most consolidated infrastructures.¹ During the years of modernisme, Barcelona had two stable theatres offering regular seasons of opera: firstly, the Teatre de la Santa Creu, known as the Teatre Principal, with origins going back to 1579 and a very rich history that made it incontestably the opera theatre for the nobility during the 18th and first half of the 19th century;² and secondly, the Liceo Filodramático de Montesión opened a theatre in the location of the old Caputxin convent, which later became known as the Gran Teatre del Liceu, and began offering regular seasons of opera from 1847. After some years of competition between these two main centres, the decline of the Principal led to the coronation of the Liceu as the operatic heart of the city and the country, becoming a theatre of reference throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.³  

However, despite the fact that the Principal and the Liceu were the most significant theatres, opera in Barcelona was not limited to these venues. To date there is no comprehensive and serious study of all the lyric performances that took place in other Barcelona theatres, be they stable or provisional, marquee or summer theatres, that offered opera even though not continuously or over a prolonged period. These included, among others, venues such as the Tívoli in the Passeig de Gràcia, which relocated to the Carrer de Casp in 1875; the Odeón in the Carrer de l’Hospital, inaugurated in 1850, that offered various shows until 1887; the Camp Elisis theatre, considered the main summer theatre of the Passeig de Gràcia, between 1852 and 1864; the Circ Barcelonès, active from 1853 to 1857; the Prado Catalán, opened on 24 April 1863 and active till 1883; the Romea, which opened its doors in 1863; the Teatre Varietats, inaugurated in 1864, on the corner of the Passeig de Gràcia and the Carrer de la Diputació, and converted in 1870 into the Teatro Español, specializing in French lyrical works, which closed in 1899; the Teatro de la Zarzuela, opened in 1864 in some gardens at the bottom of the Rambla de Catalunya and commonly known as El Barracón; the Teatre Novetats, opened in 1869 in the Carrer de Casp; the Teatro del Buen Retiro, created in 1876; the Circ Eqüestre, installed in the Plaça de Catalunya in 1879, dedicated to circus performances, but which also held lyrical shows, and which closed in 1895; the Teatre Eldorado, opened in 1884, and the Criadero, or Teatre Líric, inaugurated in April 1881 on the grounds of the Camps Elisis on the corner of the Passeig de Gràcia and the Carrer de Mallorca, and which closed in 1919. 

All these venues offered lyrical productions, but opera was not only presented in theatres. As a fashionable genre, it filled many concert programmes and instrumental musical evenings. The rich musical scene with its many associations that was launched in the mid-19th century with the foundation in 1844 of the Societat Filharmònica de Barcelona filled halls with musical activity in musical evenings, classes, concerts and performances, in which the voice was the indisputable protagonist and the repertoire came largely from opera. Fashionable pieces and successful shows were immediately transposed to musical scores, generally for voice and piano but also for varied instrumental ensembles, targeting a public in need of music consumption, whether for private use or more or less public use in social spaces. The opera, like the zarzuela, was indisputably the popular music of greatest consumption throughout the whole of the 19th century and part of the 20th century, thanks to a very effective distribution network formed by arrangers, publishers, distributors, schools, piano makers and both public and private salons that would hold and organize concerts. 

The arrival of symphonic music

As the last third of the 19th century advanced and the music of Richard Wagner was introduced and gained followers, a general interest in Germanic music also grew, drawing attention to all that was encompassed and generated by Wagner’s music, to wit, Germanic symphony. Accordingly, we begin to find references from the public, especially the intellectual circles, to their interest in the work of classical and romantic composers such as Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and Mendelssohn, for example.

The first initiative designed to break the inertia of the omnipresent bel canto and introduce instrumental or “symphonic” repertoires took place in 1867, in the cycle of so-called Concerts Clàssics held on Sunday afternoons at the Prado Catalán by an orchestra of 80 teachers conducted by the great Rius. The intention of this cycle was to provide an opportunity for new repertoires to be heard, especially symphonic and chamber music of Germanic roots, thus broadening the music on offer and inclining the public toward a genre that at the time was considered somewhat distinguished and select. Needless to say, the specialized press, particularly that of a Wagnerian bent, dedicated pages to positive reviews throughout the duration of the cycles.⁴ Naturally, the pieces performed were not excessively long, and in many cases programmes included excerpts or single movements in order to reach a public not yet accustomed to attending a musical event without a protagonist singing or operatic references. 

From 31 March 1867, the direction of these concerts fell to the conductor and composer Joan Casamitjana, who to date had worked as an orchestral arranger, and who had won a contest for symphonic compositions organized by the Ateneu Català the previous year. Thanks to the success of the Concerts Clàssics, now under the name Concerts Casamitjana, from 12 June 1867 they were moved to the Camps Elisis into a more spacious and distinguished venue, at the time managed by Josep Anselm Clavé.⁵  

Little by little, a taste for symphonic or instrumental music crystallized in Barcelona society and it shaped a trend through ever more frequent concert programmes. It was some time, however, before symphonic music ceased to be considered the obsession of a group of connoisseurs, while the general predilection was still for vocal performances.

It was through associations between music lovers and literature enthusiasts that an incipient will for change in musical habits emerged, although still for a minority interested in discovering classical and symphonic music and other repertoires beyond the standard collection of operatic arias. This represented a positioning and process that were neither easy nor immediate. One of the first entities to break away from the omnipresence of opera in concert life and take an interest in chamber repertoires was the Centro Artístico de Barcelona, founded in 1886, which included in its programmes music by Beethoven, Gounod, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Meyerbeer and Weber, among others.⁶ Naturally, the risk of this approach prompted them to combine these works with arias and vocal pieces, but preferably by the same composers, so as to give coherence to the programmes and also “sweeten” an obvious attempt at aesthetic change. 

It was after the 1888 Exposición Universal in Barcelona that the trend towards musical societies gained momentum, as did the arrival of new repertoires, increasingly centred around Germanic and symphonic music. It was also during this period that structures inherited from former times gained ground and contributed notably to the musical panorama of the modernista period. The Associació Musical de Barcelona, also founded in 1888, played a very important role in the creation of the Societat Catalana de Concerts, preparing the atmosphere and conditioning public tastes. It was within the concerts organized by the Associació Musical de Barcelona, for example, that Enric Morera premiered symphonic works such as La dansa dels gnoms in 1892, with which he impressed the public and the critics of Barcelona not only with the quality of the piece but also with a reformist style that became a hallmark of the modernista composer’s career and an entire period of Catalan musical history. Also, it was during the second cycle of Societat Catalana de Concerts held in February 1893 at the Teatre Principal, directed by Antoni Nicolau, that Morera premiered Introducció a l’Atlàntida, a work of great magnitude based on the poem by Verdaguer which consolidated the expectation created in 1892 of his value as a composer. 

The Associació Musical de Barcelona continued offering concerts for members at the Teatre Líric in 1899 and in the concert hall of the Estela piano factory in 1900, with programmes consisting of works of Germanic romanticism or Catalan contemporary composers, which is to say, clearly following the guidelines of modernista ideas.⁷  

Following various periods of crisis, in 1904 the Associació Musical de Barcelona returned to activity under the direction of Joan Lamote de Grignon. It had solid support from entities highly representative of Catalan cultural and social life, and from different perspectives, such as the Orfeó Català and the Cercle del Liceu. It also received help from particular individuals, patrons of cultural and artistic life in Barcelona, such as Lluís Graner and Eusebi Güell, among others.⁸ The more notable activities of the association centred around the organization of the concert cycles Concerts de Quaresma, held at the Liceu, with symphonic programs that were already dominated at that time by the works of Franz Liszt, Richard Wagner, Siegfried Wagner and César Franck. 

Another entity that was very significant to the introduction of symphonic repertoire was the Ateneu Barcelonès, which in a short time went from programming concerts of a purely operatic nature (arias and arranged excerpts) to becoming one of the reference points for classical and symphonic music as early as the 1860s and 1870s.⁹ To a great extent, the Ateneu also acted as a model for other similar associations that were involved in concert life and inclined toward innovative aesthetic parameters, as well as promoting Catalan composers. Thus, then, as Xosé Aviñoa mentions, the concerts held at the Casino Barcelonés in 1867; the Centro Nuevo Recreo, which in 1868 organized chamber music concerts; the Centro Artístico, where on 16 July of the same year an excerpt from a Beethoven sonata was performed; the Centro Filantrópico and the Taller Ambut clearly contributed to normalizing symphonic and chamber repertoires for the Barcelona audience.¹⁰ It should be noted that this transformation occurred mainly within the framework of musical associations. Given the commercial risk involved in introducing new repertoires for a minority audience, it could not be understood in any other way. 

The result of this entire process came to fruition during the following decades after great and decisive work by an entity of such stature as the Institució Catalana de Música, which, between 1896 and 1900, proposed the establishment of a Festa de la Música Catalana (Festival of Catalan Music) to promote the creation and dissemination of music by Catalan composers, although this proved impossible until the idea was taken up by the Orfeó Català in 1904. The institution, which to this end had a choral section and an orchestra that were directed by founding members Joan Gay and Josep Lapeyra, did not manage to carry out the project, but did create the right climate for it to flourish through the organization of concerts and also the publication of a newsletter which served not only to spread information about its activities, but also as a source of musical information, something that the Orfeó took up again years later.¹¹  

This effort at promoting and implementing instrumental or symphonic music served as a platform for more ambitious initiatives in later times, which achieved high profile developments and notably enriched the Catalan music scene, such as the Associació de Música da Camera, founded in 1913 and based on a structure with different categories of members and membership fees. The Associació was basically dedicated to organizing concerts at the Palau de la Música Catalana, either involving its own orchestra or with invited groups such as the London String Quartet, for example.¹² Another example would be the Orquestra Pau Casals, founded in 1919 by the distinguished Catalan musician, which carved out an outstanding trajectory up until 1936.  

Other centres of musical promotion that had an effect on changing musical tastes were the music schools and the concert halls hosted by the major piano factories, which represented some of the most profitable ways of promoting their products. These factories, such as Bernareggi, had their own piano schools and concert halls and organized recitals to demonstrate their new models and to show off the progress of their most promising students, both of these being actions that could generate new income. These centres also facilitated the diversification of the instrumental repertoire, which gradually entered the public sphere through the custom already well established in the 19th century of concerts, both public and private. Moving forward chronologically, it becomes evident that the programme content for these performances was increasingly removed from the fashionable operatic fantasies, more prevalent in the middle of the century, and closer to forms also of romanticism, but more closely linked to the strictly instrumental repertoire, such as waltzes and other dance forms typical of Chopin and Liszt, studies, nocturnes and the occasional sonata. 

The popularity of the piano in Barcelona led to a proliferation of musicians dedicated to teaching this instrument and facilitated original and arranged music in response to growing demand for public and private use. This context helps explain the formation in 1873 of the Asociación de Pianistas Compositores de Barcelona, whose objective was to publish and sell music for the piano, written or arranged by members, as well as to protect its interests as a group of professionals. These pieces reached points of sale in the form of sheet music that could be grouped under the generic title of the collection Vergel armónico de los pianistas. Colección de piezas fáciles (Pianists’ harmonic garden. Collection of easy pieces). Looking at the first 28 pieces of the collection, however, the importance of opera to potential customers of the time is still very evident.¹³  

Choral music

From 1850, choral activity in Catalonia, and particularly Barcelona, was one of the main sources of sociability, a generator of activities linked to leisure and musical training, general and humanist education for the masses. Well known was the work of Josep Anselm Clavé as head of these entities, which in a few years spread throughout the country and provided less fortunate towns, in particular, with mechanisms for access to culture and the practice and enjoyment of music, and, by extension, to a social consciousness and consideration within the rest of society.¹⁴  

Monument to Josep Anselm Clavé, designed by Josep Vilaseca with a gigantic sculpture by Manuel Fuxà, located initially at the junction of the Rambla de Catalunya and the Carrer de València.

The situation in Barcelona is also well known, which is the most studied, where from 1853 the Societat Coral La Fraternidad, known after 1857 as the Societat Coral Euterpe, organized choral dances and concerts in the major entertainment venues on the Passeig de Gràcia, such as the Jardins de la Nimfa in 1853, the Camps Elisis between 1853-1856, the Jardins de la Nimfa again in 1856, the Jardins d’Euterpe between 1857-1861, the Camps Elisis again between 1862 and 1867, and during the years of the Sexenni, 1868-1874, alternating performances between the Tívoli and the Teatre Novetats. Taking into account that other choral organizations were also working in Barcelona and presenting similar shows, whether they were attached to Clavé’s movement or competitors, evidently choral music was one of the most significant musical manifestations of the period and, of course, had the greatest impact at the popular level. 

Having briefly mentioned the types of performance they offered, further exploration is valuable given their novelty and what they represented for the introduction and development of a genre previously unseen in Catalonia. The shows presented by the Societat Coral Euterpe were basically of two types: concerts and choral dances. Therefore suitable venues had to be found, with an area for dancing and another where the audience could sit and listen and consume the food and beverages on offer (ensaïmades and brioches, hot chocolate, cinnamon-flavoured milk, horchata, etc.) The dances were usually held on Saturday evenings, at outdoor summer celebrations, on Sundays and in the afternoons on public holidays. The concerts were generally reserved for matinee sessions, which took place at five in the morning on public holidays.¹⁵ Naturally, the repertoire was different in each case, and the musical style of each programme as well. An orchestra or band accompanied the dance pieces, while the concert pieces were normally just choral. In both cases, Clavé introduced a genre that had never before been practised in Catalonia, that of popular secular choral music, which followed a trajectory that continues to this day and was consolidated with the proliferation of composers and the introduction of repertoire from Europe, especially during the late 19th century. 

After the death of Josep Anselm Clavé in 1874, the Societat Coral Euterpe and other similar choirs entered a period of crisis, due to internal problems, the political situation and the expanding offer of music, shows and entertainment that Barcelona experienced in the final quarter of the century. Throughout the 1880s, choral concerts continued in Barcelona at the Tívoli and the Novetats, but not so frequency as before. Claverian choral societies fell into a pattern of decline that led to internal confrontations and divisions within the federated organization into different factions which contributed to a reduction of its influence on Catalan musical life. On top of that, the choral societies suffered instability and changes in personnel and repertoire, aggravating the situation and causing a progressive loss of social impact.

The process by which the Orfeó Català was founded in 1891 is understood as the result of a need to reform the model of choral music that had been in place. The founders, Lluís Millet and Amadeu Vives,¹⁶ wanted a departure from the traditional choirs that had operated in Clavé’s environment but that would be able to take on the repertoire of the great European composers. To achieve this required an approach radically different from Clavé’s choirs: a solid base of musical knowledge and a range of different voices. Thus, from 1895, the girls’ and boys’ sections were incorporated, and this allowed the Orfeó to carry out the renovation that Millet and Vives desired. Their repertoire was completed with harmonized traditional songs and works by contemporary composers, and a very important element of patriotic songs such as Els Segadors, a traditional song that the Orfeó quickly made popular as the national anthem, or El Cant de la Senyera, the Orfeó Català’s anthem, with words by Joan Maragall and music by Lluís Millet, that achieved greater historical significance than its simple function as the organization’s anthem would suggest.¹⁷ Obviously these aesthetic approaches came accompanied with an ideological positioning born of a different social make-up than the choirs of Clavé. While the latter were of a popular nature, formed mainly by the working class that were republican and left-wing, the Orfeó Català, on the other hand, was comprised of the affluent middle and upper classes, who generally had a solid cultural background, were ideologically conservative, and supported the idea of country closely linked to the traditional religious sentiment. Needless to say, these values were then rising, as during those years the foundations of political Catalanism were being established and they were conservative in nature. This conditioned the forms of relationship and sociability for the body, which were very oriented towards giving the country the musical structures that it lacked at the time. Conceived and developed under the umbrella of the Catalanist bodies of the turn of the century, the Orfeó Català was concerned to establish foundations for musical normality: the introduction of repertoires, infrastructures, such as the magazine La Revista Musical Catalana, an organ that was to become the most important means of musical communication in the country, or the Festa de la Música Catalana, established in 1904 for the promotion of work by Catalan composers. Without doubt, the most significant step in this direction was the construction of the Palau de la Música Catalana, inaugurated in 1908 and which from being the home of the Orfeó soon became the “official” concert hall of Barcelona, and remained so for many years, after the disappearance of the Palau de Belles Arts and the Teatre Líric on the Passeig de Gràcia. 

The Teatre Líric, which opened in 1881, was sited at what today is the junction of the Carrer de Mallorca and the Passeig de Gràcia, on a piece of the land where the Camps Elisis had once been. At that time, it was part of the estate belonging to the banker Evarist Arnús.

Of course, the creation of the Orfeó Català also implied the birth of numerous entities throughout Catalonia which followed the same model. Even some of Clavé’s choirs became orfeons and aligned themselves with the so-called Orfeons de Catalunya. Catalan society had changed over the previous 40 years, and this was evident in the field of culture and the arts. Catalonia had made a very significant qualitative leap, as seen in the musical sphere, and in the choral world needs arose that could be only partly met by existing choral societies. Renewal was necessary, a broadening of objectives and ideals that implied a change of approach and methods, and that made this period, almost up until the Spanish Civil War, one of the most creative and ambitious in Catalan musical history. 

It was thanks to the Orfeó Català that Catalonia saw the arrival of symphonic choral music previously unheard in the country. This included the premiere of the whole of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (as until then its choral interpretation had not been possible) in the Concerts de Quaresma at the Liceu in 1900, conducted by Antoni Nicolau. Also of note were versions of St. Matthew’s Passion in 1911 and Bach’s Mass in B minor in 1921, to name but a few examples. 

Catalan lyric theatre, by way of a conclusion

At the beginning of this article we made reference to the importance of opera in Catalan society, particularly in Barcelona, during the period which concerns us. It has also become evident that through the years of modernisme there were differences between the general public, who favoured Italian opera and the zarzuela, and certain members of the public and composers more committed to that which represented the modernista movement, who wanted to take things further and were very influenced by the music and ideas of Richard Wagner, Germanic musical culture and the divulgation of symphonic music. And yet, an element of this group of musicians and public remained particularly interested in promoting a genre of Catalan opera that followed the Wagnerian model, and found its means of expression in the Teatre Líric Català. This was one of the most ambitious projects of the time, but unfortunately never met its promoters’ expectations. According to the hypothesis we made at the beginning of this piece, this would have been largely because it was organized privately and had no social support behind it, which is to say, it received no help from established associations, but was rather run as a business. This was perhaps a significant error on the part of those involved.

Enric Morera was the musician most committed to this project, its main proponent, and was involved in a very personal way, ultimately losing his fortune. One of his most well known works, considered the most representative and significant of the movement for its aesthetic implications and quality, is La fada (The Fairy), premiered in Sitges in 1897 during the celebration of the Quarta Festa Modernista. Following other collaborations in Sitges, Morera finally decided to organize a fixed season of Catalan lyric theatre in Barcelona in 1901, programming titles by various composers. One might imagine this would have been popular, but this was not the case and nor was the reception by critics expected: they were hostile to the organizer and sceptical about the project. Disillusioned by the poor performance of the season, Morera desisted from organizing another one, and then in 1905 he made a second attempt, this time in collaboration with Adrià Gual and Lluís Graner, which enjoyed a little more success, running until 1908 in the context of the Espectacles i Audicions Graner. Although the timing was favourable and programmes were tailored to the expectations and aesthetic needs of the public, what most disappointed Morera was that Catalan lyric theatre, although a quality product, never had the impact and continuity it deserved. While various causes have been considered and studied and others may exist, it seems this was because as a product not favoured by the institutionalized cultural powers, it never had a base of support sufficient to reach wider society. This support would have been a key factor and one that, even if not always in an organized manner, other musical and theatrical movements had been able to count on in the past. Thus, associative activity can be considered a determining factor when it comes to studying and understanding the success or failure of major changes and developments in the use and practice of music and the models and repertoires existent in Catalonia from the mid-19th century almost until the Spanish Civil War, before the advent of mass culture and cultural control in terms of consumption, whereby the agents and manners of introducing repertoire were different and responded to different interests. 

1. Obviously, the field of religious music, far ahead of opera in terms of roots, tradition and infrastructure, is not contemplated in this work, because, while it often meets the criteria, religious music is not conceived or practised within the parameters of free time and sociability. 

2. For more information on the Teatre Principal and opera in Catalonia during the 18th century, see Roger Alier, L’òpera a Barcelona. Orígens, desenvolupament i consolidació de l’òpera com a espectacle teatral a la Barcelona del segle xviii, doctoral thesis, Barcelona, Institut d’Estudis Catalans / Societat Catalana de Musicologia, 1990. 

3. For more on the history of the Gran Teatre del Liceu see Roger Alier: El Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona, Carroggio, 1999. 

4. La España Musical (Barcelona), 1867. 

5. Xosé Aviñoa, Història de la música catalana, valenciana i balear, Vol. iii, Del romanticisme al nacionalisme, Barcelona, Edicions 62, 2000, p. 118. 

6. La España Musical,  No. 43 [8 December 1886], p. 1. 

7. See the programmes and comments published in La música ilustrada hispanoamericana, Barcelona, 1899 et seqq. 

8. Asociación Musical de Barcelona. Memoria, 1907 (Annual report). 

9. See Jaume Carbonell, “La música a Barcelona entre 1874 i 1890. Els condicionants del Modernisme musical”, Revista de Catalunya, No. 68, pp. 71-86. 

10. Xosé Aviñoa, “L’activitat concertística”, a Història de la música..., op. cit., pp. 118-119. 

11. Roger Alier: “Joan Gay i la Institució Catalana de Música”, Serra d’Or, December 1973, pp. 859-860. 

12. Associació de Música da Camera. Memòria curs 1917-1918 (Annual Report). 

13. For more information on the Asociación de Pianistas Compositores de Barcelona, see the magazine La España Musical from years 1873-1874. This publication was closely associated with the entity. 

14. For more information, see Jaume Carbonell, Josep Anselm Clavé i el naixement del cant coral a Catalunya (1850-1854), Cabrera de Mar, Galerada, 2000. 

15. Years later Clavé was kind enough to programme them an hour later, at six in the morning. 

16. About the process that led to the foundation of the Orfeó Català see Pere Artís, El cant coral a Catalunya (1891-1979), Barcelona, Barcino, 1980. 

17. Oriol Martorell, “La consciència d’himne nacional”, in Els Segadors, himne nacional de Catalunya, Barcelona, Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 1993; Jaume Carbonell, “Els cors de Clavé i Els Segadors entre 1892-1936. Contribució a l’estudi de la consciència d’himne nacional de Catalunya”, in Xosé Aviñoa (Ed.), Miscel·lània Oriol Martorell, Barcelona, Publicacions de la Universitat de Barcelona, 1998. 

PLEASURE AND WORK

Visiting exhibitions. The first galleries and art spaces in Barcelona (1850-1910)

Ricard Bru and Isabel Fabregat

This article presents an overview of the spaces in which the people of Barcelona began to enjoy fine art in the period from the mid-19th century to the first decade of the 20th century.¹ It looks at, among other things, when the first exhibitions and art galleries began to appear, which agents were involved and to whom this type of activity was addressed. Elements not considered relevant, then, include the genesis of museums and public and private art collections. 

Note that as a very general presentation, and due to limitations of space, we only make reference mainly to the private places and temporary exhibitions which had greatest repercussion among the public. Also, the degree of available knowledge is quite irregular: from exhibition spaces that have been studied in detail, such as the Sala Parés or the Galeries Dalmau, to others that are hardly known.

The exhibitions had different purposes depending on who was involved and who organized them; they could be the result of business enterprise or more playful motivations. On the one hand, commercial events were driven by artists’ need for recognition and a modus vivendi apart from the official circuits. As well as the business initiatives of artists, merchants also played a role, as did gallery and shop owners that displayed the work. In this sense, the paradigmatic example at the European level is Adolphe Goupil, agent for, among others, many prestigious Spanish painters of the period. On the other hand, exhibitions were also organized from a perspective of fun, generating a new public that in principle attended out of enthusiasm or for entertainment. 

In analysing the nature of the public that attended these exhibitions, firstly one encounters the amateur, or aficionado; secondly, the collector, that is, someone not only interested in viewing the works but also in possessing them; and in general, the bourgeois. Even while many of the bourgeoisie may have had no interest in art, socially it was an almost compulsory activity: visiting a gallery became a social act, it was a place of meeting, a habit for this powerful class. Joaquim Folch i Torres explained the Sunday ritual of the tortell and a visit to Can Parés in an article published in the arts pages of La Veu de Catalunya: 

The Parés establishment has the merit of having been something to Barcelona customs; since a visit was a compulsory element in the Sunday routine of civilized residents, who when going out bought their tortell in Carrer den Petritxol, but that was not to say they had any less love of painting [. . .] With or without the tortell, the truth is it was a joy to see the galleries of Can Parés on a Sunday, and one day they attracted the cream of our aristocracy to admire the work of our painters; and not only to admire them but also to buy them, which has not been such a usual thing for some time.²  

The artists themselves also visited the exhibitions, not for leisure but to view their work and that of others. In this sense, the chronicle of an opening which painter and art critic Joan Brull published in Joventut is very illustrative. Brull explained that in 1901, for the 18th Exposició Extraordinària at the Sala Parés, Mr. Parés summoned the artists so they could see the gallery with their work already hung: 

Once inside, we did what one does: go round the gallery. Anyone would think we did it to take in the whole, but that was not it. Each artist was looking for his own work, in a more or less concealed manner. Afterwards, when all had seen their work and found it better than the rest, they formed groups and discussions began in hushed tones.³  

Those more accustomed to art criticism were also frequent visitors to exhibitions. They were important figures as guides for the public, as their opinions and the galleries they chose to comment upon had influence. Through newspapers and magazines, critics spread various currents of opinion on art that had to be considered correct. The critics, in this way, participated in the creation of public tastes by highlighting certain exhibitions and artists, criticizing works (thereby raising public curiosity about them) and reporting the opening of new galleries.

Visitors did not only consist of art lovers and those who regularly attended shows, often quite a limited group, but also we find, already at that time, phenomena of mass interest. The exhibition of Spoliarium, a painting by the Filipino artist Juan Luna which won first prize at the 1884 National Fine Arts Exhibition in Madrid, is one example of an exceptionally well-attended event. The picture, of very large dimensions, was shown at the Sala Parés in January and February 1886 to a continuous avalanche of visitors and was highlighted and discussed in all the contemporary press. The success of the exhibition led those responsible to offer free admission to the less privileged classes: “So that the working classes and day labourers are not deprived of seeing the celebrated painting Spoliarium, as of today they will be granted free entry to the Sala Parés.”⁴  

The varied panorama of art exhibition in Barcelona comprised very diverse initiatives, both public and private. Firstly, there were the official shows resulting from public initiatives, be they local, regional, national or international exhibitions. From the period of this study, of particular note was the Fine Arts Exhibition at the Exposició Universal de Barcelona (1888), which was quantitatively significant and as a result of which the city gained the Palau de Belles Arts, facing the Parc de la Ciutadella, which operated for many years. Also, the Exposicions Generals de Belles Arts de Barcelona and the Exposiciones Nacionales de Bellas Artes de Madrid, held every two or three years, were undoubtedly fundamental for artists. 

In contrast to the significant presence of temporary exhibitions, museums were not so prevalent, as the city possessed few artistic collections of public interest, the main ones being the Museu Arqueològic Provincial (Antiques Museum), the Museu Municipal de Belles Arts and the Museu de Reproduccions Artístiques. In addition, schools of art, including the Acadèmia de Belles Arts, the Acadèmia Borrell and the Acadèmia Baixas, played an important role as they held exhibitions of students’ work and of their own collections. Lastly, one should not forget the private sphere, which also provided opportunities to enjoy artworks without necessarily hosting what would be called exhibitions, with the collections of the Palau de la Virreina and the Counts of Bell-lloc, or others more specific and occasional, like those of Josep Estruch and Richard Lindau. These offered restricted access but also, as was the case with visits to artists’ studios (Caba, Martí i Alsina, Masriera, Riquer, Rusiñol . . .), opened to the public so that they could admire the artists’ latest creations or a particular private collection; these were private initiatives announced in the guides. 

 Les Belles Arts a Barcelona, as seen by the newspaper El Café in about 1860, just after the disappearance of the Associació d’Amics de les Belles Arts. 

Generally speaking, the Sala Parés was considered the epicentre of artistic activity in Barcelona in the late 19th century. While true, this statement should be qualified by enriching it with a more faithful reflection of the reality of the period. 

The first exhibitions (1847-1884)

In 1860, the magazine El Café published a mournful cartoon graphically depicting the state of fine arts in Barcelona, titled “The Death of Fine Arts”.⁵ Comparing the situation in Barcelona with that of Paris would certainly lead to the same conclusion: it was a good a century since annual exhibitions of paintings had begun in the Paris salons and the French capital already had a first network of dealers and establishments and spaces for the exhibition and sale of art. Of course, in 1860, Barcelona was still a partially walled city and the Eixample district had not yet been built, it was a city still struggling against centuries of isolation, asphyxiation and poor artistic tradition. But this was artistic poverty with respect to the incomparable Paris, and it should be clarified that even in the 1860s Barcelona did have some retailers of artistic goods and some early initiatives had been developed for the exhibition of painting and sculpture. It was precisely the decades between 1850 and 1870 when, for the first time, people began to visit art exhibitions and have easy access to works created by artists.  

The first proposal was the establishment of the Associació d’Amics de les Belles Arts, which was created in 1846 at the request of the board of the Societat Econòmica Barcelonesa d’Amics del País. As indicated in the regulations, its founding objective was to stimulate the love of fine arts and find ways to showcase the works of artists and promote sales and distribution. It was, then, the first established mechanism for organizing art exhibitions in an annual and continuous fashion and it resulted in a total of twelve shows, held between 1847 and 1859 in the galleries of the old library at the convent of Sant Joan, which had been secularized after Mendizábal’s disentailment of church poperty and was eventually demolished in 1888. 

The city needed such initiatives. Both the artists and the public required them: the former wanted to sell and the latter wanted to buy, or simply look. Thus, from the first exhibition in 1847 of works by eight painters, by 1852 this had become forty painters and in 1856 twenty painters, two photographers, four sculptors and an architect, with works by painters such as Marià Fortuny, Claudi Lorenzale, Federico de Madrazo; sculptors like Agapit and Venanci Vallmitjana; the architect Josep Oriol Mestres, and pioneering photographers, including Franck, who by 1853 were already presenting their first “photography paintings”. 

The Associació d’Amics de les Belles Arts accomplished its goals and became a prominent initiative, above all, for first promoting the practice of exhibiting art. Its role was crucial to the city’s first art system, and served to generate interest in the arts and artists who soon had their work in the city’s shops. With this, the first places where paintings were exposed to view were framing and mirror workshops, and the very first Barcelona establishment to do it was that of stage designers Jean Contier and Antoni Cousseau around 1852. This is how it was reported in the pages of the Diario de Barcelona in 1896: 

Jean Contier has passed away in the capital at the age of 82 years. In his youth he was a scene painter, moving to France in the company of M. Cousseau, also a painter, and later to Madrid, where they painted various sets for the Teatro de la Cruz. In the years 1852-53 they established themselves in Barcelona, founding an important workshop for mirrors, frames and gilded furniture and introducing the dominant tastes of Paris. Their shop, first located in the Rambla, later in the Calle Fernando and finally in the Pasaje Colon, was the first in the city to exhibit paintings and objets d’art.⁶  

Contier and Cousseau settled in Barcelona in early 1852, from Madrid, with the opening of two retail outlets for frames and pictures located in the Ramblas, one at 38 Rambla dels Caputxins and the other at 4 Rambla de Santa Mònica.⁷ Their showings included exhibitions of 17th- and 18th-century paintings, some of them attributed to Velázquez, as well as contemporary paintings by artists such as Federico de Madrazo and Joaquim Espalter. The practice soon found favour and began to spread among the retailers of paintings and prints located in the Carrer Ample, the Carrer Portaferrissa, the Carrer Petritxol, the Carrer Llibreteria, the Carrer Vigatans and the Carrer Ferran.⁸  

The small showings of paintings that these establishments hosted at irregular intervals were complemented by the annual exhibitions of the Associació d’Amics de les Belles Arts. The regularity of the latter was, therefore, essential as an outlet for the growing number of artists emerging from the Llotja School and other private studios. However, this association disappeared in 1859; this was the reason for the cartoon that appeared the following year in El Café. It was not until February 1866 that a new body of a similar nature, formed by artists, scholars and art lovers, appeared: the Associació per al Foment de les Exposicions de Belles Arts, with Francesc Miquel i Badia as secretary. It was created, no less, out of a desire to re-establish the activity carried out by the previous association: “The goals of the Association shall be to encourage a love of the fine arts, to incite noble emulation among artists, to spread news of their works, and to facilitate methods of distribution”.⁹  

The art exhibitions organized by the Associació d’Amics de les Belles Arts, known as the Societat per a Exposicions de Belles Arts, were held annually between 1868 and 1873 and, to this end, the first building dedicated to art exhibition in Barcelona was constructed, designed according to the architectural criteria for museums of the period: the Palau de Belles Arts in the Gran Via. This building, sadly demolished in 1874, answered the demands of a city which until that time had never had any dedicated space for art exhibitions. The aim was to show and sell work, and the results were more convincing than in previous years. In 1868 there were 398 works exhibited, while in 1873 some 427 paintings by virtually all the contemporary artists of the time were shown, from Ramon Amado, Pere Borrell and Antoni Caba to Baldomer Galofre, Ramon Martí Alsina, Arcadi Mas i Fontdevila, Francesc Miralles, Josep Serra Porson, Josep Lluís Pellicer, Agustí Rigalt, Francesc Torrescassana, Modest Urgell and Joaquim Vayreda, many of which served to introduce realism to the general public. These shows, in turn, demonstrated that art exhibitions served a purpose, that there was demand and supply, and that Barcelona was developing the capacity to organize activities of an artistic nature. Within a few short years, art exhibitions had become a reality in the city. 

Middle-class ladies vising a painting exhibition. Iris, 1899. 

Exhibition activity in Barcelona increased from the 1870s and allowed the completely precarious situation of the fine arts to begin to change. Quite significant was a lecture given in 1871 by Josep de Martí at the Acadèmia de Belles Arts de Barcelona entitled Ideas sobre el arte y sus exposiciones y medios para fomentar la afición al mismo (Ideas on art and exhibitions and means of fostering interest in the same). According to de Martí, the main objectives of exhibitions were to gain exposure for artists’ work, so they could sell, and to show the current state of the arts in the country. At the same time, they served to further progress and improvement by allowing both critical appraisal and the opportunity for praise. 

The people of Barcelona had found themselves a new hobby: visiting exhibitions. In the context of this new demand arose new initiatives, such as courses, parties and exhibitions at the Taller Embut (1865), from which emerged the Centre d’Aquarel·listes de Barcelona, with members such as Antoni Caba, Santiago Rusiñol and Ramon Casas, where exhibitions were put together and shown at the Museu Martorell in 1885 and the Sala Parés in subsequent years. Other entities that joined in this new dynamic of exhibitions included the Centre de Mestres d’Obres de Catalunya, the Ajuntament de Barcelona during the Mercè festival and the Acadèmia de Belles Arts, as well as private entrepreneurs, such as the owners of the so-called Exposició Permanent (1868) in the Carrer dels Escudellers, an establishment that rented space to manufacturers, producers, photographers and artists to exhibit their works. In this regard, there were several surprising ventures, such as the exhibition of contemporary European painting organized by José Schnell at 9 Carrer de la Ciutat, comprising 150 oil paintings by artists from Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, France and Holland. However, along with the great variety of exceptional events, the first four dealers who made a firm and ongoing commitment to the exhibition and sale of works of art were Josep Monter, Francesc Bassols, Francesc Vidal and Joan Parés. 

As with Jean Contier, a newspaper obituary notice provides the most concise account of Josep Monter:

José Monter was widely known and respected in art circles for the work he had done in this city for the promotion of art and especially painting. First established in Calle de Baños Nuevos, he gave impetus to the trade in modern prints, introducing the best English and French engravings of our time to Barcelona, as well as photographs from reputable foreign studios, in particular those from Goupil of Paris. Artists began to visit there by appointment, and from these meetings the idea of organizing exhibitions of fine art that were open during night hours was born.¹⁰  

Monter’s framing and moulding shop was one of those opened in Barcelona in the 1850s, initially established in the Carrer dels Banys Nous and relocated to the Carrer dels Escudellers in the 1860s, where it remained open until around 1881. Monter, as well as frames, mouldings, prints and photographs, had a space dedicated to the exhibition and sale of paintings, in which he periodically showed works by artists such as Josep Serra, Francesc Miralles, Josep and Francesc Masriera, Josep Llovera and Joan Parera. Aside from these ongoing exhibitions in the shop window and interior of the establishment, there were two outstanding exhibitions of paintings held there in December 1873 and January 1876. 

Josep Monter had only one potential competitor: “Bassols and Monter before, and Vidal and Parés now, have been chasing the results made possible by the complete absence of a dedicated facility,” said Eudald Canibell in 1884.¹¹ Indeed, following the example of Monter, Francesc Bassols opened a similar establishment in 1870, also on the Carrer dels Escudellers: a framing and mouldings shop with a section dedicated to the exhibition of paintings and which, from time to time, also hosted auctions of paintings and watercolours. In the Barcelona guides, Francesc Bassols’ store was advertised as a “Gallery of modern oil paintings”.¹²  

Of all the exhibitions Bassols organized, the most significant was that of 1876, which had more than 300 paintings, drawings and sculptures by artists like Modest Urgell, Joaquim Vayreda and Simó Gómez, and even Marià Fortuny, who had died two years previously. His initiatives for exhibitions had great impact and success, and this made his shop a very desirable place among artists aspiring to exhibit their works. So much so that it encouraged him to open a second space dedicated exclusively to the exhibition of paintings and sculptures, located at number 25 Carrer d’Avinyó: 

Don Francisco Bassols, who has worked hard to spread enthusiasm for the fine arts, has just opened a new shop on the Calle Aviñó, exclusively for the exhibition of paintings, sculptures and objets d’art. The establishment in question is elegantly and sumptuously decorated, the walls are of a tone purposely designed to enhance the merit of works of painting and sculpture.¹³  

In line with this dynamic of growth, at the beginning of the 1880s, new establishments dedicated to the exhibition and sale of art appeared, including El Arte, Can Vidal and the Sala Parés, which permitted the consolidation, once and for all, of the first circuit of art galleries and exhibition spaces in the city. 

Among them, the gallery El Arte is the least known space. It was an exhibition hall, initially for sculpture, founded and opened in 1882 by the sculptor and painter Segon Vancells. In early 1882, Vancells devoted a space in his studio in the Carrer del Consell de Cent to showcasing the works he produced which was open to the public every day of the week. In the spring of that year, in the Carrer de l’Arc de Santa Eulàlia, opposite the church of Sant Jaume, he inaugurated El Arte, advertised as an “establishment-exhibition of sculptures and paintings”.¹⁴ It was a place where every week different works were displayed, both by Vancells and other prominent artists, including the painters Parera, Gamot and Armet and sculptors Fuxà and Atché. However, before El Arte opened its doors, two other businesses which, continuing the trajectory of Monter and Bassols, were to excel in that period, opened theirs. These were the establishment called F. Vidal, opened by Francesc Vidal and Frederic Masriera in the Passatge del Crèdit, and, above all, the first Sala Parés in the Carrer de Petritxol. 

Furniture maker Francesc Vidal’s establishment has often been rather forgotten. True, Vidal’s prestige came from artistic industries rather than the world of art; but initially the trade in fine art was one of the strengths of his business. In this sense, the history of Francesc Vidal’s activity in major art industries must be differentiated into two stages: the first from 1879 to 1883 (F. Vidal), and the second from 1884 to 1889 (Vidal & Co.). The first stage revolved around the premises in the Passatge del Crèdit devoted to selling art and objets d’art, and the second around his large workshops and showrooms in the Eixample district dedicated exclusively to selling objets d’art that he produced. 

It was during his first stage, between 1879 and 1883, that Francesc Vidal was, along with the Sala Parés, one of the leading exhibitors of painting and sculpture. Many painters and sculptors were presented at the premises, especially those who had closer personal ties with Vidal, such as the brothers of his co-owner and founder, Josep and Francesc Masriera, Simó Gomez, a close boyhood friend of Vidal, and Modest Urgell, a fellow student in Paris and member of the same board of the Ateneu. Besides them, other artists that exhibited there included Cusachs, Cusí, Llovera, Miralles, Nobas, Pellicer, Soler i Rovirosa, Tamburini and Torrescassana. 

Quickly, the model of establishment encompassing interior decoration, furniture and objets d’art started by Francesc Vidal took root and was copied by others. The most obvious example is that of Lluís Folch, who reconstituted his business activity before a notary in 1883 in order to engage in the construction and sale of luxury furniture, “being able to extend his business to include the exhibition and sale of art.” This he did with an exhibition of paintings by Parera and Torrescassana and sculptures by Nobas and Atché. Thus, it became ever more common to see the windows of all kinds of shops in the city centre being used in the same way. Victor Balaguer, for example, recalled having acquired a painting by Salvador Mayol, at the time thought to be a Flaugier, from a tailor in El Call (the Jewish quarter). In fact, they could be anything from confectioners, a notable example being Pere Llibre, to tailors, hardware stores and hairdressers: 

1879. In the hairdressing salon of the Pasaje de Bacardí one finds exhibited a portrait painted by Mr. Torrescasana, which is one of the best pictures to have flowed from the brush of our compatriot.¹⁵  

1884. Messrs. Petit have opened a store of painted wallpaper in the Carrer del Pi. In their windows appear a picture of Venice painted by don Joseph Maria Marques, two landscapes of Arbucias from the brush of don Genis Codina, and two clay sculptures representing Louis XI and a female snake charmer, to complete a pretty exposition of their new collection of wallpapers.¹⁶  

What interest could a wallpaper store have in exhibiting a painting? In this case it is clear: the picture became the excuse for announcing the arrival of a collection of wallpapers that otherwise would not have been mentioned in the newspapers. The exhibition could therefore have been motivated both by a desire for press coverage and to attract the attention of passers-by. In any case, it was an arrangement that benefited both artists and retailers. 

It has often been said that Sala Parés was the first house of exhibition and sale of paintings, the first and only art gallery in the Barcelona of the 1800s. Nowadays, we know that this claim must be examined more carefully. Nevertheless, it is true that Sala Parés became the leading establishment in the city during the 1880s and 1890s, as well as the main trader and exhibitor of late 19th century paintings and a centre of attraction for the best painters and wealthier bourgeoisie. 

The origins of the Parés establishment were as a business selling prints, engravings, frames and artists’ materials, opened in 1840 by Joan Parés. Initially it was not a shop that stood out within the sector, nor has it been confirmed as the first to exhibit artwork. So, wherein lies the source of its success? Can Parés was the first private establishment where it was decided to allocate a space for the periodical and continuous exhibition of work produced by painters and sculptors in the city. This occurred in 1877, three years before Bassols set up in carrer d’Avinyó and five years before the gallery El Arte opened its doors. Next to his old framing and mirror shop, on 13 March 1877, Joan Baptista Parés opened an exhibition space with natural overhead light, a true innovation in the city. Enric Galwey recalled how during his student years at the Llotja School he considered this first space as a benchmark for the city: 

When I studied painting at Llotja, in 1883, Joan Baptista Parés was already organizing exhibitions of painting and sculpture in the small room, the only one there was then, and in which the most renowned painters exhibited their work each week. Vayreda, Martí i Alsina, Armet, Enric Serra, the Masrieras and Simon Gómez, and the subsidised from Rome, brought life to art in that period: the only spiritual spark Barcelona enjoyed, because this city was completely orphaned from the official Museums. Emerging from the dark and gloomy Llotja classrooms in a daze, we went to the Can Parés to breathe sincere art.¹⁷  

In the late 1870s, thanks to Monter, Bassols, Vidal and Parés, the panorama began to change. Sala Parés marked the starting point for art galleries as we now understand them and, in this sense, there were some very significant articles, such as the Carles Pirozzini piece published in La Renaixensa in the summer of 1879 under the title Breus consideracions sobre lo Renaixement de las Belles Arts Catalanes (Brief Thoughts on the Renaissance of Catalan Fine Arts). In a matter of twenty years, the situation went from the “Death of Fine Arts” announced in El Café to complete rebirth. This change was the result of many different factors, but all intertwined, from the industrial wealth that developed around Barcelona to the consolidation of the cultural movement of the Renaixença, the urban growth of the Eixample and the emergence of a new bourgeois class in need of a legitimizing art. In the same way that Francesc Vidal chose to respond to the demand by specializing in the field of de luxe artistic industries, virtually unprecedented in Catalonia, Joan Baptista Parés did the same in the art trade. Thus, in 1884, Sala Parés made the definitive leap towards consolidating its business by opening a large exhibition hall, also in the Carrer de Petritxol. That year, Vidal had abandoned the business of selling and exhibiting paintings and sculptures so that, from then on, Sala Parés eclipsed all other similar ventures. 

From the hegemony of Sala Parés to the new galleries in the Eixample

Senyor Parés’s new space was officially opened on 15 January 1884 in the presence of the Prince and Princess of Bavaria, the Mayor of Barcelona and the Lopez and Güell families, known as the “transatlantics”. The premises covered an area of 260 m2 with twelve-metre high ceilings, and from the inauguration, a large three-metre skylight and several sections desdicated to the exhibition primarily of sculptures and paintings. 

The type of work on display was heterogeneous, mainly of realist, modernista (Catalan art nouveau) and postmodernista painters, all interested in gaining recognition and promotion. Besides the so-called “extraordinary exhibitions” held annually, the gallery organized other remarkable exhibitions, like those of Rusiñol-Casas-Clarasó, when they had recently returned from Paris in the years 1890, 1891 and 1893, and it also served to introduce the general public to young artists like Picasso and Nonell. Similarly, it organized group exhibitions for members of organizations like the Cercle Artístic, the Cercle de Sant Lluc and the Societat Artística i Literària. It also welcomed other cultural activities such as concerts, raffles, charity exhibitions and social gatherings.¹⁸  

Despite the hegemony of Sala Parés, throughout the 1890s a number of establishments opened that fell into the category of something in between a gallery and an auction house, and they were known as sales “hotels” and “salons”. Between 1890 and 1893, the Hotel de Ventas operated as an establishment cum exhibition owned by the society Crédito Artístico, Industrial y Agrícola, directed by industrialist Josep Bordas. The premises, which opened on 15 March 1890, were at 8 Carrer de la Portaferrissa, near the Carrer de Petritxol in the area that was becoming the epicentre of art exhibition and sales. The decor of the place was outstanding, with artistic direction and painting by Ramon Padró, and Frederic Homdedeu responsible for the sculptures. Like all other similar premises, it was illuminated both day and night. There were daily public auctions held there and a permanent exhibition of paintings by artists such as Ribera, Meifrèn, Rusiñol, Galofre, Llimona and Tamburini, as well as sculptures and trinkets. Thus, the Hotel de Ventas became an important meeting point for artists and art lovers in the early 1890s; artistic chronicles highlighted this establishment along with Sala Parés as the most desirable venues to visit in Barcelona. 

In April 1890, an article in the pages of L’Avens declared: “It seems that the existence of two establishments dedicated to the exhibition of artwork in Barcelona has spawned a local artistic movement. Indeed, since our last edition there have been new developments at Can Parés and the Hotel de Ventas attracting the public.”¹⁹ At the same time, other enterprises sprung up hoping to follow in their footsteps. Within months, the same publication reported that at 11 and 13 Carrer del Portal de l’Àngel, “A new establishment has opened for the cultivation and study of fine arts and photography, with an exhibition space annexed to it, in the style of Can Parés and the Hotel de Ventas.”²⁰  

The second major establishment for sales and auctions opened at 30 Carrer de Fontanella. Known as the Salón de Ventas, it was also decorated by Ramon Padró and opened in March 1892, with two large showrooms for displaying works on sale to the public: paintings, reproductions, sculptures, furniture and objets d’art. A year later it relocated to the former site of the Hotel de Ventas, at 8 Carrer de la Portaferrissa, in order to capitalize on the better lighting and conditions of those premises. To mark the inauguration, a major exhibition was prepared featuring works that Mateu Balasch had brought from Rome, as well as a large number of works by the most recognized artists. Spaces like these offered the possibility of seeing a wide variety of works and, sometimes, of seeing collections before they were broken up, which often happened soon after a collector had passed away. 

From the mid-1890s, the Rovira²¹ establishments gained importance on the art enthusiasts circuit. On 19 October 1895, Sr Rovira, who, according to the chronicles of the time, was a well-known trader in objets d’art, opened the Alhambra at 25 Passeig de Gràcia, an establishment dedicated to the exhibition and sale of oil paintings by contemporary artists, such as Urgell, Casas, Brull, Masriera, Roig i Soler and Cusí, among others, and de luxe items. Three years later, the Rovira brothers opened a new exhibition space at 5, 7 and 9 Carrer dels Escudellers, where the same artists could again be found, including Casas, Mas i Fontdevila, Graner, Rusiñol, the Urgells, the Masrieras, etc. Joaquim Cabot predicted that they would be successful if they maintained such a high level of artistic quality, and not only among the public but also with buyers: “Not only will they receive visits from the public, who go there expressly, but also from intelligent buyers and wary buyers that have learned the lesson of buying a pig in a poke.”²² This was an opinion shared by Marià Pidelaserra in a commentary in the handwritten magazine Il Tiberio, although he did not like the place, finding it too small.²³ Before the turn of the century, the Rovira brothers had decided to separate the businesses: Vicenç continued with the gallery in the Carrer Escudellers, and Pere opened up in the Carrer de Ferran, under the same name. 

Exhibition reviews and reports and arts announcements from around 1900 focussed on the Sala Parés and the Saló Rovira, both its Carrer de Ferran and Escudellers locations, as had occurred previously with the Parés and Hotel de Ventas. It should not be overlooked, however, that there were others, such as Casa Mauri, initially at 80 Carrer dels Escudellers, and Can Cuspinera, a venture launched in 1896 by Gabriel Cuspinera in the old premises of Pere Llibre’s shop in Carrer de Ferran. 

From the turn of the century, yet more galleries and art spaces were emerging, many of which first opened in the old centre and later relocated to the Eixample district. Outstanding enterprises included those of Santiago Segura, Claudi Hoyos and Josep Dalmau, as well as the Sala Gaspar and the Sala Reig. 

Santiago Segura converted the premises of Faianç Català in the Gran Via, an objets d’art business created by his uncle in 1891, into an exhibition space, which became the home for the noucentistes. In 1915, its successor emerged in the form of the Galeries Laietanes, also a Segura venture.²⁴ For their part, Hoyos & Esteva, later Hoyos, Esteva & Company (1903) and later still Esteva, Figueras & Successors of Hoyos (1905), opened an establishment in November 1900 for decorative objets d’art, where artworks were also exhibited, initially at 7 Carrer del Paradís, and subsequently relocated to Carrer del Cardenal Casañas and then Carrer de Santa Anna. Simultaneously, Josep Dalmau, painter and leading promoter of the avant-garde in Catalonia, founded the Galeries Dalmau in the Carrer del Pi in 1906. Relocated to the Carrer de la Portaferrissa in 1910 and later to the Passeig de Gràcia, it became one of the most representative exhibition spaces of the early 20th century. The Galeries Dalmau, like the Galeries Laietanes, were distinguished during the 1910s and 1920s by great diversity in their exhibitions, represented by both the noucentistes as well as artists of the avant-garde. Notwithstanding, there were other important and permanent exhibition spaces that were set up in the Eixample district during the first decade of the 20th century that ought not be overlooked. These include, for example, the Sala Gaspar: from its initial glass, mirrors and frame store it relocated in 1909 to 323 Carrer del Consell de Cent. Another space where Barcelona residents could enjoy art, also in the Eixample, was Casa Reig, at 27 Passeig de Gràcia, known to have existed from 1907 and which specialized in the exhibition and sale of ancient and modern art. 

We said at the beginning of this piece that Barcelona had outstanding art exhibitions, annual and periodic, historic and important, such as all those held at the Palau de Belles Arts, from its first exhibitions in 1891 and 1894 through to the 5th International Exhibition of Fine Arts in 1907. In this respect, to complete the panorama of leisure spaces where exhibitions could be seen in the modernista era, it is important to identify and assess the existence of other centres and institutions, now centenarian, such as the Ateneu Barcelonès, the Cercle Artístic, the Cercle de Sant Lluc and the Cercle Eqüestre. There was also the Saló de La Vanguardia, and the famous bar Els Quatre Gats in the Carrer de Montsió, a place where both group and individual shows could be seen, including Picasso’s first exhibition. Similarly, as occurred in the 1870s and 1880s, the people of Barcelona continued to have access to artwork in locations not intended for exhibitions; during research some surprising examples came up, such as a show held in 1892 at the Gimnasio Catalán, which had artists and enthusiasts among its members: “Thus, it is not surprising that as if by magic an exhibition appeared, installed in the fencing hall and comprising quite a number of pictorial works, some of great merit.”²⁵  

In short, during the second half of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th century, Barcelona gained many exhibition spaces, first being established in the Ciutat Vella and then in the Eixample. Many of these locales initially began as framing and furniture shops that were later converted into art spaces, while from the end of the 19th century they were being directly established for the purposes of art exhibition and sales. The variety was enormous, with the number of small premises and mixed businesses that found their way to exhibiting art numbering more than a hundred, here only the most recognized have been mentioned. There is no doubt that the revival of fine arts to which Carles Pirozzini referred in 1879 had become a new reality by the turn of the century, with permanent art spaces and periodic exhibitions on offer, both collective and individual, which had the support of distribution networks and a now consolidated infrastructure. 

1. The article is largely based on several previous studies that have dealt with this subject from different points of view. Principally: Joan A. Maragall, Història de la Sala Parés, Barcelona, Selecta, 1975; Jaume Vidal i Oliveras, Josep Dalmau: l’aventura per l’art modern, Manresa, Fundació Caixa de Manresa and Angle, 1993; Andrea A. Garcia i Sastre, Els museus d’art de Barcelona. Antecedents, gènesi i desenvolupament fins a l’any 1915, Barcelona, Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 1997; Jaume Vidal i Oliveras, Santiago Segura (1879-1918): una història de promoció cultural, Sabadell, Museu d’Art de Sabadell, 1999; Helena Batlle i argimon, “Exposicions i galeries d’art”, in Francesc Fontbona (Dir.), El Modernisme, Vol.IV, Les arts tridimensionals. La crítica del Modernisme, Barcelona, L’Isard, 2003, pp. 233-252; Carme Hueso, Aparadors d’art: una aproximació a la història del galerisme a Catalunya: dels inicis a la creació del Gremi de Galeries d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona, Gremi de Galeries d’Art de Catalunya, 2006; Carmen Riu de Martín, “Les exposicions d’art a Barcelona durant el Sexenni (1868-1870)”, in Ramon Grau (Coord.), El tombant de 1868-1874, Barcelona, Ajuntament de Barcelona, 2009, pp. 171-181, Coll. “Quaderns d’Història”, No. 15. Other useful volumes: Antònia   Montmany, Montserrat Navarro and Marta Tort, Repertori d’exposicions individuals d’art a Catalunya (fins a l’any 1938), Barcelona, Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 1999, Coll. “Memòries de la Secció Històrico-Arqueològica”, No. 51, and Antònia    Montmany, Teresa Coso and Cristina López, Repertori de catàlegs d’exposicions col·lectives d’art a Catalunya (fins a l’any 1938), Barcelona, Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 2002, Coll. “Memòries de la Secció Històrico-Arqueològica”, No. 59. Also, for precise data regarding the opening, relocation and identification of places, see the database on leisure spaces, GracmonDocs, available through the GRACMON research group website: www.ub.edu/gracmon. 

2. Flama [Joaquim Folch i Torres], “L’Historia de cân Parés”, from the art pages of La Veu de Catalunya, No. 96 (19 October 1911). 

3. Joan Brull, “Notas d’art. Saló Parés”, Joventut, No. 54 (21 February 1901), p. 147. 

4. La Renaixensa, No. 3088 (1-II-1886), p. 691. 

5. “La muerte de las Bellas Artes”, El Café, 30 September 1860, p. 3. 

6. Diario de Barcelona, No. 95 (4 April 1896), p. 4027. 

7. In 1855 they relocated to the Carrer de Ferran and a decade later, moving for the last time, to the Passeig de Colom. 

8. These establishments were initially classified under the professional category that the delegation of the Treasury delimited under “Retailers of paintings and prints” from the 1840s. 

9. Asociación para el Fomento de las Exposiciones de Bellas Artes. Reglamento, Barcelona, Imprenta y librería de Verdaguer, 1866. 

10. Diario de Barcelona, No. 213 (1 August 1886), p. 8924. 

11. Eudald Canibell, “L’Exposició Pares”, L’Avens, No. 23 (31 January 1884), p. 135. 

12. Gaietà Cornet Mas, Guía de Barcelona. Edicion de 1877, Barcelona, Librería Eduardo Puig, 1876, p. 64. 

13. Diari de Barcelona, No. 120 (29 April 1880), p. 5097. 

14. La Renaixensa, No. 815 (6 May 1882), p. 2796. In late 1884, the gallery "El Arte" relocated to 26 Plaça de Santa Anna. 

15. El Diluvio, No. 24 (5 March 1879), p. 596. 

16. La Renaixensa, No. 4146 (30 October 1887), p. 6467. 

17. Enric Galwey, El que he vist a can Parés en els darrers quaranta anys, Barcelona, Sala Parés, 1934, p. 12. 

18. For more detail see Joan A. Maragall, Història de la Sala Parés,  op. cit. 

19. L’Avens (2nd epoch), No. 4 (30 April 1890), p. 96. 

20. L’Avens (2nd epoch), No. 8 (31 August 1890), p. 199. 

21. In the press, the name appeared as both Rovira and Robira. 

22. J. C. y R. [Joaquim Cabot], “Notes d’art”, La Veu de Catalunya, No. 6 (6 February 1898), p. 43. 

23. M. del Tupí [Marià Pidelaserra], “Sala Parés y Comp.”, Il Tiberio, no. 27 (1 January 1898), p. 3. 

24. For more detail see Jaume Vidal i Oliveras, Santiago Segura. . ., op. cit. 

25. La Vanguardia, 18 May 1892, p. 3. 

“Relax and have your picture taken”: photography, between fun and obligation

M. Santos García Felguera and Núria F. Rius

For Pep Parer

Among the many borrowings that Catalan has made from the photographic lexicon, one popular expression met with particular success in Barcelona in the first quarter of the 20th century: “Posa’t tranquil i fes-te retratar”, or, “Relax and have your picture taken.”¹  

The saying has its origins in the period around the beginning of the 20th century when photography was still a technological and visual novelty, and many people were “photograph virgins”, as Sempronio puts it in his book Barcelona pel forat del pany (Barcelona through a keyhole). The fact is that photography, although it arrived in the city in 1839, remained for many decades a practice almost exclusively in the hands of professional portrait photographers. Even so, it was to be with amateurs –industrialized, cosmopolitan and wealthy– that the Arcady of photography developed, where exposing a plate was synonymous with fun and creative freedom, far removed from the rules and standards representative of the time. Nevertheless, social imperative on the part of the client, necessity for the professional portrait artist, and free time for enthusiasts –as free as it could be when it came to creation– came together to create a risk of exploitation for workers in photographic studios, from adults to children and including women. Ultimately, in the Barcelona of 1900, photography was an ambivalent exercise and experience falling into a category somewhere between fun and obligation. 

The portrait artist

Previously a soldier, barber, language teacher or painter, among other occupations, the portrait artist was a new professional in the image business which first emerged in Barcelona sometime in the 1840s, shortly after photographic technology arrived in the city in November 1839. Firstly, due to technical issues, namely the need for extended exposure time, and secondly as a matter of visual tradition, with the strong influence painting exerted on photography, the latter found its first field of commercial exploitation in portraiture. Consequently, the first type of professional photographer was called, for some decades, a retratista, or portrait artist, with studio sets as the main area of work. The opportunity for a wider range of society to possess their own image, emulating the noble status of painted portraits, along with a gradual reduction in the price of photographs and the speed of execution, led to the development of an industry that in Barcelona, by around 1860, comprised some thirty photographic studios, a number that was to grow steadily well into the 20th century. Antoni Fernández and Anaïs Tiffon, known as “Napoleon”, Rafel Albareda and Manel Moliné, Franck de Villecholle and Alexandre Wigle, Josep Hostench, Gustavo Larauza, Antoni Rodamilans, Joan Cantó, Marcos Sala, Emili Morera, Ramon Roig, Joan Rovira, Joan Martí, Narcís Novas and the Ventura, Unal, Areñas, Esplugas, Mariezcurrena, Audouard, Matarrodona and Partagàs families were some of the names that dominated the portrait business in 19th-century Barcelona, which was centred around the Ramblas and the Pla de Palau at first, and later the Plaça de Catalunya and Carrer de Pelai. 

The possibility of having one’s portrait taken in a studio run by a woman also existed; they were not common, but there were some. Most of these women were widows of photographers who continued to work under the name of the deceased until their children joined the business, which would then become “Canton’s Widow and Sons”, for example. Other times, though even less frequently, they were the mothers, daughters or sisters of photographers, like Margarita Miret and Maria Hostench. In the 1870s, you could have chosen between the studios of Flora Casulleras, Margarita Miret or Eulàlia Morera; at the end of the decade, Teresa Archs or Maria Sánchez, and in the early 20th century, Petronila Bosch. Some of them, including the first to use daguerreotypes, offered photography lessons; one example of this was Carmen León de Sala in 1874, who taught young ladies in her studio, at home or in schools, “Applying photography to art, needlework, embroidered handiwork and portraits.”²  

Far from the creative universe so identified with the arts, the element most typical in the portrait artist’s life was routine, given the standardization of production. Santiago Rusiñol described the photographer, in an attempt to highlight the miserable dimension of the trade, as, “The professional who feels his life slipping away, monotonous as an endless plain [. . .] with a total lack of feeling to lift the spirits,”³ a situation that photographers like Lewis Carroll and Félix Nadar were already complaining of in the 1860s and 1870s,⁴ and that the portrait artist Pau Audouard, despite being one of the most acclaimed of the period in Barcelona, confirmed from experience with a famous article published in 1906 in the magazine Graphos Ilustrado.⁵ Monotonous and recalcitrant, the profession of the portrait artist also meant dealing with non-payment by clients, a common occurrence at the time. A story set in the studio of Rafael Areñas entitled “Un retrato” (A Portrait) by Fialdro, a writer and portrait photographer, provides first-hand knowledge of some of the hardships suffered by photographers, such as the patience they needed to accommodate customers’ whims or the ability to listen to conversations of no interest, “just like a hairdresser or confessor”. Still, the most significant problem was that many clients left without paying.⁶ (Fig. 1) 

The vicissitudes of the professional photographer’s life were the subject of bitter satires by caricaturists of the time, and in some cases it was photographers who also worked as cartoonists that depicted their own craft through the lens of humour. One well-known example is the article “La Retratomania” (Portrait-mania) written by Manuel Moliné, with a caricature of French photographer Franck catching a defaulter and Antonio “Napoleon” Fernández in the background taking portraits in the Emperor’s bicorn hat.⁷ It is not the only one, however, as publications such as Lo Xanquet and La Esquella de la Torratxa included others that often reflected the same setbacks. 

That being said, the portrait photographers also knew how to have their own fun in the studio. The possibilities for representation which photography offered led many professionals to spend part of their free time making self-portraits, in a playful exercise of dressing up in costumes to emulate known personalities, far removed from the image of a classic portrait artist in his typical hat.⁸ Similarly, this game was linked to the relationship that photography maintained with theatre throughout the 19th century. Beyond the strong correlations between the studio and the stage and the frequent act of sharing the same models,⁹ the truth is that many professional photographers were great fans of the theatre, and in some cases even wrote dramatic pieces. This passion later, gave rise to the cinematographer, as in the case of Antoni Esplugas, an avid fan according to historian Miquel Porter i Moix.¹⁰  

The customer

There was a strong sense of ceremony about having one’s portrait taken, which converted the experience into a situation of serious gravity. First of all, the subject underwent physical suffering, as the inevitable ascent to the glass-enclosed rooftop studio required climbing several flights of stairs. Having reached the rooftop, of course, one was then exposed to the weather conditions typical of winter or summer, so photographers installed all kinds of facilities to attract more customers, making their galleries more comfortable and better acclimatized to winter, or putting benches on the landings, “so that all people, however delicate their health may be, could comfortably ascend to the photographer’s studio.”¹¹ Secondly, the subjects found themselves before the mystery of the camera and the new reality of the photographic image, which provoked situations like that which Heribert Mariezcurrena explained to his contemporaries, whereby one day, as he turned away to let his client pose quietly in front of the lens for the few seconds required, this person stood up, advanced stealthily and stood in front of the lens, and stared into it trying to figure out what was hidden inside.¹² Last, but not least, remained each customer’s acceptance of his or her own physiognomy. 

Each photographic studio catered to a social and economic stratum. In 1900, a high-ranking military family probably would have gone to Napoleon studios,¹³ with a horse drawn carriage, entering through a wide doorway into a garden ready for equestrian portraits. This family would have been received at the foot of the stairs by “Old Napoleon”, Antoni Fernández, with his impeccable suit, polite manners and somewhat old-fashioned gallantry. He performed the honours of the house, but practical matters would have been taken care of by “Young Napoleon”, his son Emili. After a portrait by the carriage, or perhaps on horseback, all went inside, passing through luxurious rooms with period furniture and photographs of all shapes and grand dimensions, framed like paintings, lining the walls or in small frames on the side tables. 

To honour such illustrious visitors, the photographers would show them the main rooms of the house that were not strictly public, such as the director’s office or the painting studio where the photographs, placed on easels, received the colour still denied them by the technology of the time. After preliminary grooming, customers posed in one of two magnificent glassed-in galleries that received direct sunlight, with an object reflecting their status: an armchair or a side table, and in front of a curtain (such as those used in painting) or a tapestry of antique character. For portraits of children, photographers used a designated gallery, also glassed-in, with cardboard and toy horses. For those of around one year of age, someone stood behind them to discreetly hold them and keep them still, but sometimes an indiscreet foot revealed its presence from below a curtain. Napoleon gave the instructions, but it was an operator who handled the camera, although, if it were the portrait of a commander in chief and his family, or of the civil governor or other high-ranking military officer, or a bishop, a count, a marquis, an industrialist, a mayor, a concert musician or winner of the Jocs Florals . . .  perhaps he would take care of it personally. Some days after a portrait session, as well as the prints provided in beautiful envelopes imprinted with the house crest, all Barcelona could see the life-size portraits, probably hand-coloured, in the main showcase window the studio maintained in the Carrer de Ferran, next to the church of Sant Jaume. Here people stopped to look at and comment on the pictures that were changed every week.¹⁴  

Apart from Napoleon, Pau Audouard was the other photographer in the city who had a so-called “equestrian” studio, the dimensions of which, together with direct access from the street, allowed portraits including carriages, furniture and even pianos, in addition to large groups of people. It was his establishment on the Gran Via where a good many of the Barcelona elite, particularly architects, writers and musicians, went to have their pictures taken.¹⁵  

If the person wanting a portrait was “Lola la Sevillana” or “Monsieur Bertin,” a cabaret star or quick-change artist, and actress or a singer that had come to Barcelona to work at the Teatre Principal, they would most likely have entered through the neighbouring door and climbed the stairs to the top floor where there was a studio that can still be seen from the street today. In 1900, it was run by Félix Laureano de los Santos, a Filipino photographer based in Barcelona, and five years later the owner was a woman, Emilia Sebastià Silva, also born in the Philippines, who worked with her husband, the writer Miquel Figuerola Aldrofeu, known as “Fialdro” for photography-related tasks.¹⁶ Or it was also possible to cross the Rambla and be photographed in Antonio Esplugas’s studio located in a building opposite the theatre. 

Even though the figure of a “peasant” and his visit to the studio, with all the unfortunate resulting consequences, was one of the most fruitful scenes for humorous literature of the period,¹⁷ the truth is that men who were artisans, sold fruit at the market or dragged a cart through the streets, and women who washed clothes, scrubbed houses or worked in factories were hardly to be seen in portrait studios, as they simply had not the money even for the cheapest of photographs. If, however, by a stroke of luck or very special circumstance they did, it would have been to one of the most humble and cheapest studios in the city they went, such as the ‘fake’ “Napoleon I”, “II” or “III” [sic], which took advantage of the fame of the original to make their name, camouflaging the Roman numerals on their signs in barely visible type.¹⁸ (Fig. 2) There was only one exception for this social class: wet nurses, whose portrait was often taken holding the child whom they breastfed or cared for, but never with their own children. All galleries have left us images of these women who accompanied infants in their daily lives, even in the photographer’s studio. Evidently, in families it was not the custom for the mother, either alone or with the whole family, to be photographed holding her baby.¹⁹  

Photograph by Napoleón IIII, Retrat d'una dona, Barcelona, c. 1900.

The amateur

The dialogue that appears to occur between the photographic motifs carved into the façades of the Casa Amatller and the Casa Lleó Morera, all the work of the artist Eusebi Arnau, reveals how photography had taken hold among the gentry of Barcelona.²⁰ Indeed, at the end of the century, coinciding with the rise of the great photographic studios, Barcelona saw the development of various initiatives aimed at promoting amateur photography. With the opening of retail outlets selling material, the creation of societies and the organization of exhibitions and competitions, along with magazine publishing, a positive climate for amateur photography was gradually being created. 

Although since the beginning of the photographic business there had been outlets in the city selling equipment and accessories, like the establishments for optical and physical instruments of Lluís Corrons and Francesc Dalmau,²¹ it was not until the last quarter of the century that a genuine retail network began to take shape. In this regard, professional photographers became the main suppliers of equipment, as some sold cameras of their own making or imported from abroad. Particularly active in this field were the Esplugas brothers. In 1887, from his studio in the Carrer de València, Laureà Esplugas sold a “pocket” apparatus designed by himself at a price of 25 pesetas.²² Not coincidentally, that year another of the Esplugas brothers, known as J. E. Puig, offered a 20-day crash course in photography.²³ The Exposició Universal de Barcelona in 1888 marked a boom in amateur photography over the months prior to the related contest and during the following years. Urban changes in the city, along with the various festivals held to celebrate the event, doubtlessly inspired a desire to immortalize the memory beyond the photographic work carried out by professional portrait artists. The extensive advertising of the period emphasized this, with publicity for the establishments of Francesc Arenas (5 Carrer de Regomir), the Busquets i Duran family (19 Carrer de Sant Pau), the Widow of Fernando Rus (68 Carrer de Sant Pau and 10 Carrer Espalter) and Sons of Josep Teixidor (3 Carrer de Regomir). These were all photography houses active throughout 1880, to which would soon be added new businesses answering the growing demand for materials by amateurs.²⁴  

Meanwhile, initial attempts at setting up photography societies in Barcelona were being made. A first effort took place in 1881 at the hands of painter and portrait photographer Ramon Roig, who called a meeting at his studio on the Carrer de la Princesa in March of that year.²⁵ With a turnout both “numerous and select”, it was agreed that the entity would take the name Sociedad de Aficionados a la Fotografía, but its life must have been short, given the absence of further news. It was followed in 1883 by the Sociedad Española de Aficionados a la Fotografía, although it would not be until 1891 that the first reasonably significant photography society was founded in Barcelona, the Sociedad Fotográfica Española, which grew out of a meeting between enthusiasts and some of the distinguished professionals of the city, including Pau Audouard, Antoni Esplugas and Adrià Torija, among others.²⁶ With the arrival of the new century, a number of important cultural institutions of the period, including the Cercle Artístic (1902), the Centre Excursionista de Catalunya (1904) and the Cercle Artístic de Sant Lluc (1905), founded their respective photographic departments.²⁷ It was a growing movement, similarly accompanied by the increasing involvement of prominent exhibition spaces in the city, such as the Ateneu Barcelonès, Sala Parés and the Saló de La Vanguardia, and coverage in publications like La Ilustració Catalana and Hojas Selectas, which displayed the photographic works of amateurs and organized competitions and exhibitions. 

Untitled, El Tiburón, 1866.

It is important to stress the link that existed between the lack of a lucrative dimension to amateur photographers’ work and the aesthetic possibilities for their images. Precisely because they were the result of a leisure activity and the imagination of the enthusiast, it was considered that the images had the seal of the artist’s temperament and disinterest appropriate to the world of art, as opposed to the routine commercial characteristics of portrait photographs, which limited professional practitioners of the period. It is, therefore, largely through amateur practice that the dominant cultural venues and publications of the time became interested in the new art of photography, making it an area of convergence for some of the major artists of the period, including Alexandre de Riquer, Santiago Rusiñol and Ramon Casas. 

The profiles of aficionados in Barcelona were diverse, as varied as they were in their primary careers. Industrialists, liberal professionals, architects and painters were the most common, producing photographs that could be broadly classified into three areas: travel and hiking, “art”, and anecdotal or domestic photography. Given the specific idiosyncrasies of Catalanism, as viewed through the lens of scientific and folkloric knowledge so well embodied by the activity of Centre Excursionista de Catalunya, photography applied to hiking and travelling was that which most prospered;²⁸ exemplified by Juli Soler, Josep Salvany, Joan Nonell and Lluís Llagostera.²⁹ Among the most cosmopolitan, key figures were the industrialists Antoni Amatller and Romà Batlló, and the scenographer Oleguer Junyent.³⁰ (Fig. 3) 

However, some devotees also resorted to photography for professional tasks. Probably the most illustrative case was the application of photography to architectural teaching during the period. This is demonstrated by the example of Lluis Domènech i Montaner, who was responsible for the installation of a photographic laboratory in the Escola d’Arquitectura de Barcelona in 1900, as he explained in the article, “En defensa de l’Escola d’Arquitectura” published years later in El Poble Català.³¹ Proof, once again, of the permanent contributions from professional and recreational fields to the world of photography. 

The workers

The photographic business in Barcelona went from family hands (the photographer, a son or brother, perhaps his wife, an assistant) in the 1850s and early 1860s to companies with growing numbers of paid employees in the 1880s and 1890s, with the same inherent problems that commonly affected expanding contemporary industries. Similarly, even a modest portrait studio, as well as the gallery and a small powder room for subjects to make themselves up in, would have a laboratory with a darkroom, an area for printing and enlarging and an archive of plates. In more luxurious studios the spaces and amounts of equipment multiplied. The variety of tasks involved was leading to diversification of the types of staff required, which included operators, retouchers and printers, who were often sought through press advertisements, as Rafael Areñas did in 1875: “Rafael Areñas photography requires a good printer, a young man for the front desk and girls to paste proofs.”³² As is clear from this text, women, as was also the case with child workers, had their specific place in studio work. While customers waited for their pictures to be taken or to collect portraits, in some studios they could see people retouching images, and they were usually women. The person who delivered prints to an important office would also most likely have been a woman, just as years before it would have been a woman who “packaged” a daguerreotype plate in a case, with frame and glass to protect it. 

The very structure of a photography gallery had implied risks. On the one hand, given the fragile construction of the glassed-in galleries located on the rooftops of buildings, the windy autumn weather in Barcelona was often a cause of major damage, as happened in 1887 at the studio of Antoni Esplugas in the Plaça del Teatre, where a worker suffered head wounds trying to salvage the photographic materials.³³ (Fig. 4) On the other hand, there was also the possibility of chemical accidents, “natural photographic disasters”, as Emili “Napoleon” Fernández referred to them in a letter to Apel·les Mestres,³⁴ that could result in explosions and fires in the laboratory, as happened in 1901 at his firm’s studio in the Plaça de l’Àngel.³⁵ In some instances, the accidents were fatal for workers, as was the case of the young Eduard Coll i Dusarens, who, having worked there from the age of 14, died at 26 in Rafael Areñas Tona’s studio.³⁶ Furthermore, the history of photography studios in Barcelona includes various episodes more appropriate to a film noir, with quite a few assassination attempts and mysterious deaths. Thus, for example, in 1867 when Joan Rovira (of Fotografia Rovira & Duran studios at 5 Carrer de la Ciutat) was found dead in a pond on Montjuic near Vista Alegre.³⁷ Or the instance when, at Fotografia Audouard in 1901, the employee Ignasi Gasset was threatened with being fired and violently attacked Gregori Armengol, the operator responsible for the studio.³⁸ This occurrence was repeated a few years later in the Fotografia Amer studio at 50 Carrer de Pelai, where the employee Mario Gabino, also having been fired, attacked the manager Enrique Martínez with sulphuric acid.³⁹  

Just as for those in the habit of going to mass, the ritual of going to “the photographer’s” on specific dates, often designated in the seasons of spring and summer, was pre-eminently assigned to Sundays. This created an obvious problem for studio workers vis-à-vis their weekly day of rest, and gave rise to demands which lasted many years and merged into those for the establishment of an eight-hour working day.⁴⁰  

The first photographic association of a syndicated nature on record in Barcelona was the Centro Artístico de Oficiales Fotógrafos, founded in January 1916. It was a platform designed to unite all the workers from the different establishments in the city in order to facilitate communication and ensure collective strength.⁴¹ The centre maintained constant contact with other similar platforms, such as the Asociación Benéfica de Dependientes de Fotografía de Madrid, which in 1917 pressured the government to publish a provision clarifying the Law on Sunday Rest of 1904 and under which photography establishments were exempted from compliance.⁴² The Barcelona centre was responsible for advising the various businesses in the city of the clarifications, and it created a monitoring committee to ensure correct compliance. This initiative, judging from the information published in its newsletter, did not prevent failure to comply, as was the case with the Amadeu photography studio.⁴³ Thus, although establishments such as Rafael Areñas Tona’s studio were of sufficient financial health to remain closed on Sundays, an attempt to solve the problem by designating an alternative day off during the week for “photography workers” was made, but this suggestion did not achieve full attainment of the right to rest either.⁴⁴  

Thanks to the scattering of information contained in newsletters preserved in the Arxiu Històric de la Ciutat de Barcelona (AHCB), we know that the Centro Artístico de Oficiales Fotógrafos proposed other projects, such as the formation of communal studios, calling guild members by studio to explain the policy programme of the centre, preparing common foundations of work. Ultimately many of these proposals were not carried out due to the suspension of guarantees arising from the state of war.⁴⁵ On the other hand, the centre produced other initiatives, like creating a “photography academy-workshop” to be subsidized by the City Council, the Diputació (provincial council), the Ministry of Public Instruction and the Ministry of Public Works, which would be directed by a renowned photographer; an educational project that would train “convinced artists”.⁴⁶ At the same time, they also engaged in specific struggles related to wage issues, for example, when in 1919 the printers and retouchers of Madrid were earning 45 pesetas while those in Barcelona were paid only 25.⁴⁷  

The physical gathering of workers also gave rise to pastimes. The centre organized lectures and trips to facilitate continued professional training, and, on their premises, from late 1918, weekly gatherings that led to an increase in member participation in activities, as evoked in an idyllic way by one member of the centre: 

My dear friend: the success has been, for its speed, far greater than we had imagined. Think of a large room that, for want of a name, could be half-café, half-billiard hall; here you see candlesticks, beyond which a group rehearse a classic play, on the wall the bulletin board of a Society under which a group of cheerful youths animatedly debate; the clatter of dominoes on a nearby table impedes the understanding of their words; an outrageous joke provokes loud laughter [. . .] it allows us to realize where we are and the class of people that so boisterously fraternize in such beautiful camaraderie . . . They are photographers.⁴⁸  

1. Nowadays the expression means “No cal comptar amb allò de què es parla de fer” [T.N.: Roughly translates as “Don’t worry about what people say they are going to do”.]: M. Teresa Espinal, Diccionari de sinònims de frases fetes, Barcelona, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona / Universitat de València / Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 2004, p. 432. 

2. “Señoritas. La profesora de Fotografía da lecciones a domicilio, colegios y en su casa, aplicando la fotografía à las artes, labores, industrias y retratos bordados . . .” was advertised at number 11 in the Carrer de Sant Oleguer: Diario de Barcelona, 13 December 1874, p. 12191. “We have received several photographic reproductions from the studios of doña Carmen León de Sala, who desires to teach photography to the mademoiselles…” [Trans. from the original Spanish]: Diario de Barcelona, 8 December 1874, p. 11963.  

3. Santiago Rusiñol, “Un fotógrafo de legua”, La Vanguardia, 29 January 1891, p. 5. 

4. Lewis Carroll, “A Photographer’s Day Out” (1860); Elizabeth Anne McCauley, Industrial Madness: Commercial Photography in Paris, 1848-1871, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1994, p. 356. 

5 .“My profession is utterly personal and monotonous at the same time. / The day begins with the portrait of the rubicund Doña Josefa; then the suckling infant in his little shirt; the girl dressed for First Communion; a classic family group, with the father, mother and four little kids, the youngest being two months old. After that the engaged couple, and so on goes the day; and the next day, another lot of the same kind of work”: Pau Audouard, “La profesión de fotógrafo”, Graphos Ilustrado, June 1906, p. 165. 

6. Miguel Figuerola Aldrofeu [Fialdro], “Un retrato”, in Cromos. Coleccio de cuadros en prosa satirichs, humoristichs, verts, y madurs, executats a la ploma, á una sola tinta y ab diferents tóns, Barcelona, Llibrería Espanyola de I. Lopez, 1887. Due to clients defaulting on payment, the studio of Fialdro and Emilia Sebastià was subject to eviction in 1909. 

7. El Café, 27 March 1859, pp. 4-5. 

8. Quentin Bajac, “Jeux de doubles”, in Le photographe photographié. L’autoportrait en France 1850-1914, Paris, Association Paris-Musées, 2004, p. 80. Recorded in the Barcelona social annals of the 1800s was an event where Pau Audouard and Pompeu Gener dressed up at the former’s studio as Rubens and the Marquis de Pescara respectively, and then stormed into a ball at the Teatre Líric in 1981 in costume. See Luis Cabañas, Cuarenta años de Barcelona 1890-1930, Barcelona, Memphis, 1944, p. 160; Màrius Verdaguer. Medio siglo de vida íntima barcelonesa, Barcelona, Barna, 1957, p. 30. 

9. Sylvie Aubenas, L’art du nu au xixe siècle: le photographe et son modèle, Paris, Hazan i Bibliothèque nationale de France, 1997. 

10. Miquel Porter i Moix, Adrià Gual i el cinema primitiu de Catalunya, 1897-1916, Bellaterra, Edicions de la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 1985, p. 32. Esplugas was an important collector of autographs, which he obtained from painters and writers in exchange for free portraits, according to La Esquella de la Torratxa: “Antoni Esplugas”, La Esquella de la Torratxa, 16 November  1828, p. 758. 

11. La Vanguardia, 24 November 1881, pp. 4-5. 

12. La Esquella de la Torratxa, [10 June 1898], p. 388. The Mariezcurrena story connected with a spectral consideration of photography that became classic of the period, as reflected in the experiences of Honoré de Balzac at the studio of the daguérreotypeur or narrated in the fiction of Jules Champfleury in his tale “La légende du daguérreotype” (1864). 

13. María de los Santos García Felguera, “Anaïs Tiffon, Antonio Fernández y la compañía fotográfica ‘Napoleon’”, in Locus Amoenus (Barcelona, Departament d’Art, Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona), No. 8 (2007), pp. 307-335, Online: http://ddd.uab.cat/pub/locus/11359722n8p307.pdf; Els Napoleon. Un estudi fotogràfic, Barcelona, Photographic Archive of Barcelona, Institut de Cultura, 2011. 

14. The press did so as well. Thus, El Noticiero Universal periodically informed of the new photographs hung in the window. 

15. Núria F. Rius, Pau Audouard, fotògraf retratista de Barcelona. De la reputació a l’oblit (1856-1918), Barcelona, Universitat de Barcelona, 2011, doctoral thesis. Online: www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/32063. 

16. María de los Santos García Felguera, “Postales y teatro: Miguel Figuerola Aldrofeu, Fialdro”, Revista Cartófila, No. 30 (December 2009), pp. 18-28. Online: http://desantacreuasantpau.blogspot.com/2011/09/postales-y-teatro-miquel-figuerola.html. 

17. See, for example, Lo Nunci, 18 August 1878, pp. 3-4: “A peasant entered a photographer’s studio, steady of pace and badly oriented.  /  – God bless you. Would it be you that takes portraits? / – At your service. / – Right, then. I have come here, in secret, because I received a letter from my wife, and I’m afraid to say, my mother-in-law died last Monday, God forgive me, and now my wife would like, if it’s no trouble, for you to make a portrait of the deceased, paying what it may cost, and when it is ready it should be sent to the village, and here you have the address; and try to do a good job, as if I am pleased by it, I may well write you to order one of each of us in the house who are still living. / – Ok, – said the portrait artist – But how do you expect me to make a portrait of someone I have never met, and know not even how she was? / – Ah, you’re right! Do you know what I’ll do? When I get back to the village I‘ll send you her identification papers, there you’ll find all the details”. Another anecdote following the same argument was “A ca’l retratista”, signed Pepet d’Esplugas, in Almanach de La Esquella de la Torratxa, January 1891, p. 101. 

18. The studio “Gran fotografía de Napoleón 1” of Porta and J. Comas was at 2 and 4 Carrer de Sant Pau, and “Fotografía Napoleon IIII” at 25 Rambla del Centre; from an anecdote in Luis Cabañas, Biografía del Paralelo, Barcelona, Memphis, 1945, pp. 27-28. 

19. Writer and politician Maurici Serrahima biographically evoked an experience of a wet nurse in a family photographic session at Pau Audouard’s studio, then on the ground floor of the Lleó Morera house: “I remember very well one time we went –around 1906– and that a portrait was taken of Joan and the wet nurse, Patrocinio, who looked very nice and was married to a Filipino, Heriberto Gulia, a waiter on one of the ships belonging to the Transatlántica, and that, while they were getting ready, Joan urinated on the wet nurse’s apron, but they did not notice, and when they printed the portrait, the stain was so obvious that they were obliged to crop the definitive portrait to just below the wet nurse’s waist [. . .] I know that the wet nurse was very upset, and that at home we laughed a lot.” Maurici Serrahima, Del passat quan era present, Vol. 2, Barcelona, Edicions 62, 1974, p. 265. 

20. We refer to the representations of a group of dogs playing with a camera on a tripod, the character that uncovers the lens of a detective camera and the image of a camera with bellows on the former; and the allegory of Photography – a female figure holding a camera of tiny dimensions – alongside others of the phonograph and electricity, on the latter. 

21. In the guide El Consultor of 1863, Lluís Corrons advertises himself as “Manufacturer of instruments of optics, physics, surveying, meteorology, printing, photography [. . .]”, while Francesc Dalmau sold “Photographic equipment for the most modern systems”: El Consultor, Barcelona, Narciso Ramírez, 1863, pp. 14 and 28. 

22. La Vanguardia, 5 February 1887, p. 788. Laureà Esplugas distributed his machine throughout Catalonia: Bajo Ampurdán, 21 August 1887. Cited in Emili Massanas, Fotògrafs i editors a les comarques de Girona (1839-1940), Girona, Diputació de Girona, 1998. 

23. La Vanguardia, 17 April 1887, pp. 2384-2385: “The exceptional photographer of this capital Don José Esplugas Puig, has just established in the Calle de Escudellers, number 89, 4th floor, 3rd door, large photographic studios that we recommend especially to enthusiasts, as in them Señor Esplugas, for the modest sum of 10 duros and in just twenty days, offers practical instruction in photography [. . .]”. J. E. Puig was a photographer who was very active in sales, as is demonstrated by the many advertisements he placed in the press from 1887 and throughout the 1890s. See, for example, El Noticiero Universal, 12 May 1890, p. 4:  “Photography enthusiasts / The way to save money and get good equipment for photography in perfect condition, is consulting, before purchasing anything, with the photographer J. E. Puig, No. 80, Calle Escudellers, corner of Calle Ancha. Enthusiasts welcome”.  

24. Going on data in the Riera Yearbooks, from these four establishments in 1896 there were a total of 20 in 1916: Anuario Riera. Guía General de Cataluña, Barcelona, Antonio López, 1896, pp. 270-271; Anuario Riera . . ., 1916, p. 559. 

25. The only news available is from the days immediately before and after the creation of the society; see La Renaixensa, 8 March 1881, p. 1481, and La Vanguardia, 6 March 1881, p. 3, and 8 March 1881, p. 17. 

26. El Noticiero Universal, 14 January 1891, p. 2. This initiative came from professional portrait artist Pau Audouard, who, through the press, called a meeting at his studio in Gran Via. 

27. María de los Santos García Felguera and Núria F. Rius, Xocolata, ciutat i pantorrillas. Fotografies de Carles Fargas i Bonell (1912-1938), Barcelona / Saragossa: CEC / Prames, 2011. 

28. Susanna Muriel, “Arxiu Fotogràfic del CEC”. In Susanna Muriel and Núria Téllez, Arxiu Fotogràfic del Centre Excursionista de Catalunya i Arxiu Històric del Centre Excursionista de Catalunya, Barcelona, Generalitat de Catalunya, 2011. 

29. Ricard Marco and M. Mercè Riera, La mirada del viatger: les Balears a les col·leccions fotogràfiques de la Biblioteca de Catalunya (1900-1935), Barcelona, Espai Mallorca, 2009; Ramon Barnadas, “Juli Soler, el primer gran pirineista-fotògraf del vessant sud dels Pirineus”, in Ramon Barnadas and Francesc Roma, Seduït per valls i cims. Fotografies de Juli Soler i Santaló (1865-1914), Barcelona, CEC, and Saragossa, Prames, 2011. 

30. Especially the latter two who published their photographs in albums: Batlló in De la China al Mar Rojo: recuerdos de un viaje por el Asia meridional (c. 1900), El Japón a la vista (1904) and Notas fotográficas tomadas por Roman Batlló en algunos de sus viajes (c. 1900); Junyent in his popular book Roda’l món y torna’l Born (1910). 

31. Lluís Domènech i Montaner, Escrits polítics i culturals 1875-1911, Barcelona, Diputació de Barcelona and La Magrana, 1991. The architect lamented: “The professors work when they can and when it suits them; not so the students. It would be useless pedantry to expect it. With eight-and-a-half hours of classes a day and the corresponding study could they go out to the laboratory afterwards? This must become a specialization. In any case, they don’t know enough chemistry. / At the laboratory I have developed and printed hundreds of plates” (p. 221).  

32. Diario de Barcelona, 9-, 10-, 11 July 1875. 

33. La Vanguardia, 8 September 1887, p. 5632. 

34. AHCB, Fons Apel·les Mestres, “Epistolari”, box 5, D. 52-12, AM C 1412r-v. 

35. La Vanguardia, 7 February 1901, p. 2: “Yesterday afternoon there was a threat of fire at the photographic premises of Señor Napoleón located at the Plaza del Ángel. After sounding the alarm several fire engines rushed to the place from Santa Catalina, San Gayetano and the Parque, and were followed by the carriages first to exit. There was no need to start their pumps, since the neighbours, before their arrival, were able to extinguish the fire that had threatened to expand rapidly, given the materials stored at the place”. 

36. M. F. V., “En Eduard Coll i Dusarens”, Boletín del Centro Artístico de Oficiales Fotógrafos, October 1918, p. 153. 

37. Diario de Barcelona, 26 October 1867, p. 9978. 

38. La Vanguardia, 7 July 1901, p. 3: “To the crimes of the past few days we must add another committed yesterday in the photography studio that Señor Audouard owns at No. 273 Calle de Cortes. / According to our news some time ago Señor Audouard engaged to work in his studios a young man named Ignacio Gasset y Saura, who had very good references. / Though his conduct was good, he had a slightly brusque and haughty nature and a somewhat nervous temperament. / This was the reason why, when Señor Audouard had reprimanded him for work-related issues some days before, Gasset answered the owner telling him he knew what he was doing. This response upset Señor Audouard and he considered firing him. The employee found out and yesterday afternoon, when he went to the studio, he faced the manager Don Gregorio Armengol y Asó, telling him he knew that they were going to fire him and that he was to blame. Grave insults followed these words. / Señor Armengol tried then to calm him down telling him that he had nothing to do with Señor Audouard’s decisions and therefore would he please refrain from making such accusations. Gasset grew angry and, pulling out a knife, rushed furiously at Don Armengol, stabbing him several times and then brandishing the weapon against himself, inflicting himself a terrible stab in the left side. / Señor Audouard, who was not at the establishment having felt somewhat ill that morning, went to the studio after receiving the news [. . .]”.  

39. La Vanguardia, 11 September 1913, p. 2. There were also romantic episodes, such as the “Disappearance of a youth”: “A complaint has been filed to the court, reporting the disappearance of a youth of seventeen years, son of the photographer Napoleon. / The family has received a postcard, with the stamp of the post office in the railway station, stating that an unknown person took the young man it is not known where. / Notwithstanding what the postcard says, it is believed to be a case of a love affair”: La Correspondencia de España, 13 January 1902, p. 2.  

40 . This reclamation was made from different studios all over the country. See Elisabet Insenser, La fotografía en España en el periodo de entreguerras 1914-1939, Girona, Ajuntament de Girona, 2000, pp. 225-227. 

41. Judging from the press, the association was conceived in December of the previous year. La Vanguardia, 22 December 1915, p. 6: “The organizing committee of the Centro Artístico de Oficiales Fotógrafos invites all industry associates to a meeting to be held today, at ten o'clock in the evening, at No. 88 Calle Marqués del Duero, to discuss the approval of statutes and election of the board”. 

42. However, the Royal Order of the Ministerio de la Governación of 25 May 1917 established that: “[...] workers employed on a Sunday must be only those strictly necessary to serve the public, print plates and develop them when, due to a lack of materials, this last operation must be performed immediately, for these are the only workers who are strictly necessary to justify this exception”; and, “The final precept of Article 17, which prohibits the employment of a worker for full shifts on two consecutive Sundays, will be applied rigorously, as will Articles 18 and 19 of the Regulations, which impose a duty of restitution during the week of any time worked on a Sunday, and grant workers who are not supposed to work on Sundays the necessary time to fulfil their religious obligations”. Taken from the Boletín del Centro Artístico de Oficiales Fotógrafos, August 1917 issue. 

43. J. Misterio, “El Descanso Dominical”, Boletín del Centro Artístico de Oficiales Fotógrafos, July 1918, p. 126. 

44. “Bofetada”, Boletín del Centro Artístico de Oficiales Fotógrafos, November 1918, p. 158. 

45. F. Barbosa, “Compañeros”, Boletín del Centro Artístico de Oficiales Fotógrafos, August 1919, pp. 221-222. 

46. F. B. G., “Luminosa idea”, Boletín del Centro Artístico de Oficiales Fotógrafos, August 1919, p. 224. See also Andreu, “Academias de fotografía”, Boletín del Centro Artístico de Oficiales Fotógrafos, June 1919, p. 209-210. 

47. See the agreements made between the Gremio de Fotógrafos and the association Arte Fotográfico de Madrid, in place from 5 May 1919, for the regulation of the working day, studio activity and wages according to professional category, classified in accountants and office workers, operators, enlargement retouchers, plate retouchers, printers, assistants, advanced apprentices and new apprentices: Boletín del Centro Artístico de Oficiales Fotógrafos, July 1919, pp. 219-220. 

48. Boletín del Centro Artístico de Oficiales Fotógrafos, December 1918, p. 166. 

ADDICTIONS

The quest for artificial paradise: images of morphinomania

Irene Gras

[. . .] beautiful Morphine, Siren sweet of voice, Fairy of the love for dreaming, Guardian of peace, and dulcet vision of rest [. . .] it was Her, she that extinguished life, she that brought terror.¹  

When Rusiñol wrote these words, in a story published in Pèl & Ploma in 1901, he did so inspired by the painful and intense personal experience of morphine addiction. Of course, his was not an exceptional case: morphinomania, as scientists of the time called the disease, was without doubt one of the most widespread and pervasive phenomena at the end of the 19th century. Not only did artists and the literary succumb, but also members of all levels of society, including politicians, military personnel, doctors, workers, prostitutes, women of affluence . . . In fact, during the years 1880-1890, the drug did not necessarily imply marginality or eccentricity, on the contrary, it was said: “Morphine is an excellent aid for conducting a ‘normal’ social existence, a professional and mundane life.”²  

The rule of the substance otherwise known as the fée grise, or “grey fairy”, began in 1870, just after the Franco-Prussian War. Morphine, the “miracle drug”, had been widely used by physicians of the German army, and within a few short years had been warmly received by the European population.³ The conquest of Indochina, conducted at the beginning of the French Third Republic –keeping in mind that opium use in the Far East dates back to the 17th century⁴ – certainly contributed to accentuating the fascination with this substance and its alkaloid derivatives.⁵ At first, enthusiasm was widespread among both doctors and patients: the drug’s narcotic and analgesic power was used to appease aches in both body and soul. In this regard, the intravenous method of administration was significant, as it facilitated the very rapid onset of the desired effects. The first to develop this technique was Dr Alexander Wood, who did so in 1853 in Edinburgh, administering morphine by hypodermic injection. Some years later in France, Dr Charles Pravaz pioneered injections with hand-held syringes, which bore his name and became very popular items among those affected, as it allowed administration of the drug in the comfort of one’s own home. The Pravaz syringe was small and manageable, with a needle of silver or gold that over time was made progressively thinner, making it increasingly easy to use. 

Precisely because of the ease with which the alkaloid could be consumed, its abuse became widespread, thus accentuating morphinomania, the unhealthy addiction that creates the need in sufferers for regular doses of the drug. It was then that the very same doctors who had been prescribing the drug first rang the alarm bells, warning that excessive use of morphine had given rise to an illness that threatened to reach catastrophic proportions.⁶ In fact, the concept of intoxication from taking drugs, that is, drug abuse, first emerged with the excessive consumption of this substance.⁷  

Advertisement for the New York Quinine and Chemical Works (1901).

The role that the pharmaceutical industry played in the spread of this habit must also be considered, as they launched aggressive advertising campaigns that aimed to demonstrate its supposed stimulating and therapeutic benefits. As shown by numerous examples, including an 1887 calendar, morphine could be consumed in many ways besides intravenous injection, as syrup, tablets and so on. One of the most popular formulas of the time was “Mrs Winslow’s soothing syrup”. It was a solution containing 65 milligrams of morphine per 28 grams of syrup, and it was stated to be a great help for mothers because of the sedative effect it had on restless children. The company that produced it devised various means of promoting the product, including the aforementioned calendar, cookbooks and cards. Of course, once the medical world discovered the dire consequences of addiction, advertisements began to proliferate that promised to cure morphinomania, often through other even more dangerous remedies, such as the administration of cocaine.⁸  

Within the artistic and literary circles of the time, morphine was widely used by symbolists and decadents. These characters, devoured by a “mortal fatigue of living”,⁹ more pernicious still than romantic fatigue, wished to excite the senses with all kinds of dangerous games, including monstrous loves, black magic, bestiality, necrophilia and, above all, drugs. They rapidly obtained all kinds of feelings, rare and refined, and allowed themselves to remain for extended periods in a sort of perpetual, artificial dream. Drug use, in effect, was quite extensive in intellectual circles from 1870.¹⁰ While opium, in the form of laudanum, and hashish were the drugs of Thomas De Quincey, Charles Baudelaire, Gérard de Nerval and Dante Gabriele Rossetti, the decadents inclined more towards absinthe, morphine, cocaine and ether.¹¹ The effects of each of these drugs were different, but they all contributed to the same goal. As Liedekerke described it: “Nirvanas of the ‘grey fairy’, cerebral exhilarations from ether, cocaine frenzies, the drugs sterilize existential ills and push worries away till tomorrow.”¹²  

This decadent attraction to morphine consumption spread beyond purely artistic circles, and into the social domain in France. At some gatherings, ladies even queued to receive an injection in an atmosphere of fun and refined perversity. As Jean-Marie Gerbault chillingly explains, “There unleashed then, in certain circles, a frenzy, a mad hunger for shots. The stylish concealed tiny golden syringes in their sleeves to make sure they wouldn’t miss a dose, even during visits. It was common to observe a guest abandon the table or disappear from the living room for a moment when their body demanded its next fix. Nobody was surprised by then; on the contrary, it was quite the done thing. The great drug addicts, known throughout Paris, even had the ostentation to inject in public, and some went about with a gold needle permanently inserted beneath dressings. Others, eager to maintain their reputation, injected pure water, so essential had it become to be perceived as decadent.”¹³  

Morphinomania, along with other addictions such as alcoholism, was one of the “vices” characterized as pathological in Barcelona society. Dr Max-Bembo, in his accurate portrayal in La mala vida en Barcelona (1912), also speaks, with pedagogical intentions and a desire for social reform, of the misery of the underworld and widespread sexual “deviations”, prostitution and compulsive gambling among the most “degenerate” sectors. His aim was to present a raw and stark look at vice, stripping it of the veil of fascination that had made it so attractive. To that end, he quoted a significant phrase from Benjamin Tarnoswsky: “The appealing aspect of vice, which favours the incitement of morbid depravity, must lose its charm when one realizes that vice, in its most violent incarnations, is the symptom of a pathological state”.¹⁴ Also interesting is that the study –in line with the work of Cesare Lombroso and Max Nordau– is dedicated to one of the writers who fell most deeply into the sordid margins of fin-de-siècle Barcelona: Juli Vallmitjana. 

From here on, we could cite an extensive repertoire of visual and literary images on the subject, from both Catalonia and the rest of Europe. Suffice to say, however, that within the local environment, depicting morphinomania remained an audacious act, given the reserve of the rather conservative Barcelona bourgeoisie. Practically speaking, there were only two artists who became involved: Hermen Anglada-Camarasa and Rusiñol. This was, however, in Paris: it was during one of their stays in the French capital that they produced the paintings described below. Each artist’s perspective, however, was quite different. While Anglada-Camarasa illustrates the observations of a flâneur fascinated by the most unhealthy and decadent elements of Parisian society to wander the boulevards by night, Rusiñol expresses the agony of suffering at the hands of his own addiction. In both cases, they produced some very striking images. 

Looking at La droga (c. 1901-1903), immediately one feels almost intimidated by the dark-ringed mind-blown stare the subject directs fixedly toward the viewer. Both the disturbing visage and diaphanous clothing give the figure a spectral appearance, common in many of Anglada-Camarasa’s works from this period. The character’s companion at the table, situated in the background, looks on at the woman like a doctor, as if carefully analysing the fatal effects of the drug on this “flower of evil” flourishing in the refined nocturnal gardens of Paris. An equally challenging pose is to be found in La morfinomane (1899) by Italian painter Vittorio Corcos. Here the sickness is irremissibly associated with the wild and threatening sexuality of the femme fatale, expressed through the half-open neckline, redness of the hair and wild bear skin on which she poses. 

In La morfinòmana (1902), Anglada-Camarasa returns to the subject of a woman of high social status sitting in a cafe. Despite a bold stare and the mannered contortion of the body, features that give her a menacing serpentine appearance, the hypnotic and indifferent expression directed toward the viewer –very reminiscent of the Paó blanc (1904)– suggests that the subject is still under the recent effects of morphine. Her cadaverous face, emerging from a dark halo, like that of the Dame au chapeau noir (1898-1900) by Georges De Feure, only serves to highlight the emerald green eyes and blood-red lips. Darkness spreads ominously around the figure, contrasting with the phosphorescent colours of the scene glimpsed behind. Through these morphinées, Anglada-Camarasa clearly expresses “the decadence of this sensual and refined aristocratic society”.¹⁵  

Raimon Casellas had already remarked upon this at the time, following an exhibition dedicated to the painter in late April 1900. The critic was the first to speak of the “emotion” and “confusion” caused by the Parisian works of the artist. These oils, Casellas declared, have no relation to the “pretentious” and “common” landscapes of the artist’s earlier work. The scenes of Paris nightlife are “sadly suggestive” paintings, a “painful expression of the tragedies of pleasure” in the modern world.¹⁶ Although Casellas was unable to refer to the two works mentioned above –they had not yet been painted– his words could have perfectly described their subjects: 

Ghost women or cadaverous ballerinas, they all carry death in the languor of their bodies, the palidity of their faces, in the extreme and horrible wideness of those eyes, which reflect the insomnia, the fever, the alcohol and the morphine!¹⁷

Also from France, Paul Besnard presents a stunning and vaporous image in his Morphinomanes (1887). Again the viewer is riveted by fixed and penetrating eyes, which seem to burn with the fever caused by the alkaloid. This same figure plays with a black plume under the watchful eye of her companion, who, in turn, adopts a languished pose suggesting the tranquilizing effects of the drug. 

Rusiñol also gave us a representation of two morphine addicts, as well as some stories centred on the theme of the fée grise. However, in his case, as we mentioned earlier, one must take into account the fact that he was an addict, as were the writers Stanislas de Guaita, Édouard Dubus and Laurent Tailhade. Before analysing these works, therefore, it is necessary to look at his illness, which brought him such comfort and so many afflictions. 

Firstly, it should be noted that the author’s taste for drugs did not arise from a desire for experimentation or escape, but from the prescription of medicine to alleviate physical pain. A similar case is to be found in Charles Baudelaire, who, beyond a possibly insatiable attraction to drugs, was obliged to take laudanum and other opium preparations –as well as hashish– to combat the frequent neuralgias and intestinal pain he suffered as a result of syphilis contracted during his youth.¹⁸ Neither of them, having developed a habit, was able to completely rid themselves of addiction, which probably came down to their character and reasons beyond purely physical dependence. Which is to say, addiction in itself has inherent psychological traits that are ultimately determining. Rusiñol’s personality, generally idealistic and sometimes quite depressive, may have played a fundamental role in the development of his fatal relationship with morphine. 

Regarding the evolution of his disease, Rusiñol suffered ferocious attacks of pain during a trip to Malaga in early 1896. As Josep de C. Laplana explained, “In leaps and bounds, morphine took control of Rusiñol’s will and destroyed him.”¹⁹ His addiction intensified progressively, to the point where his admission in the spring of 1899 to the Boulogne-sur-Seine sanatorium of Dr P Sollier became an absolute necessity. His brother Albert, who had also been through treatment for morphine addiction, took care of the expense. 

As a result of this experience, Rusiñol wrote two stories in which he spoke of his personal hell. These were the aforementioned “La casa del silenci”, published by Pèl & Ploma in 1901, and “El morfiníac”, reproduced in El Poble Català in 1905. 

The “casa del silenci” of the title is an isolated and deserted place, of a “funereal” and “diseased” whiteness, that addicts undergoing treatment, like Rusiñol, could observe from the sanatorium where they were detained. The patients, or “neurasthenics”, prisoners of an “incurable sadness”, were none other than . . . 

[. . .] those ill from morphine stupefied by the desperation of a desire they were unable to satisfy, an unquenchable thirst, a shore to which they never arrived, suffering at all hours from a yearning for rest, and anxiety for a calm dream state.²⁰  

La morfina de Santiago Rusiñol, Pèl & Ploma, Barcelona, September 1901. 

The “dying” creatures that inhabited this house are found in an even more deplorable state than the sanatorium patients: pale, spectral, “the colour of wax with purple lips as if poisoned by a mysterious kiss.” There was no longer any hope for them; they were the patients who had failed to overcome addiction and for whom only death remained. The struggle, for these characters, had been lost. And it certainly must have been a terrible struggle, given the power of the drug. Rusiñol explains the ambivalent nature of morphine in a highly suggestive description, which makes clear the feelings of attraction and rejection that the drug, personified in the figure of the femme fatale, provoked: 

The suicide balsam, nectar of good and evil, dulling life with the desire not to live it, the sick knew already that there was only one spirit that had that power; the spirit of Morphine, the spirit loved like a shadow of rest, and cruel like a torment that makes one dream of agony; that quenches the heart’s thirst and curses it by consolation; that numbs the fibres of the body and awakens those of the soul; that beautiful Morphine, Siren sweet of voice, Fairy of the love for dreaming, Guardian of peace, and dulcet vision of rest; that infamous Morphine, Courtier of Death, Protector from torment, Source of thirst and false and treacherous friend with lips of temptation and mouth of viper’s drool, and heart of panther’s blood [. . .] that macabre yellowness was from Morphine; that nervous fever that had the white walls shaking came from Morphine; it was Her, she that extinguished life, she that brought terror [. . .].²¹  

In 1905, Rusiñol was sufficiently distanced from the most critical period of his addiction to be able to relate his experience with the drug in detail, although he did so through the character of the anonymous “Morfiníac”. At the beginning of the story this character, a writer like Rusiñol, is immersed in the phase of total dependency: to feel inspiration he needed to consume, but a state of delirium and prostration would then follow the creative fever. Hence, the initial struggle against temptation was always lost: 

But, you will give me, morphine, the strength! Never mind that afterwards you kill me [. . .] What offspring we two will have! [. . .] He sat and, looking on the table, grabbed an extremity. Her! Temptress! The perverse one! [. . .] His gaze fixed on that little piece of glass, shining there crouched, with the colours of a poisonous flower, the reflexes of a salamander, the iridescence of a rainbow and the glitter of a beetle [. . .] And he took the loving wasp, and gave himself its sting. A sudden blaze of life ran through all his veins, up and up to reach his temples, and a delightful bath of calm left him serene, placid [. . .] Him, a refined man [. . .] who brought together in a single plane the mysticism of Verlaine with the sonority of Mallarmé and the force of Baudelaire, [. . .] with her, with the malign love, the wicked siren, the sweet lover, deceiving, he would write a page, just one, but they would both write it, staring fixedly at each other, kissing each other, poisoning each other, corrupting each other. And guided by the siren, he wrote one that was impeccable, splendid and serene, but it took ten years of his life. 

After the reaction, again came the dreaming.²²  

Finally, the morphinomaniac accepts his addiction as inevitable and decides to offer himself unreservedly to the enchanting drug, reaching the state of calm that precedes death. Unlike La lutte (1907) by Léon Daudet, here there is no recovery; the power of morphine overcomes the will of the protagonist, who would fit in perfectly well at “La casa del silenci”: 

I won’t leave you, morphine: I am yours, you have me now; now, although I wanted to, I could not. I already know you must kill me, that you will kill me little by little; but, the consolations you give me [. . .] I will die kissing you, adoring you, idolizing you. [. . .] The more venom the more comfort, and for more comfort, more venom [. . .] it was death that ended up making him live. [. . .] Full of tumours, covered in sores, and no longer finding where to infiltrate the body with death, it entered through the same wounds. 

Now he slept, dying of sleep; no longer with the will for anything but not to be; and as he was going slowly, slowly, the work, his work, lay there on the table to wrap up morphine.²³  

In 1901, Antoni Font had already described in all manner of gory detail the morphine addict’s experience the moment the drug is injected. It is not known whether the author was a habitual consumer of the drug, but in any case he had access to all kinds of references: real, artistic and literary: 

Surrounded by a vacuum that nobody filled, she gave it over to enjoying memories of childhood, and to forget what she was now, consciously delivered herself to the mortal pleasures of morphine, pleasures that would slowly lead to death, for her so desired [. . .] and she stabbed that needle into the flesh of her left arm... and stayed upright gazing at the beautiful whiteness of her very fine skin . . . and becoming pale . . . From time to time her body trembled convulsively, her lips lost their poppy colour and turned dark purple and dry, her breathing laboured and slow, her eyes closed under an irresistible weight, and without strength, completely flattened by morphine, slowly fell onto the spongy carpet, with her hands contracted, with her beautiful hair strewn like a skein of gold thread . . . and drawing on her lips a smile of supreme happiness.²⁴  

In 1885, for example, Marcel Malla de Bassilan accurately recreated the Countess Volnay’s consumption ritual in La comtesse Morphine (1885): 

Preparations completed, she kissed the little syringe decorated with rubies, which contained the forgetting of pain and solitude, and stretched out smiling on her bed, she pinched the skin of her calf and injected, between the flesh and the skin, the entire contents of the Pravaz syringe. [. . .] A great calm, an inexpressible well-being came over her after the anxiety of the preceding hours.²⁵  

Whatever the case, most probably, Font would have had the opportunity to see the two most famous paintings on the subject: Rêverie (La medalla) and La morfina by Rusiñol, both from 1894, which show the moments before and after taking the drug. It is difficult, in fact, to find examples in fine art that illustrate in detail the act of injecting morphine. One of the few works that do so would be La Morphinomane (1898) by Eugène Grasset, that shows, in blatant and shocking fashion, the moment a prostitute sticks a needle in her leg.  

Returning to Rusiñol, it is notable that when Rêverie (La medalla) and La morfina were exhibited in the 12th Exposició General at the Sala Parés in 1895, they were seen as very provocative. Firstly, because it was the first time the subject had been presented in Barcelona, and secondly, because many people were aware of Rusiñol’s addiction. Both works were displayed in the same setting, probably an austere room of the Quai Bourbon, and depicted, according to Vinyet Panyella, the same model, Stéphanie Nantas. When Rusiñol commenced painting La morfina, the young woman had arrived at his studio in ill condition and the artist proposed, “to reflect her state and give it the touch of morbid drama suggested by the title”.²⁶ He certainly achieved this; as described by Casellas, the final canvas depicted: 

[. . .] the morphinomaniac, lying in bed caught in an agonizing torpor, with her sharp face buried in the pillow, and a clenched hand gripping the sheets in convulsive contraction.²⁷  

The scene represented by Rusiñol could understandably evoke, as previously noted, the one recreated in Font’s “La morfinòmana”. In both cases the sick subjects, as a consequence of the effects of the drug, become prey to a kind of ecstasy that agitates their whole body. One can imagine what would have followed: something similar to that described by Stanislas de Guaita’s poem La morphine (1883):²⁸  

Finalement l’homme s’endort

Pour cuver l’extatique ivresse 

Qui l’enveloppe de paresse 

Et l’éblouit de songes d’or.²⁹

Stylistically, there are several aspects of note. Firstly, María López Fernández compared the pose of Rusiñol’s figure with that depicted in one of Charcot’s sketches of the “great hysteria attacks”, compiled in Les Démoniaques de l’art (1887); specifically the one corresponding to the first attacks of hysteria from the “epileptoid period”.³⁰ Also, Isabel Coll shows the compositional parallels that can be drawn between Rusiñol’s oil and the cover illustration for Bruges-la-Morte (1892) by Georges Rodenbach, created by Fernand Khnopff: both show a figure in profile, lying on a bed with her hair strewn across the pillow.³¹   The artist also declares a Grecian influence in the hands of the young addict: thin, long and expressive, like those of the penitent Magdalene with the cross, that Rusiñol had acquired. It is especially in the colour, however, that Rusiñol shows a clear inspiration in El Greco, such as the yellow the Cretan artist had used for his St Peter and that the Catalan painter employed for the bedclothes.³²   According to a review published in La Voz de Sitges, this yellow fabric is nothing less than the “sad symbol of forthcoming death”.³³ At the same time, the colour contrast between the yellow, black and white accentuates the morbid atmosphere that pervades the whole picture. 

Regarding one of the Rusiñol works mentioned above, we should clarify the use of different titles. In Paris the artist gave it the name Le réveil, and in Barcelona called it Rêverie.³⁴ The term morfina (morphine), of course, comes from Morpheus, one of the thousand children of Hypnos, the god of Sleep, because of its sedative effects. La medalla (The medal), however, as reported by Josep de C. Laplana, is the title the work was granted at Cau Ferrat, probably by Miquel Utrillo or Rusiñol himself. This came about because the female figure represented in the painting is looking at an object that, due to its shine, was assumed to be a medal. Isabel Coll, however, notes that it was most probably the gold syringe used to inject morphine, a suggestion borne out by the artist’s alternate title for the painting: Abans de prendre l’alcaloide (Before taking the alkaloid).³⁵  

In short, the attraction felt by the decadent sensibility towards this world has bequeathed a great repertoire of shocking and terrifying images that show the horrors of certain artificial paradises. 

1. Santiago Rusiñol, “La casa del silenci”, Pèl & Ploma, No. 80 (September 1901), pp. 103-107, see p. 104. [T.N.: English trans. from the original Catalan.] This article is based on research carried out for the doctoral thesis El decadentisme a Catalunya: interrelacions entre art i literatura by the same author, available online through the Tesis Doctorals en Xarxa (TDX) catalogue of the Universitat de Barcelona: http://hdl.handle.net/10803/2029. 

2. Arnould de Liedekerke, La Belle Époque de l’opium, Paris, La Différence, 2001, p. 108. 

3. Arnould de Liedekerke, La Belle Époque . . ., op. cit., p. 99. Most of the general information in this section has been drawn from this study, as it is one of the most detailed and comprehensive on the subject. In addition, the essay is accompanied by an interesting anthology of literary and critical texts relating to the various opium derivatives. 

4. See Paul Butel, L’opium. Histoire d une fascination, Paris, Perrin, 1995. 

5. Jean Pierrot, L’imaginaire décadent (1880-1900), Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1977, p. 215. 

6. See Benjamin Ball, La Morphinomanie. De la responsabilité partielle des aliénés, les frontières prolongés de la folie, les rêves prolongés. Opuscles divers, 2nd ed., Paris, Librairie Em. Lefrançois, 1888. 

7. Paul Butel, L’opium..., op. cit., p. 354.

8. Antonio Escohotado, Historia general de las drogas, Madrid, Espasa Calpe, 2008, p. 445.

9. See Erasmo Caro, El suicidio y la civilización, Madrid, La España Moderna, 1893. Original ed.: Nouvelles Études sur le temps présent, Paris, Hachette, 1869.

10. María López Fernández, “Mujeres pintadas: la imagen femenina en el arte español de fin de siglo (1890-1914)”, in Mujeres pintadas. La imagen de la mujer en España, Madrid, Fundación Cultural Mapfre Vida, 2003, pp. 12-57, see p. 22.

11. Philippe Jullian, Esthètes et Magiciens: L’art fin-de-siècle, Paris, Librairie académique Perrin, 1969, p. 40.

12. Arnould de Liedekerke, La Belle Époque..., op. cit., pp.90-92.

13. Jean-Marie Gerbault, Les drogues du bonheur, Paris, Hachette, 1975. Compiled by Antonio Escohotado, Historia general . . ., op. cit., p. 430.

14. Max-Bembo. La mala vida en Barcelona: anormalidad, miseria y vicio, Barcelona, Maucci, 1912, p. 179.

15. Françoise Torrel, “Anglada Camarasa en París”, Estudios Pro-Arte, No. 6 (1976), pp. 6-21, see p. 11.

16. Raimon Casellas, “Cosas d’Art. Un concurs de cartells. Academias y pinturas de l’Anglada”, La Veu de Catalunya, 10-V-1900.

17.Raimon Casellas, “Cosas d’Art . . .”, op. cit. [T.N.: English translated from the original Catalan.]

18. Enrique López Castellón, “Estudio preliminar”, in Charles Baudelaire, Los paraísos artificiales, El vino y el hachís, La Fanfarlo, Madrid, M. E. Editores, 1994, p. 9.

19. Josep de C. Laplana, Santiago Rusiñol: el pintor, l’home, Barcelona, Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 1995, pp. 238-239. [T.N.: English trans. from the original Catalan.]

20. Santiago Rusiñol, “La casa del silenci”, op. cit., p. 104.

21. Santiago Rusiñol, “La casa del silenci”, op. cit., pp. 105-107. [T.N.: English trans. from the original Catalan.]

22. Santiago Rusiñol, “El morfiníac”, El Poble Català, no. 15 (18 February 1905), p. 1-2. [T.N.: English trans. from the original Catalan.] 

23. Santiago Rusiñol, “El morfiníac”, op. cit. [T.N.: English trans. from the original Catalan.] 

24. Antoni Font, “La Morfinòmana”, Joventut, No. 89 [24-X-1901], p. 713. [T.N.: trans. from orig. Catalan.]

25. Marcel Malla de Bassilan, La comtesse Morphine. Avec un avant-propos de M. Francisque Sarcey, París, Frinzine, Klein et Cie. Éditeurs, 1885, p. 142, Coll. “Bibliothèque des Deux Mondes”.

26. Vinyet Panyella, Paisatges i escenaris de Santiago Rusiñol. París, Sitges, Granada. Barcelona: Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 2000, p. 200.

27. Raimon Casellas, “Crónica de Arte. Exposición Rusiñol”, La Vanguardia, 21 October 1894.

28. Compiled in Arnould de Liedekerke, La Belle Époque . . ., op. cit., p. 343. The author died prematurely at the age of 36, precisely due to an addiction to morphine. For her part, Isabel Coll, Rusiñol i la pintura europea, Sitges, Consorci del Patrimoni de Sitges, 2006, pp. 116-121, reproduced several fragments of Les possédés de la morphine (1892), by M. Talmeyr, in reference to these paintings by Rusiñol, suggesting the artist may have been inspired by this writer in creating these works.

29. Finally the man falls asleep / Hung over from ecstatic intoxication / Enveloped by laziness / And dazzled by dreams of gold. [T.N.: translated from the orig. French.] 

30. María López Fernández, “Mujeres pintadas. . .”, op. cit., p. 22.

31. See Isabel Coll, Rusiñol i la pintura europea . . ., op. cit., p. 121.

32. Isabel Coll, El Greco i la seva influència en les obres del Museu Cau Ferrat, Sitges, Consorci del Patrimoni de Sitges, 1999, Index no. 22, n.p.

33. La Voz de Sitges, 21 October 1894. Compiled in Isabel Coll, Rusiñol i la pintura europea. . ., op. cit., p. 118.

34. Josep de C. Laplana, La pintura de Santiago Rusiñol, Vol.III, Catàleg sistemàtic, Barcelona, Mediterrània, 2004, p. 82.

35. Isabel Coll, Rusiñol i la pintura europea. . ., op. cit., p. 119. The author had already used this title in Rusiñol, Vilafranca del Penedès, Museu de Vilafranca del Penedès, 1990, illus. p. 98, and in Rusiñol, Sabadell, Ausa, 1992, illus. pp. 58 and 295.

LEISURE AND RELAXATION

Park Güell, from urban project for the wealthy to leisure space for local residents

Mireia Freixa and Mar Leniz 

A new way of life began to prevail among the affluent classes of Barcelona in the years of modernisme. No longer was it usual for them to reside in the old centre of the city, as they had largely moved into the comfortable apartments on the central streets of the Eixample district, Passeig de Gràcia and the adjacent streets. Furthermore, the urbanization of the Plaça de Catalunya in 1902 encouraged new habits: the commercial centre of the city also relocated from the old axes of the Carrers de Ferran and de la Princesa.¹ In fact, the mass migration of this social class was one of the reasons this renewed district became one of the best examples of European Art Nouveau. 

Eusebi Güell, however, did not follow this pattern. While keeping the Palau Güell in the Carrer Nou de la Rambla, he chose to promote a development on the outskirts of the city that would facilitate an even more elitist lifestyle: living with the comforts of the city and connected to it, but in an environment at one with nature. It was not the only such proposal in Barcelona at the time. Dr Salvador Andreu developed the area around the base of Tibidabo, while the construction boom reached from the Carrer de Muntaner and above right up to the Tres Torres area of Sarrià, to Sant Gervasi and Putxet. This was all designed for families who were moving out of their main residences in order to escape the insalubrious industrial city, and had nothing to do with the phenomenon of summer residences, which is addressed in the following section of this book. Most new buildings belonged to the wealthy, who put up huge villas with all the amenities, but the working classes also abandoned the centre, settling into houses known as “cases de cos”, comparable to the British two-up two-downs. The report presented by Güell to the Barcelona City Council in 1904 asking permission for the construction of Park Güell made two objectives very clear. He wanted hygienic conditions, and to maintain links to the city: “The grounds to be developed [. . .] together with their excellent hygienic conditions, which have earned the district the name La Salut (in English, health), and their proximity to the Barcelona urbs, make them ideal for villas where Barcelona residents could live comfortably and independently without losing sight of their regular business activities.”²  

Of all these projects, which could be dubbed “The conquest of the hills”, Güell’s was the most ambitious, and the only one that ended in resounding failure. The causes of this failure will not be analysed here, nor is there space for a study on Park Güell, which will be left for another occasion. Our aim is simply to reflect on the motives Eusebi Güell had for launching this initiative, identify patterns of influence and, ultimately, understand how Park Güell became a leisure space for Barcelona residents. While Eusebi Güell was alive, and as he progressively abandoned his idea for developing the suburb, all sorts of popular celebrations were organized in the grounds until, after his death, it was sold to the City Council and opened as a public park. 

The construction and failure of a great urban project

Eusebi Güell had acquired the property called Can Muntaner de Dalt on 29 July 1899 from Salvador Samà i de Torrents, Marquis of Marianao, through a hereditary lease contract with an annuity of 5,750 pesetas.³ In turn, Salvador Samà had acquired the estate the previous year from the Larrard family.⁴  

Soon after the acquisition of the estate, in October 1900, work began on levelling the site.⁵ Meanwhile, the property was expanded with the Ramon Coll i Pujol estate on the northeast slope of the mountain. By January 1903, work on the viaducts and roads was completed as were part of the grand esplanade, the walls of the estate, the two entrance pavilions and the main staircase presided over by a dragon. 

In 1906 work on the pillared hall began and in March 1909 construction of the ceramic bench surrounding the square commenced. In 1914, however, work came to an abrupt halt, and in the same year work also ceased on the church in the Colònia Güell. Only two houses had been built: the sample house, from a design by Francesc Berenguer, which Antoni Gaudí eventually occupied, and the one commissioned by the family of Dr Martí Trias Domènech, designed by the architect Juli Batllevell.⁶ Eusebi Güell had reconditioned the old Casa Larrard of the Can Muntaner de Dalt estate, now converted into a school, and in about 1907 made it his residence; we must remember that he still had the mansion in Carrer Nou de la Rambla and another big house with a garden in the Les Corts neighbourhood, but he chose to live in Park Güell. In 1921, while Gaudí was still alive, Güell’s successors offered the gardens to the City Council, they were acquired and opened as a public park in 1926. 

On urban models that influenced Park Güell

The very name of Park Güell, using the English “park” rather than the Catalan parc, was obviously a direct reference to British models. Thus, in the building permit it said, “Taking all this into account, it has been designed as a park where the parades, roads and lanes will be used as a thoroughfare, where there will be gardens, woodlands and other general services and in which the houses are spread out, isolated, each surrounded by its garden and private paths and walkways. It will be called park güell.”⁷ The importance of the use of this name for the Güell family is also made clear in the document that Güell’s successors, as spokespersons for the Sociedad Urbanización Güell, S.A., drafted with the objective of offering the estate for purchase to the City, which imposed as a precondition that, “The City Council will be obliged to respect in perpetuity the current name Park Güell”.⁸  

The influence British lifestyle had on the Catalan bourgeoisie is indisputable; Britain was the origin of the Industrial Revolution and the country from which machinery and raw materials were obtained. The most important families sent their children there to study engineering and thus introduced British ways of life and snobbish tastes (indeed, is not the use of “Park” instead of Parc mere snobbery?). There is no doubt that Eusebi Güell would have known how cities such as London, Manchester and Liverpool were developing, how their neighbourhoods were organized around detached houses with gardens, and also  –as a paternalist entrepreneur, typical of the times– he would have known of the utopian social projects that had been developed during the 19th century. 

The Park Güell project was a development model based on British models, but could in no way be interpreted as a version of the “Garden Cities” imagined by Ebenezer Howard. In Catalonia, Howard’s urban theories were expounded by Cebrià de Montoliu (1873-1923), founder of the Societat Cívica Ciutat Jardí and by the magazine Civitas, its organ. However, that occurred at a later date, as Montoliu did not become interested in the subject until the final years of the first decade of the century. When the park was being designed in 1900, Güell could have known of Howard’s first book, To-morrow, a Peaceful Path to Real Reform, which dates from 1898 and was an explicit influence in Spain on Arturo Soria’s Linear City project of 1899.⁹ However, it should be noted that the text that divulged Howard’s theory, La cité jardin, by French theorist Georges Benoît-Lévy, was published in 1904, when the park was already a reality.¹⁰  

The models for the Park Güell were heading in a different direction; a key to understanding their origins was provided by Antoni Gaudí. According to Salvador Sellés, when the members of the Associació d’Arquitectes de Catalunya visited in 1903, Gaudí referenced the British university towns: “Inspired by the rural urbanization of the premises of an English educational establishment, we have applied, improving the concept significantly, the foundations of this park-estate, which could almost be classified as autonomous depending on the administrative organization.”¹¹ He was also quoted, a year previously in the Centre Excursionista de Catalunya newsletter, as saying, “A beautiful park of modern taste is being constructed.”¹² One may wonder what exactly comprised this “modern taste”, but would not be wrong in thinking that it came from French or British models. This idea is reinforced, moreover, by an account given by architect Bonaventura Bassegoda in the Diario de Barcelona.¹³  

The great British university towns, and many primary and secondary schools, had large areas with gardens. Quite possibly these establishments were known to Güell through a book by Salvador Sanpere i Miquel, a great promoter of industrial arts in Catalonia, entitled Las escuelas inglesas para la enseñanza del dibujo (The English schools for teaching drawing), published in 1872.¹⁴ However, the information is sufficiently ambiguous that the only firm conclusion to be drawn is that the residences would be integrated with gardens. Interestingly, it was to be the magazine Civitas that had previously spread Cebrià de Montoliu’s ideas, which, in an article in 1914, as well as stating that “In the strict sense of the term, there are no garden cities in Spain,” argued that the Park Güell was related to British urban developments: “The Park is to be built upon, with some lots already sold on which magnificent villas have been erected, all of them surrounded by gardens, since, as is the practice with some English parks, construction is carefully regulated in the conditions of sale, which limit building to only a proportionally small part (1/6) of the surface area of the land, with other restrictions of a similar nature.”¹⁵  

There is, however, one influence relating to the morphology of the gardens that must be mentioned: British landscaping, in which the interplay of contrasts was valued, what is known as a taste for the picturesque, where roads or trails veer from the straight line to offer, at every turn, a new play on perspectives. Both Gaudí and Güell were no doubt aware of it and, indeed, there were plenty of examples in Catalonia, including the gardens of the Laberint d’Horta, the Parc de la Ciutadella by Fontserè –with assistance from Gaudí– beside the monumental fountain, a section of Güell’s estate that was completed in times of Eusebi’s father Joan Güell, or the Marquis de Marianao’s Parc Samà itself.  

Neighbourhoods “segregated” for the bourgeoisie

Aside from the indisputable relationships with British models of urbanization and landscaped gardens, the main objective of the Park Güell development was, as we pointed out at the start of this essay, to create an ideal space that allowed the “segregation” of the wealthy classes from the greyness of the industrial city, just as throughout the 19th century “segregated” neighbourhoods had also been designed for the working class. In Catalonia it was nothing new: along the river basins a whole series of industrial towns had been thrown up. The difficulties of extracting coal from the Catalan subsoil and the popularization of the turbine as a power source led to the emergence of labour estates which, second only Cerdà’s plan for the Eixample, were the most significant Catalan contribution to the history of town planning. They were, of course, the result of the growth of industry, but in some cases were accompanied by a social policy of a clearly paternalistic nature that could be considered in the same vein as the European utopian interventions. 

One essential point of reference is that the same year as Eusebi Güell acquired the Can Muntaner de Dalt estate, he also moved the activity of the Vapor Vell textile factory from the inner city area of Sants to Santa Coloma de Cervelló, thus creating the Colònia Güell, with the aim of creating an ideal space for combining work with a dignified life. Güell was assisted in this project by the engineer Ferran Alsina and, as in some European utopian projects, integrated industry with agricultural work. Gaudí’s great collaborators participated in the construction, with Francesc Berenguer providing the overall plan, Joan Rubió i Bellver designed the most significant elements of housing and Gaudí took care of building the church. Even so, there were no projects in Catalonia that could be classified as genuinely utopic, like Les Jardins Ouvriers (1865) by Fréderic Le Play¹⁶ and the Familistère de Guise (1846) by Jean-Baptiste Godin, both in Bournville on the outskirts of Paris; or the Birmingham project founded by chocolate maker George Cadbury (1879), or even Port Sunlight (1888), created by the soap manufacturer William Hesketh Lever. Either Güell or his right-hand man Ferran Alsina, however, could have known about all these projects. 

The ultimate goal of Park Güell corresponded to the other side of the coin: the planning of wealthy suburbs. Again, Great Britain serves to offer potential models, not in the university towns as Sellés wrote, but rather the elite neighbourhoods like Regent’s Park, London (1811), designed by the architect John Nash and landscape gardener Humphry Repton. This prototype was adapted by Joseph Paxton for Birkenhead Park, built in 1844 near Liverpool, and by James Pennethorne for Victoria Park in London the same year, as well as Richard Lane’s project for the Victoria Park in Manchester (1837). The latter is of particular interest, as its plot layout was very similar to that of Park Güell. Again, Eusebi Güell, who, like many Catalan industrialists, had travelled to Great Britain, could have known all these projects. 

However, resuming our thread from the beginning of this piece, in Barcelona at the time, various similar projects were being carried out and the closest was the urbanization of Tibidabo being developed by pharmacist Salvador Andreu i Grau.¹⁷ In 1899, Dr Andreu founded the company Sociedad Anónima Tibidabo and began a significant process of urban development around the wide avenue that accommodated a tramway, following, to some extent, Arturo Soria’s scheme for the Linear City (1882). Sociedad Anónima Tibidabo’s business was concerned primarily with leisure and, above all, the construction of the amusement park on the peak of Tibidabo. Andreu abandoned the idea of urbanizing the whole mountain and only completed work on the area nearest Barcelona, but this did include residences for important families of the city, many of which were the families of partners in the development company: the banker Arnús, Teodor Roviralta, the Sert family . . . The company incorporated a large part of the most conservative bourgeoisie, and commissioned its buildings from the architect Sagnier. 

The Güell project, however, was backed only by the man himself through a system of acquisition that left hereditary lease contracts in place, which involved a very particular distribution of costs that may well have put off prospective buyers. This is one of the key factors that could explain the failure of the project, but there is another reason: Park Güell was more ambitious, but did not take into account an element that was essential to Andreu’s development project, transport.¹⁸  

And a garden for leisure . . .

So far, we have not been speaking strictly of leisure in Barcelona, since Park Güell was, above all, an urban development project. However, as the project became progressively unviable, a series of activities purely for fun and entertainment were held at the site, and, in keeping with the nature of this book, it seems logical to dedicate the last few paragraphs to this period. 

For the first few years, Eusebi Güell’s aim was to promote his development project, and at the same time take advantage of the ample space, as a promoter of arts and culture, to host events for the city that led, for example, to a place on the jury of the Jocs Florals in 1900. It was not the first time that extensive private gardens had been used for major events in modernista Barcelona. Adrià Gual, for example, organized a performance of Iphigénie en Tauride in the gardens of the Laberint d’Horta in October 1898. However, there was another aspect to the events held in Güell’s garden: they were an extension of social paternalism, but applied to the promotion of cultural Catalanism. This is how it was seen by, for example, Eusebi Güell’s first biographer, Father Miquel d’Esplugues: “Indeed, this noble park responded to a hoard of idealities intimately cherished by Güell. Memorable explosions of high Catalan ideals occurred in the park. And Don Eusebi –who never demonstrated his patriarchy with such intimate affection as he when devoted himself  to the concerns of Catalonia and her great men– never said no when requests were made to use the park for the expansion of the Catalan soul, radiant in the glory of triumph”.¹⁹  

 Balls típics d’Eivissa al Park Güell. Arxiu Fotogràfic de Barcelona. Frederic Ballell collection, 1905-1915. 

Early on, however, these activities were also intended to promote the potential of the development. This was the case, for example, with the previously mentioned visit by the Associació d’Arquitectes de Catalunya in January 1903. It was meant to be fun, as Sellés pointed out when he described how members of the tour, as well as being shown the works and the palaeontological excavations undertaken by Monseigneur Norbert Font i Sagué, were given cigars and liquor.²⁰ The year before, the Centre Excursionista de Catalunya had also organized a tour to see the state of the excavations.²¹  

Entrada de la geganta al Park Güell. Biblioteca de Catalunya. Salvany collection, 1916. 

In a second respect, the first event documented was a dance of sardanas in 1904,²² and perhaps the most outstanding of these early events was a garden party –named as such in English– held within the framework of the First Catalan Language Congress on 20 October 1906, which undoubtedly reflected Güell’s attitude toward Catalan culture. 

Thus, between 1906 and 1914, after which the park fell into a state of decay, all kinds of events were held there: sporting events, such as a car race to benefit the Santa Llúcia refuge in June 1908, and a gymnastics contest in April 1908; social events, such as a meeting of Red Cross volunteers in October 1910; a hot-air balloon launch; visits by members of Congress, such as the Congrés de Pirineistes in March 1908; sardana gatherings, such as the aforementioned in 1904 and others in October 1906, in 1907 and 1910. In 1908, the Esbart Català de Dansaires (Catalan Folk Dance Group) performed the Ball de Gitanes (Dance of the Gypsies) in the park. Lastly, in photographs by Salvany, one can see a parade of the costumed figures known as the gegants (giant puppets) in 1916. 

Worthy of mention, for its outstanding size, was a banquet for five thousand people in honour of Francesc Cambó on 21 May 1916, for which the entire main square was completely covered with a marquee. Also of note was a visit by the Argentine sailors of the frigate Presidente Sarmiento, who were accompanied by Gaudí himself, in November 1911. Finally, a tribute to the infanta Paz and her daughter Pilar, also in November 1911. These celebrations were so popular in the city that even the satirical magazine L’Esquella de la Torratxa quipped: “What a day of rest the sardana groups had last Sunday. In the morning: Sardanes in the Plaça de la Universitat. In the afternoon: Sardanes in Park Güell. In the evening at the Belles Arts . . . “.²³  

As the possibilities of building a neighbourhood of residential homes diminished, Park Güell became an extension of the garden surrounding Eusebi Güell’s house, and he promoted its use a venue for public events. Clearly, although both Gaudí’s house and, during the summer, the Trias house were inhabited, Güell regarded the entire space as his private garden to be used as he thought fit. The fact that only two houses had been built –although some more plots had been allocated²⁴ – meant that the planned Sindicat de Propietaris (Owners’ Union) did not come to pass and, in fact, Güell ceased to cover maintenance expenses. 

Here we have simply looked into a couple of issues relating to the history of Park Güell; minor aspects, after all, greatly overshadowed by Gaudí’s creativity. Ultimately, the wonder of Park Güell is how the architect, in the role of landscaper, transformed the gardens through a unique creative process that pushed the aesthetic boundaries between nature and art. 

1. See the collection of images in Albert Garcia Espuche, El Quadrat d’Or. Centre de la Barcelona modernista, Barcelona, Lunwerg Editores, 1990, 107ff.  

2. Report presented by Eusebi Güell to the Barcelona City Council in 1904, reproduced in Joan Bassegoda, El Gran Gaudí, Sabadell, Ausa, 1989, p. 392. 

3. Luis Gueilburg, Gaudí i el Registre de la Propietat, Barcelona, Institut Gaudí de la Construcció i Registradores de España, pp. 127-147. The Marquis of Marianao maintained renter’s rights until 6 November 1925, whereupon the rent was redeemed in favour of the Sociedad Urbanización Güell, S.A. It is possible that the complexity of the system of acquisition was one of the causes of the project’s failure. 

4. The old Casa Larrard was a stately home that housed a number of paintings by the artist known as El Vigatà, which are now held in the Villa Casals, Pau Casals’ house in Sant Salvador. Between 1908 and 1912 significant renovations were carried out, including a new main structure crowned with a tower. Gaudí collaborated on the interior decoration. 

5. The supporting documentary material was used in developing the permanent exhibition, which was completed within the framework of this research, titled “Güell Gaudí and Barcelona. The Expression of an Urban Ideal”, in which the Park Güell can be seen as of 2010. Further work on the subject is being done for a book to be published by the Museu d’Història de Barcelona (MUHBA). We are indebted to all previously published works on Park Güell, especially the following books, which contain a great deal of useful information: Joan Bassegoda, El Gran Gaudí, op. cit.; Juan José Lahuerta, Antonio Gaudí: 1852-1926: arquitectura, ideología y política, Madrid, Electa, 1999; Eduardo Rojo, Antoni Gaudí: aquest desconegut: El Park Güell, Barcelona, La Llar del Llibre, 1986; Eduardo  Rojo, El Park Güell: historia y simbología, Sant Cugat del Vallès, Los libros de la Frontera, 1997; Conrad Kent and Dennis Prindle, Hacia la arquitectura de un paraíso, Madrid, Hermann Blume, 1992. 

6. Contrary to Güell’s objective, the family of Dr Trias used theirs as a summer residence. 

7. Report submitted to the Barcelona City Council; see footnote 2.

8. Offer to purchase the Urbanización Güell, S.A. to Barcelona City Council (26 February 1921), Barcelona City Archive, reproduced in the Pla Integral d’Actuacions del Parc Güell(Ajuntament de Barcelona, 2009). 

9. Garden Cities of To-morrow, Howard’s most significant book, was published in 1902. 

10. Information in Jaume Genís Terri, Els fonaments ideològics de l’arquitectura de Gaudí a la maduresa, Barcelona, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2006, p. 203 (doctoral thesis) agrees that it was impossible that Gaudí had any kind of relationship with Howard, but allows that he may have read his works. Howard proposed an economically independent entity with a balance of residence, industry and agriculture, whereas Park Güell was simply an urban development project. 

11. Salvador Sellés i Baró, “El Parque Güell: Memoria descriptiva”, Anuari de l’Associació d’Arquitectes de Catalunya (Barcelona), 1903, p. 54. 

12. Butlletí del Centre Excursionista de Catalunya (Barcelona), Year xii, No. 84 (January 1902), p. 40. 

13. Bonaventura Bassegoda Amigó, “Cuestiones artísticas. El Parque Güell”, Diario de Barcelona, 14 January 1903, pp. 567-569. 

14. Conrad Kent and Dennis Prindle, Hacia la arquitectura . . ., op. cit., p. 46; they also defined Park Güell as an enclosure for the Barcelona elite. 

15. “Las ciudades jardines de España. Barcelona: El Parque Güell”, Civitas (Barcelona), No. 2 (1914), pp. 55-59. 

16. Joan Bassegoda, El Gran Gaudí, op. cit., p. 537. 

17. Joan Molet, “Conquering” the Collserola range: Modernity, Leisure and Nature, Online: www.art nouveau-net.eu. 

18. Ferran Armengol et al., Un segle pujant al Tibidabo, Barcelona, Ajuntament de Barcelona, 2002. 

19. Miquel d’Esplugues, El primer comte de Güell. Notes psicològiques i assaig sobre el sentit aristocràtic a Catalunya, Barcelona, Arts Gràfiques Nicolau Poncell, 1921, p. 107. 

20. Salvador Sellés i Baró, “El Parque Güell... “, op. cit. 

21. Butlletí del Centre Excursionista de Catalunya, No. 84 (January 1902), p. 4. 

22. These acts are mainly documented based on: Joan Bassegoda, El Gran Gaudí, op. cit.; the online newspaper archives of La Vanguardia and La Veu de Catalunya; photographic sources held in the Mas Archive and the Arxiu de la Vila de Gràcia, and the Ballell collection in the Photographic Archive of Barcelona and other sources from the same archive; photographs from the Centre Excursionista de Catalunya, and the stereographic photographs in the Salvany collection at the Biblioteca de Catalunya. 

23. L’Esquella de la Torratxa, No. 1531 (January 1908). 

24. Two additional plots had been sold to Antoni Bau i Valls, in March and July 1913, and two more had been allocated to the siblings Tecla and Dolors Tintoré. All these pieces of land were bought back by Güell. Administrative Archive of Barcelona, estimation prior to purchase, dated 21 May 1921, compiled in the Pla Integral d’Actuacions del Parc Güell (Ajuntament de Barcelona, 2009), pp. 33-37. 

Summer holidays and relaxation in the crown of Barcelona. The Busquets estate in Vallvidrera, a unique example

Teresa-M. Sala

Most of the good Barcelona families spent the summer season, three or four months, in places they had chosen for the fresh air and  beautiful views, or to enjoy thermal springs or bathing in the sea. The social phenomenon of the summer holiday in Catalonia¹ spread among the wealthy classes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and brought significant changes to selected natural areas. 

The old village of Vallvidrera, which was joined with Sant Vicenç de Sarrià in 1890, was the core of a scattering of farmhouses that was urbanized at the turn of the century, coinciding with the expansion of Barcelona towards the Collserola range, basically for recreational purposes. The enterprises pushing for visitors and vacationers required a number of services relating to supply, access roads and transport connections with Barcelona. The construction of buildings dedicated to recreation, that is, accommodation and facilities for leisure, such as hotels, inns, spas and second homes –houses and chalets– gradually changed the face of the landscape crowning the city of Barcelona. Collserola was one of the privileged natural spaces for recreation and pilgrimage, where there were numerous natural springs, picnic areas, hermitages and farmhouses with their cultivated fields. 

One of the initiatives that contributed most to the metamorphosis of the different areas of the range was the work of the Sociedad Anónima El Tibidabo, founded in 1899 by the pharmacist Salvador Andreu i Grau and with the participation of other leading figures of the time, including Ròmul Bosch i Alsina, Romà Macaya i Gibert, Francesc Simon and Teodor Roviralta. Its main objective was to develop much of the mountain and build an amusement park for Barcelona, in the manner of other cities that already had such a thing.² In the lower area of the Society’s grounds a city garden was built, with an avenue connecting Tibidabo by tram and funicular. At the top of the mountain, the Temple Expiatori del Sagrat Cor was erected, designed by architect Enric Sagnier i Villavecchia from the existing chapel built in 1886. Beside that, the first amusement park constructed in Spain was to become the most popular leisure spot for the people of Barcelona. Visitors to the park could enjoy a variety of entertainment and recreational activities, such as exhibitions of antiques and photographs, a homing pigeon station, a large electric projector and a shooting gallery, as well as being able to admire the views through a huge telescope or visit the function room. This increasingly significant conquest of leisure by the bourgeoisie prompted the family of Dr Andreu to build the Metropolitan Hotel at the intersection of Avinguda del Tibidabo and Passeig de Sant Gervasi between 1906-1908. The project was contracted to architect Adolf Ruiz i Casamitjana, who hired, among others, Alfons Juyol for the sculptures and Lluís Bru for ceramic mosaics. Noteworthy pieces include representations of scenes from modern life and various bourgeois distractions that appear in the decoration. From the world of art, there were paintings, a piano (the instrument par excellence for indoor musical evenings) and photography (as a new, modern hobby, which was gaining popularity among amateurs). Various activities to do with the fashionable sports of the time were also in evidence, including skating, cycling, football, hunting, sailing and motoring.³  

In 1908, with mostly French capital, a proposal was made to create a Grand Casino on the Rabassada.⁴ The idea of building a large leisure complex, comparable with those in other tourist centres around the world,⁵ became a reality. On the site chosen there had been, since 1899, the Gran Hotel-Restaurant de la Rabassada, established by entrepreneur hotelier Miquel Montané i Martos and building contractor Josep Sabadell i Giol.⁶ The architect, and professor at the École des Arts Décoratifs de París, Edmond Lechevallier-Chevignard, had designed the building in a neo-Arabic style. In 1909, the company La Rabassada Sociedad Anónima Inmobiliaria de Sports y Atracciones bought it, contracting the architect Andreu Audet i Puig to design a sumptuous games room. As publicity in the newspaper La Vanguardia announced, it was: 

A special casino. Various games. Luxury restaurant. American attractions. Scenic Railway, Cake Walk, Rowling Halleys, Haunted House, Crystal Palace, Fun House, Walks, etc. Entry 0.50 pesetas, with the right to choose one attraction.⁷  

From the plans for the facilities, which are kept in the Sant Cugat del Vallès archives, and several period photographs from the period⁸ one can imagine the splendour of the establishment, which was eventually closed by ministerial order in 1912 after intense political debate about its appropriateness. 

Leisure spaces in Vallvidrera

The phenomenon of the summer holiday led to the emergence of new goods and services, and new ways for wealthy families to interact and enjoy spending time together. In Vallvidrera, the influence of holidaymakers was noted, although the social relationships between vacationers and locals remained rather classist.⁹ The area around the artificial reservoir,¹⁰ built between 1863 and 1864 to provide water for the district of Sarrià, became a favourite recreational area for the people of Barcelona. For this reason, between 1904 and1906, the engineer Carles G. Montañés installed a small electric train, the Mina-Grott, which crossed the range, and which immediately became a source of amusement for visitors. Other recreation centres also saw the opportunity to establish themselves in the unspoilt grounds of Collserola. For example, Heribert Alemany decided to construct an amusement park called Lake Valley on the property known as Can Sibina, beside the reservoir in Vallvidrera. 

El pantà de Vallvidrera, the work of Elies Rogent. Postcard published by Thomas, Barcelona, postmarked September 1, 1905.

As previously mentioned, the improvement of communication was the key to setting this transformation in motion. From 1888 the road between Tibidabo and the city was open, and the Tramvia Blau, which covered the same route, was not to be far behind. In 1902, the carretera de les Aigües became another access road, but there is no doubt that the decisive factor was the construction of the funicular, which was inaugurated on 28 October 1906. The station buildings (upper and lower), by the architects Bonaventura Conill i Montobbio and Arnau Calvet i Peyronill, are of secessionist influenced modernista (Catalan art nouveau)  design, with large stone socles, mosaic, wrought iron and characteristic parabolic arches. 

Also, as can be seen in postcards published by Roisin, various summer residences and chalets were being built, with a kind of modernista architecture, sometimes with a picturesque touch. An essential element of the attraction to the spirit of the place was the forest trails, where there were many natural springs, picnic areas and restaurants. One of the most well known was the Hotel Buenos Aires,¹¹ famous for its breath-taking views. Other quality hotels were also built in natural settings or on the road from Vallvidrera to Barcelona, such as the Ideal Pavillon, a grand construction the architect Antoni Coll i Fort conceived as one of the best look-out points over Barcelona, which opened its doors in 1908. In order to draw the attention of customers, the establishment printed postcards on which it was stated: 

The best panoramic view on the mountain. Spacious banquet hall. Family lounges. Comfortable rooms. Steam heating in winter, with ventilation. Electric lighting. Bathroom. Chapel. 

An added attraction was that it had a tennis court, a fashionable sport among the bourgeoisie. These tastes of cosmopolitan luxury existed alongside establishments like the old Casa Trampa of Cristobal Civil, in the village square of Vallvidrera, where, as the publicity advertised, breakfasts and lunches were made with “Attentive service. Clean and economical.”¹² Thus, during the first decade of the 20th century, Vallvidrera became a leisure area complete with festivals, dances, sardana competitions, concerts, parades, etc. The 1907 local festival was rather special, with a series of celebrations held amidst the forest.¹³ On 18 August, a concert by the Orfeó Català choir took place, directed by Lluís Millet, where they performed their anthem, the “Cant de la Senyera ” by Joan Maragall. In the first part of their performance, as noted in a programme published by L’Esquella de la Torratxa and La Campana, they also sang popular songs that included “Muntanyes regalades, “La Filadora”, “La Gata i en Belitre”, “Lo rossinyol”, “Els tres tambors” and “Aucellada”, by Janequin. During the second half, “Les Flors de Maig”, by Anselm Clavé, “El fum-fum” (traditional), “La Sardana” by Borràs de Palau, “L’Emigrant” by Vives, Adrià Gual’s “La mare de Deu” conducted by the great Nicolau, and, finally, “Els Segadors” by Lluís Millet. 

Festa major de Vallvidrera, Universal postcard, c. 1900. 

On the initiative of the Casino de Vallvidrera, in the summer of 1915 the Teatre de Natura¹⁴ was set up in a clearing in the Miralles forest, near the reservoir and with magnificent views over the Vallès. The entertainment offered, although it only lasted two summer seasons, had already been quite successful in other areas such as La Garriga, where from 1911 to 1914 programmes of beautiful fairy tales were staged, including La Viola d’or by Apel·les Mestres, for example, a work that concluded the summer cycle in the forest of Can Terrés.¹⁵ Gabriel Alomar declared that the Teatre de Natura was: 

A celebration of community spirit and social solidarity. [. . .] A theatre of nature is not a rural reaction: it is a conquest of the country by the city; a consecration of the primitive forest to the new Barcelona; it is a sacred olive or oak branch on a monument.¹⁶  

Until the late 1920s, these open-air events continued, encouraged by the summer holidaymakers. Some critics, such as Josep Morato i Grau, considered it inappropriate “to place it unthinkingly in the middle of the forest”.¹⁷ Thus, the Teatre de Natura, which had essentially become a manifestation of the modernista spirit, with artists like Adrià Gual, Ignasi Iglésias, Apel·les Mestres, Santiago Rusiñol and Enric Morera, came to an end. 

Summer residences, a special type of domestic architecture

New buildings were built in Vallvidrera during the era of modernisme, and some existing farms were even remodelled. For example, in 1888, the then mayor of Sant Vicenç de Sarrià, Ramon Miralles i Vilalta, acquired Mas Ferrer, a farm situated in a privileged location close to the medieval church Santa Maria de Vallvidrera and overlooking the mountain of Montserrat, and renamed it Vil·la Joana after his wife.¹⁸  

Following the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative Arts in Turin in 1902, architectural modernisme turned its gaze towards central Europe, particularly Vienna. In summer residences, architects had a greater degree of freedom than in other more representative or symbolic buildings. With the arrival of the Vallvidrera funicular, several old farmhouses in the area were remodelled as summer residences, including the Torre Sansalvador and Casa Carreras-Soler. The architect Bonaventura Conill planned some houses and villas of a central-European character for Vallvidrera, such as Villa Monitor (1905). Between 1906-1907, the architect Joan Rubió i Bellver built several for wealthy families, including the house for Manuel Dolcet at 44 Avinguda Vallvidrera. Also, in an eclectic style with some modernista elements, the architect Antoni Coll i Fort built a large detached house, as well as the Herrando estate at 10-12 Carrer Pelfort, which were constructed between 1906 and 1911. The latter consisted of a complex of two-story buildings within private grounds. 

The furniture maker and upholsterer Joan Busquets i Cornet, who had a shop at 9 Carrer de la Ciutat in Barcelona, acquired some land opposite the Vallvidrera funicular station with the intention of building a summer residence, the Busquets estate.¹⁹ The land was bought from Ramon Miralles, as recorded in a deed dated 23 January 1907 by notary R. Permanyer. In a prime location, freestanding homes were built on the site between 1907 and 1913. The first, Torre Sant Joan, was the work of master builder Pere Bosch i Cardellach, who received various amounts of money for the project design and plans in early 1907, the year in which construction began. Busquets had written a letter, dated September 1906, to the Sarrià City Council asking for building permission (which was signed by the then mayor, Carles Xiró i Jordà). By the beginning of this year, the locksmith Francis Tulla of Sarrià had built an iron fence to demarcate the plot of the first four houses (A, B, C and D), to be built on the road from Tibidabo to Vallvidrera (opposite the Plaça de Pep Ventura). In September, Busquets paid the Sociedad General de Aguas de Barcelona (the water board) for a water supply, and construction commenced in December with the contractor Pere Grau Cuyàs of Vallvidrera, who signed several receipts for quantities received. The first contract mentions “clearing and preparing land” for the construction of the Sant Joan and Sant Enric houses. For the second house, the architect Arnau Calvet i Peyronill²⁰ was responsible for the plans and construction management, lasting until 1913 for houses X and Z, which fronted the Carretera de la Rectoria (to Les Planes). Between 1909 and 1912, the second group of chalets (E, F, G and H) were completed, with the construction of a garage building, transforming the house beside the Carretera de l’Església. 

In short, the Busquets estate was conceived by its owner, begun by master builder Bosch i Cardellach and continued by architect Arnau Calvet.²¹ The complex consisted of detached houses of varied typology, all stylistically influenced by the secessionist movement. Solutions of a Viennese character were also employed elsewhere by the architects Rafael Masó, Josep Maria Pericas and Josep Renom. What is significant is the unique character of each of the houses, which individually showed signs of diversity but together formed an aesthetic whole. Architectural modernisme broke with eclecticism and uniformity, opting for the uniqueness and the total art ideal (of brotherhood between all the arts). 

The houses of the Busquets estate all consisted of a ground and first floor. The interior spaces included: vestibule, dining room with veranda, bedrooms, bathroom, kitchen, galleries, workshop and coal cellar, all equipped with electricity (distributed by the Sociedad Anónima El Tibidabo), bathroom fittings by Casa Lacoma Hnos. & Bonsoms, hydraulic mosaic floors of various brands and beautiful drawings from Casa Butsems i Fradera, tiles and steps from the Pujol i Bausis factory at Esplugues and artificial stone from Cabruja i Seguí, among other elements. Variety was the dominant note within a reserved style of decoration, not absent but with a sense of rhythm and devoid of the excesses and exaggerations commonly seen prior to 1900. 

As documentation of the construction process has been preserved, detailed information of the industrialists and craftsmen who participated and the costs involved is available. Thus, the carpentry was entrusted to Joan Pasaret’s workshop, while Fèlix Coma took care of decorative woodwork. The windows were provided by Buxeres i Codorniu, locks by Jacint Cuyàs and forged pieces were by Joan Mas. Pere Bofarull, who had a steam-powered carpentry shop, was commissioned to transform a window into a balcony. 

As for the interiors, the painting was done by decorator Lluís Savall, who had a workshop on the Carrer Major de Sarrià. Meanwhile, chairs were obtained from chair maker Joan Roselló of Carrer de Riego in the Sants neighbourhood. It might seem strange that Busquets, himself a furniture maker, should purchase chairs from another shop, but chair making was a specialized activity and, indeed, Busquets also sold chairs from other makers in his own store. 

One characteristic of the whole estate is that all houses had balconies with a view, situated around a communal courtyard or terrace, where there was a well and a landscaped garden with trees, shrubs, roses, daisies, geraniums, wisteria, hydrangeas and aromatic herbs (sage, rosemary, lavender and thyme) that had been planted and arranged by Francesc Rodó, who was engaged for the construction and care of the gardens and continued with their maintenance for many years. 

In the common space between the houses, a chapel was erected, which was kept decorated with flowers, for which liturgical ornaments were purchased from a store run by the sons of M Garin in Carrer Jaume I in Barcelona. It is known that the chapel was built and expanded in the summer of 1907, and on 5 February 1912 a special request had to be made to Cardinal Casañas for mass to be held. Also, according to oral testimony passed on by the owner’s grandson, Joan Busquets i Guindulain, apparently, some years later, various theatrical performances were put on there, in collaboration with the hatter Joan Prats of Carrer Ferran in Barcelona. This landscaped patio served as the meeting point for the inhabitants of the estate, as throughout the long summers families gathered together for the regular liturgical acts. 

In 1914, enamel plaques with the names of the new houses (Puig-mal, Montserrat, Mont-sec, Puig-padrós) were ordered from Bazar E Grandin, a business specializing in “Decorative and commercial enamel” located at 25 Portal de l’Àngel, and to E. Bossi at number 48 Carrer Pelai. That same year, Joan Busquets i Jané’s wife Enriqueta Guindulain died of typhus, and he also fell ill, as did his sister Joaquima and his father, Joan Busquets i Cornet, who did not overcome the disease and died on 7 January 1915. The Board of the Centro Recreativo de Vallvidrera wrote a letter to the family, signed by the secretary Jaume Grau, which expressed condolences and sympathy regarding one of the most prominent members of the organization. 

The poem by Miquel dels Sants Oliver engraved on the house Sant Joan, which bears the name of the estate’s founder, captures the feeling of tempus fugit: 

Depressa fugen las horas,

depressa y no tornan més. 

Aprofita l’hora dels encants primers, 

aprofita l’hora que no torna més.²²

The engraving uses an original modernista typography, with letters drawn by Joan Busquets i Jané that, in some ways, are testimony to a golden age of summer holidays in Catalonia and of family activities in an urbanized idyll among unspoiled nature. 

1. See Glòria Soler, L’estiueig a Catalunya, 1900-1950, Barcelona, Edicions 62, 1995, with photographs by Xavier Miserachs. 

2. Horacio Capel and Paul-André Linteau, Barcelona-Montréal: desarrollo urbano comparado, Barcelona, Edicions de la Universitat de Barcelona, 1998, pp. 371-392. 

3. See Ricard Bru, “La Rotonda”, in Francesc Fontbona (Ed.), Joies del modernisme, Barcelona, Enciclopèdia Catalana, 2011, pp. 164-170. 

4. Sergi Yanes, La Rabassada. La utopia de l’oci burgès, Barcelona, Punto Rojo, 2011. Sergi Yanes is a member of Turiscòpia. Working Group of the Catalan Institute of Anthropology (ICA). 

5. At the time of writing, a proposal has been made by an American tycoon to build a gaming complex called Eurovegas in Madrid or Barcelona, which would represent a new model in the current global scene.  

6. Sergi Yanes, La Rabassada . . ., op. cit. 

7. La Vanguardia, 8 November 1911, p. 5. 

8. See www.fotosdebarcelona.com/docs/CasinoRabassada-ESP.pdf. Also Pere Fàbregas and Carlota Giménez, Gran Casino de la Rabassada, història d’un somni burgès, Barcelona, Viena, 2011. 

9. The “gentlemen of Barcelona” arrived with their families and servants and kept to themselves. In any case, the scene changed over the course of the 20th century and with the growth of tourism the old summer mansions gave way to smaller chalets and apartments, just as “the summer” became known as “the holidays”. 

10. The task of designing the reservoir and guardhouse was allocated to the architect Elies Rogent. See Francesc Tomàs, Salvador Ferran, Cristòfol Jordà and David Forgas, Itineraris. Vallvidrera-Les Planes, Barcelona, Ajuntament de Barcelona, 2007. 

11. See Julio Vives, Hotel Buenos Aires. Un record del modernisme a Vallvidrera, Barcelona, Lulu.com, 2009. 

12. Documents in the Busquets Archive of Vallvidrera include a receipt from 1908.

13. Programme guide for the village festival, preserved in the Busquets Archive of Vallvidrera.  

14. See “Barcelona: ¿teatre de natura o teatre a la fresca?” in the (unpublished) doctoral thesis by Raffaella Perrone, Espacio Teatral y escenario urbano. Barcelona, entre 1840 y 1923, Barcelona, ETSAB, May 2011, pp. 146-150. As Perrone points out: “This marked the end of the genre, as it betrayed two essential elements that characterized the spirit of the initiative: that the works performed should be of the Catalan theatre and that the power of the landscape should be an integral part of the relationship between the audience and the text”.  

15. See Francesc Viñas, “El Teatre de la Natura: els modernistes a la Garriga”, Lauro, No. 13. 

16. L’Esquella de la Torratxa, 8 September 1911. 

17. Josep Morató, “Teatre de natura?”, La Veu de Catalunya, 20 August 1916. 

18. This farmhouse converted into a summer residence was the last refuge of Mossèn Cinto Verdaguer, who had been advised to have a change of scenery due to the delicate state of his health. The poet stayed there from 7 May 1902 until his death a few days later. 

19. The documentation that allowed us to reconstruct the history of the houses in detail is preserved in the Busquets Archive of Vallvidrera. When we wrote the book La Casa Busquets. Una història del moble i la decoració del modernisme al déco a Barcelona, Barcelona, Universitats Catalanes i MNAC, 2006, Memoria Artium, No. 4, we were not aware of the existence of this resource, which has allowed us to correctly attribute the architectural project, thought at the time to be the work of Jaume Gustà i Bondia (p. 188). 

20. The architect was born in Barcelona in 1874 and in 1897 received his qualification. He collaborated on a philanthropic initiative: proposed by Senyor Masgrau, proprietor of the magazine La Ilustración Obrera, he drew the plans for a house the magazine was to give away to its subscribers. At the Festa de la Fraternitat on 1 May 1904 the foundation stone was laid in the presence of the Rector of the Universitat Literària, several builders’ associations and the federations of the Cors Clavé, among others. Arnau Calvet, in his early stages, was notable for various works of secessionist style modernista architecture, including: the Magatzems Cendra i Caralt (1905) on the Carrer dels Arcs in Barcelona, where the Hidroelèctrica de Catalunya was installed in 1946; the aforementioned houses in Vallvidrera; and back in Barcelona the apartment houses in the Eixample, Casa Armenteras and Casa Perallada at 324-326 Carrer Provença. He was also apparently a municipal architect for Sarrià, where he worked on the market with Marcel·lià Coquillat between 1911 and 1913 and the plans for the summer estate in Tibidabo (1912-1919). Later he was known for designing the Magatzems Jorba (1926-1932). He died in Barcelona in 1956. 

21. According to the documentation, the architect offered to work for half fee. The invoice stated “Direction of the house of the Rectoria in Vallvidrera (original fee)” for the amount of 474.83, of which was retained the “voluntary discount” of 224.83, with the bill coming to a total of 250 pesetas. The Busquets estate consisted of eleven chalets with a total cost of 54,000 pesetas, a very considerable amount in those times.

22 “In haste the hours take flight / In haste and not to return / Seize the hour of first delights / Seize the hour not to return”. [T.N.: English trans. from the original Catalan.] 

APPENDICES

Theatre in the dining room

Notes on two plays by GRACMON 

Antoni Galmés Martí

...the strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone.

Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People 

University theatre, among many other things, ought to allow the creation of a repertoire and the active participation in research. Recover, rethink and represent are theatre words analogous to certain ecological terms we all know of, but are not relevant here. At the same time, to accompany the study of a work, into its context or most profound meaning, it is a privilege and an excellent resource that university theatre halls allow due to the degree of empirical knowledge they offer based on trial and error and, obviously, for the freedom they enjoy. In repertory theatres, reproductions often include classical pieces that have become, over time, universal cultural heritage, as well as local works that confirm the richness of a language, history or culture.

The artistic sense that comes along with theatre practice (university theatre and, therefore, not professional) provides the opportunity to conduct research using, as the primary tool and means of diffusion, the creation of the show. In effect, creating a drama and staging a production are ways of investigating a subject or a reason, or forming part of a research group. ¹  

In two years, the Aula de Teatre de la Universitat de Barcelona, in collaboration with GRACMON, has presented two shows that may seem far removed in perspective but, as will be shown, have a significant relationship to each other. These projects were, firstly, a play called A l’ombra d’un pi escanyolit, and a contemporary adaptation of Aigües encantades by Joan Puig i Ferreter. Both texts were intended for university actors and actresses and to be performed in non-theatre spaces. To this purpose, for the dramatization, use was made of primary texts and sources of the period, and character studies on Santiago Rusiñol, for example, or authors such as Joan Puig i Ferreter. 

Suffice to say that, in terms of repertory theatre, the richest heritage we have here in Catalonia is from the modernista (Catalan art nouveau) era. Thus, to serve this concept of repertoire, research in the category of modernista theatre is essential. This is not to say that good theatre is not being made today, quite the contrary, contemporary theatre is currently enjoying a moment of rude health. However, the phenomenon of modernista theatre brings together two factors that make it very interesting.

First of all, it could be considered the birth of our contemporary theatre. In the absence of a longstanding tradition, such as had existed in the Spanish state, the theatre of the late 19th century embodied a sense of immeasurable vigour and youth. Adrià Gual, in his memoirs Mitja vida de teatre, had said that regarding theatre his generation felt orphaned, alluding to the previous theatre of Guimerà and the Renaixença movement. Josep Maria Poblet, in his study Les arrels del teatre català (The roots of Catalan theatre), cites a long list of names, from Vidal i Valenciano to Serafí Pitarra, of 19th century playwrights who propelled the start of our theatre.

The second factor is the nature of the typical man of modernista theatre. His profile a starting point or extension of a plurality of thought and activity: another face of the polyhedron of the total artist. Therefore, to speak of theatre in modernisme is to explore an artistic practice complementary to other arts such as painting, sculpture, music and, as Xavier Fàbregas explains with regard to Apel·les Mestres, even gardening.² Thus, social profile also forms a part of heritage and the repertoire of theatre. Indeed, this is the character that A l’ombra d’un pi escanyolit is concerned with: the modus vivendi of a total artist.

Having stated these initial considerations, what follows is an explanation of the thematic lines of the two works of drama studied as part of this research.

This is not an attempt to justify this work. Even when necessary, it is seen as bad form for a theatre director to talk about his work, since it will often employ hidden poetic license difficult to justify. Simply, if you will, here are a series of sensations arising from the experience of performing theatre in emblematic or historic places, or of making art à la manière of those who one day did so in the same places. The play A l’ombra d’un pi escanyolit was born of the desire to present theatre in the Casa Amatller. The choice of location is lost to memory, but an attempt was made to reproduce what Francesc Curet and Xavier Fàbregas, in their respective histories of Catalan theatre, dubbed “theatre of the dining room and bed chamber”.³ 

Indeed, aside from public, commercial and institutional theatre, as in the case of the Teatre Principal, the Romea and the Liceu, in Barcelona there also exists a taste for private theatre. It seems that since the 18th century, and especially after the political events involving the death of Ferdinand VII (1833) and the triumph of the liberals, a significant number of amateur companies that performed in private homes are recorded. A lack of accurate statistics and information, however, means that this assertion is made without scientific support.⁴ 

Other non-conventional spaces where theatrical performances took place included bourgeois circles and in the workshops and homes of people linked to the cultural and artistic elite. Thus, for example, the architect, painter and historian Ràfols i Fontanals talks of 29 intimate theatre sessions performed within the celebrations of Cau Ferrat in Sitges and of the influence they had on certain aspects of the new dramatic literature that was developing in the first years of the 20th century.

The place where this piece was first performed shared these characteristics: the photographic studio of Antonio Amatller, located in the loft of his house. In 1900, the wealthy and renowned chocolatier started renovations of the house he had acquired years earlier at 41 Passeig de Gràcia. The work was directed by Josep Puig i Cadafalch, with the help and collaboration of Masriera i Campins in forging bronzes, Manuel Ballarín on sculptures and numerous artists who contributed to converting a quite ordinary three-story home into an exclusively modernista icon. At the same time, Gothic style and northern-European influences tried to pick up on the style first by this same architect in the Casa Martí in the Carrer de Montsió.

One of the peculiarities of the house was the usage of the loft space. Antoni Amatller was a great enthusiast of collecting and, above all, of photography, and converted his top floor into a laboratory. The space was a large room under a pitched roof, with British-style beams and skylights that gave it a special character. In 1923, to commemorate his daughter Teresa’s 50th birthday, he organized an allegorical presentation entitled Divertiment dedicat a Teresa Amatller, Barcelona març de 1923.⁵

Working in a non-theatre space required, both then as it does now, an adaptation of the theatrical conventions regarding the number of actors, the entrances and exits of each character, and even the lighting. Reading the play one sees that the initial blocking included a screen with oriental motifs. This resolved the need for a kind of background behind which the actors could conceal themselves and then return to the scene. The scenography was provided verbally in front this screen, which, by the way, in our staging of the piece was replaced by a huge open portfolio.

A scene from the play A l’ombra d’un pi escanyolit. Photograph by Àngel Monlleó. Barcelona, 2009. 

A l’ombra d’un pi escanyolit was meant to be performed by four actors, each playing multiple characters. The plot revolves around the life of Santiago Rusiñol, not related in the first person, but rather through the eyes of two people close to the artist: Maria Rusiñol, his daughter, and Josep Pla. On the one hand, Maria shows us her father the artist, the man and the paternal character of this emblematic modernista figure. Josep Pla, meanwhile, helps situate the context of the Barcelona of the time.⁶ 

The show comprises eight scenes plus a prologue and an epilogue, each of which includes a significant musical element. For our first performance, Peter Cowley composed the music, although, supposedly, each director is free to make his or her own choice of composer.

The Romans knew very well which was the important part of their lives: otium. The time of rest, enjoyment and disinterested activity; the temporal space to let the imagination fly. Everything else was negotium, but that’s another story. In modernista Barcelona, entertainment was sacred. For the artisan and the great entrepreneur, the liberal and the conservative. But above all for the artist. This is the basic context for the drama of A l’ombra d’un pi escanyolit.

The work was given the subtitle Peça musical col·leccionable en un acte i vuit escenes (Collectable musical piece in one act and eight scenes). Collecting was a favourite pastime in the Barcelona at the time. Maria, the daughter, begins the play thus: “If I could, now that everything is collected, I would make a collection of memories.”⁷ This phrase inspired deep emotivity due to the ephemeral matter of which memories are constructed. As poetic as collecting silences or kisses; it is a delightful opening. One imagines a Maria Rusiñol with a portfolio filled (very full) with everything relating to her father, addressing the audience and singing her memories. In memoriam.

At the same time, the device used to elucidate Rusiñol is neither his work nor his family, nor anecdotes from his everyday life or his passing journey through the bohemia of Barcelona. It is the places where Rusiñol lived or where he spent time that are used to drive the drama. Certainly, if we take Josep Pla’s book Santiago Rusiñol i el seu temps⁸ as a model, it provides an accurate portrayal of the man through the context of his life. Working from circumstances to create drama is a technique that Ricard Salvat had already employed in his texts Adrià Gual i la seva època and Salvat-Papasseit i la seva època, both from 1981. Even without having had the privilege of seeing either work staged, reading them makes one think of Xavier Albertí’s pieces portraying a bygone Barcelona, a dark city of night owls and strolling players. This is evident in Crónica sentimental de España (2006), based on the book by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, Pinsans i Caderneres (2008), from texts by Comadira Narcís, or Josep Pla’s portrait of the barri xinès (red light district) in Vida privada (2011).

Simultaneously, the choral component is inspired by the productions of Joan Oller, specifically El jardí dels cinc arbres (2009) and Maragall, la llei d’amor (2010).

Josep Pla, then, provides the perfect references for the locations and means of understanding leisure and everyday life in Barcelona throughout all stages of Rusiñol’s life. A synthesis has been made from this text that can be seen reflected in each of the scenes of the play, although it is most predominant in the first scene, which exposes the thinking and ways of life in a still walled-in Barcelona. Meanwhile, Maria Rusiñol speaks of moments more tender and in which she was present as an observer. Sitges provides the most compassionate moment in the play. The Rusiñols, like so many other families and bourgeois, travelled there for the good weather. It is the Mediterranean summer, “a white spot on the sea”, and the arty evenings at the Cau Ferrat. We included an excerpt from La Fada by Enric Morera, to be played on the piano.

Another section of the play resolved with a song is the scene Quatre Gats. This was the landmark location of bohemia, of the gatherings and the shadow puppet performances. It was necessary to show, more than just Rusiñol, something of the atmosphere they breathed and, above all, the peculiarities of the owner, Pere Romeu, who, according to Josep Pla, kept the tables rather grubby, cobwebs on the ceiling, and was rather grim-faced himself.

Rounding out the piece are texts by Rusiñol and some aphorisms. The depiction of the Parisian night comes from his trip to Paris with Ramon Casas; the Mallorca scene praises the ensaïmada and is taken from his book L’illa de la calma, and there is the final monologue from L’auca del Senyor Esteve,⁹ in which the grandfather (played by Santiago Rusiñol himself) bequeaths the inheritance to his grandson Ramonet, which is to say, our generation. 

* * *

The second production was Aigües encantades by Joan Puig i Ferreter, by which one can study the role of Catalan dramaturgy of the early 20th century with regard to great European literature. It was presented in the form of a dramatized reading at the University of Barcelona’s 4th Festival Clàssics al Jardí (Classics in the Garden Festival) in 2011.

The influence of Ibsen’s drama on modernist dramatic literature has been studied in an overall sense, but not treated at length with regard to the work of Joan Puig i Ferreter. In fact, the researcher Marisa Siguán, in her study La recepción de Ibsen y Hauptmann en el modernismo catalán (The reception of Ibsen and Hauptmann in Catalan modernisme), only speaks of a symbolic influence of the Norwegian writer on Dialechs Dramàtichs and La dama enamorada.¹⁰ A more determined analysis of the relationship is made by Margarida Casacuberta in her article Les aigües encantades i les aigües podrides de la modernitat (The enchanted waters and the putrid waters of modernity).¹¹ 

Casacuberta describes perfectly the points of connection between the two works, sustained by the two characters Cecilia and Petra (the daughter of Dr Stockmann), but also clarifies the differences and remarks on the place of action (a small locality in Tarragona as opposed to the Norwegian urban space), and places Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People on a higher plane of social, political and symbolic criticism. Now, perhaps Ibsen’s work influenced not only aspects of Puig i Ferreter’s writing but also, in a more generalized way, the anarchist sentiments of the author, his reflection on the progressive postures that liberated the individual (and, especially, women) and a set of life circumstances that made him particularly sensitive to these issues.

In this case, unlike the previous production, we have opted for contemporary adaptation of a specific text. This adaptation was based on two concepts:

1. Extracting of the main theme and relating it to the immediate present (i.e. the sociocultural context of the theatre group in 2011).

2. Converting the realist drama into an epic and choral text.

Aigües encantades premiered in 1908 at the Teatre Romea.¹² Readers today will see that it follows the same dramatic structure as An Enemy of the People (1882), in which a character bearing truths that would help the improvement and advancement of a stagnant society is banished and censored precisely for exposing these truths. Thus, just as Dr Stockmann is systematically prevented from exposing that the spa waters are poisonous, the outsider in Aigües encantades (representing empiricism against religious dogma and the interests of feudal society) receives the same treatment.

Moreover, the role of water as the starting point for conflict in both works is quite evident. They are almost the only works of the time in which natural events are presented as the object of disagreement between individuals. The most important thing to note is that the water does not appear as an isolated act of nature, but as the symbolic representation of a stagnant society. In Ibsen’s drama, the water should cure, but does not because it is poisoned (it is unhealthy) and, therefore, we can understand that in a society that seeks profit there is evil lurking within. Water, in the work by Joan Puig i Ferreter, fulfils the same concept, but the symbolism is more obvious, or more naïve, perhaps: the waters of the Virgin’s well are putrid, stagnant, and it is clear that the problem of drought is not one of divine punishment, but of geographical circumstances. These waters symbolize the stagnation of a society that, the more its fields suffer, finds fewer and fewer solutions as it spends increasingly more time praying to the Virgin. Meanwhile the priest, quite content with this, bullies anyone who dares to act against his interests.

However, the female figure is given more weight in Puig i Ferreter’s piece. Cecilia is a girl who has lived (and studied) in the city, is well read and has cultivated freethinking ideas, and finds herself in a context of family and social oppression. The despotic and religious environment oppressive of freedoms (especially those of women) is asphyxiating to the point of emaciation for the protagonist. Thus, the words Cecilia says at the end of the work, “The eagle leaves the henhouse”, are reminiscent of Nora Helmer’s gesture at the end of A Doll’s house, when she closes the door and leaves her husband. The suffragette first appeared in the theatre in 1879 with this play by Ibsen, but feminism had already had a presence throughout continental Europe since the mid-19th century.

Even so, this contribution to women’s freedom does not imply that Ibsen or Puig i Ferreter had any association with feminist circles. For the Catalan writer, personal circumstances had cast shadows over a prolific and creative youth. The cause might have been, as Lluïsa Julià suggests in Imatges, realitats. La dona en la primera etapa teatral de Joan Puig i Ferreter (Images, realities. Women in the first theatrical phase of Joan Puig i Ferreter) (1904-1914),¹³ his family situation: not only the fact of being the son of a single mother (which implied constant marginalization), but also the incestuous relationship between his mother and uncle, a far greater grievance that led him to question certain individual liberties. 

Gradually, Puig i Ferreter acquired a political consciousness and defended, at least superficially, the theatre of ideas and agitprop. The defence of the individual and his or her liberties became, more than feminism, the spearhead of all his work.

In spite of all this, as he himself postulated in a lecture entitled L’art dramàtic i la vida” (Dramatic art and life) delivered at the Teatre Novetats on 8 November 1908, coinciding with the premiere of the two great works of his youth, Aigües encantades and La dama enamorada, “The young artist is not always satisfied with the observations that reality provides for his works. He often abandons his own memories and calls upon the inventions of wild fantasy.”¹⁴ From this we can draw the poetic principle that prevails in his work, which does not necessarily have to specifically echo in his individual or contextual reality. To the contrary, his poetry and politics are complements of the same anarchist thinking, influenced by similar tendencies among other European authors.

To the contemporary reader, it helps to understand the political volition of the author and of the adapter, who was aware of current events at a social level at the time of writing the adaptation and of the university production. It coincided with the revolt of the so-called Arab Spring, and the protests by the indignados in Plaça de Catalunya. The self-immolation of the young Tunisian street vendor Mohammed Bouazizi suggested the possibility that his last words could have been the same as those uttered by Cecilia before her exit. In dictatorships, the only escape is death or exile. In all cases, getting out of the place.

For this reason, in our increasingly secular state where Catholicism has not the same presence as in 1908, it was imperative to find a more international simile. An Islamic psalm (included in the adaptation) is the contemporary and universalizing proposal of this adaptation.

As for language, an attempt was made to preserve the parlance of the original, to demonstrate the local character of the story and its characters. Even so, as the reader will see, there is a simplification of phrases and a repetition of the most choral moments (voices of the people and women speaking) to give the play a more epic feel, to both the situations and the theme.

In this way, our intention was to reproduce a modernista text with strength and freshness. Its use of symbolism is precisely what allows such dramaturgical operations to bring it into the “here and now” and to ensure thematic and dramatic survival.

1. This is the main object of research of the author’s post-doctoral project. Against all odds, years working with the theatre group of the UB’s Faculty of Geography and History made evident the possibilities for research through the practice of theatre in the context of Art History. See Antoni Galmés, “Teatre i Universitat: la lluita per un reconeixement”, Hamlet. Revista d’Arts Escèniques, No. 25 (2012), pp. 38-41. 

2. Xavier Fàbregas, “El teatre en el temps del modernisme”, in El temps del modernisme, Barcelona, Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 1980, p. 231.

3. Francesc Curet, Història del teatre català, Barcelona, Aedos, 1962; Xavier Fàbregas, Història del teatre català, Barcelona, Millà, 1978.

4. Xavier Fàbregas, Les formes de diversió en la societat catalana romàntica, Barcelona, Curial, 1975, p. 75.

5. Complete libretto and photographs of the performance conserved in the Mas Archive of the Casa Amatller. 

6. For more information, see the interesting study on urban sociology of the Barcelona of 1900: Teresa-M. Sala, La vida cotidiana en la Barcelona de 1900, Madrid, Sílex, 2005.

7. Maria Rusiñol, Santiago Rusiñol vist per la seva filla, Barcelona, Aedos, 1968.

8. Josep Pla, Santiago Rusiñol i el seu temps, Barcelona, Destino, 1990.

9. Santiago Rusiñol, Teatre, Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1982; Santiago Rusiñol, L’illa de la calma, Muro, Ensiola, 2004.

10. Marisa Siguán, La recepción de Ibsen y Hauptmann en el modernismo catalán, Barcelona, Promociones y Publicaciones Universitarias, 1990.

11. Aigües encantades. Temporada 2005-2006. Published by the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, pp. 40-43.

12. Joan Puig i Ferreter, Aigües encantades, Barcelona, Edicions 62, 1980; Joan< Puig i Ferreter, Textos sobre teatre, Guillem-Jordi Graells (Ed.), Barcelona, Edicions 62, 1983.

13. Josep A. Baixeras et al., Puig i Ferreter. Cinquanta anys després, Tarragona, Arola, 2008, pp. 43ff.

14. Joan Puig i Ferreter, Textos sobre teatre, op. cit., p. 22.

In the Shade of a Scrawny Pine

Collectable musical piece in one act and eight scenes 

Antoni Galmés Martí

Barcelona, January, MMX

A small collection of musical memories of the life of the bohemian Rusiñol, based on texts by Santiago Rusiñol, Josep Pla and Maria Rusiñol. 

Júlia Barceló              Maria 

Aura Garí                   Lluïsa 

David Bo                    Rusiñol, clarinet   

David Anguera          Newspaper boy, Casas, Utrillo, Doctor, Pepet the Gypsy, accompaniments on piano, accordion and guitar  

The scene is an empty place, of Mediterranean whiteness. There is a piano, a guitar, an accordion and a clarinet. The background is a screen with Japanese motifs.  

Prologue

Enter Maria Rusiñol, with a portfolio full of drawings and sketches she looks upon with certain tenderness. She begins to sing “Collections”. 

Maria:

If I could, now that all is collected,  

I would make a collection of memories.  

At home I would have and before my eyes,  

Those ink-stained portfolios 

That made me suffer so much. 

I would have that blessed slate 

On which the accounts never balanced.  

A star painted with a moon

And a single palm frond with a pink-coloured bow,  

And a cheap box of watercolours

And everything the Three Kings brought me 

Those nights of insomnia.  

And a flower dried between the pages of a book.  

Letters with blurred writing

Of which only I would know the secret,  

And plains, and landscapes and paths and forests.  

If I could, now that all is collected,

I would make a collection of memories.

And this whole collection

Made up of pieces of my own life,  

Would be my book of hours,  

And as no-one would understand it,  

It would be only I who read it. 

If I could, now that all is collected,  

I would make a collection of memories.  

Scene 1. Barcelona

Newspaper boy (with La Vanguardia): Extra! Breaking news! Shock in the Spanish state! Cuba will not be returned to Spain! Teatre Líric presents the drama Silenci, by Adrià Gual! (Maria buys a copy.) Thank you, ma’am. And don’t forget our next issue comes with a graphic supplement! 

Maria: Barcelona as a city is a bit unhinged. The bourgeoisie and the artisans, living symbols of civic liberalism, people walking the streets in shirtsleeves, implausible rifles and guns.  

Newspaper boy: In summer, fresh water trickles into the earthenware pitchers. We drink anisette and make horchata de murri. We sing, in chorus, the latest nonsense of love or politics. What things we sing of in Barcelona in these times of progressivism! (Sings “The Eight-hour day”:) 

The Eight-hour day

Is a legal thing (x 2) 

The bourgeois tried to make us afraid 

But we the workers of the Llobregat can’t be scared away! 

And now they don’t think we’ll go on as before 

When for less than five cents

They could pretend to be giants. 

Lluïsa: In winter the soldiers gathered around the fire or the hearth. They played briscola, tute or manille. Now and then a shot whistled by. (The Newspaper boy falls down dead.) In these places, in the mornings, there floated in the air a mixture of tobacco smoke, the smell of partly burned green timber and velvet clothing to give you goose pimples. And nevertheless, despite this roughness, tradition is not to be overthrown. From time to time, people like to dress in a frock coat, top hat, tie and patent leather shoes with pearl buttons. (The corpse calls for attention:)  

Newspaper boy: The people of Barcelona have always had a weakness for burials. They turn up smoking a Caruncho or Múrias cigar, which expunges a divine aroma. On Sundays there is always mass with the wife and family and, ah! Buying a tortell: essential.  

Maria: And within this rare scene that ran from full dress to shirtsleeves, is a world of humour. Almost the entire 19th century in Barcelona was a century of jest, but in the times we’re talking about it reached delirium. People snatching at every opportunity for revelry:  

Lluïsa: fontades in Montjuïc,  

Newspaper boy: barbecues on Mt. Pelada,  

Maria: afternoon teas in the Barceloneta,  

Lluïsa: neighbourhood balls,  

Newspaper boy: choral groups that gathered to sing hymns of freedom, habaneras and ensucrades,  

Lluïsa: Carnival,  

Newspaper boy: amateur theatre and puppet shows.  

All: El ball del tururut, qui gemega, qui gemega. El ball del tururut, qui gemega, ja ha rebut. Gloriós Sant Ferriol, ballarem si Déu ho vol, lo qui toca’l tamborino ha perdut lo flabiol.¹  

Maria: In summer, the humid and sensual Barcelona summer, there are gatherings on the rooftops, with fresh watermelon and muskmelon in cool buckets and the clamour of youth under the watery milky, slightly purple, languid and heavy sky. (They fall asleep.) 

Newspaper boy: In this country where people love life, humour, revelry and foolishness flourish in times of popular politics. Progressivism is linked to a love of the humble things of nature —the water of a spring or the shade of a scrawny pine— and to the more succulent aspects of the kitchen and bad music, which is always the most agreeable. 

And now, some advice from Dr Olovarrieta:  

Lluïsa:

Live a good and tidy life.

Use few remedies

And do all you can

To not worry about a thing. 

Food, in moderation, 

Exercise and distraction. 

Have no apprehension, 

To go to the country a while, 

Stay in little, be social  

And keep occupied. 

Newspaper boy: How about that, people fancy having good manners, what they call urbanity. They teach the girls affectations, and the boys reserve. This urbanity is taught in verse from the book Faith, Steam and Electricity: “Wash your feet with glee ⁄ every two months or three”.²  

All: Eeew! 

Lluïsa: The crinoline has disappeared, vanished into thin air. The bustle is born. Ladies wear, on the rump, a curvilinear and pompous structure about which don Francisco Silvela, less ingenuous regarding sentimental issues than political ones, said the famous phrase: “The bustle has something real behind it.” And how! (The Newspaper boy touches her bottom. Lluïsa turns and slaps him.) 

Maria: Generally speaking, the wealthy Barcelona citizen of the time had a certain predilection for entertaining foreign ladies. These years saw the first arrival of the French. Coinciding with the absolute splendour of the cod a la llauna at Pudes in the Barceloneta: 

Bourgeois lady 1: Who is this girl, Carmeta? 

Bourgeois lady 2: She’s French. Vador’s French girl.  

Bourgeois lady 1: Damn! 

Bourgeois lady 2: I wouldn’t stare; they say you turn to stone. How brash... Isn’t she ashamed to go about like that? 

Bourgeois lady 1: And Vador?  

Bourgeois lady 2: Picked her up in Paris, when he went there to study Venusian therapy.  

Bourgeois lady 1: Vador a therapist? But he sings at Eden Concert! Does she know this, the French girl? Or does she think she’s married a doctor? 

Both: No shame! 

Lluïsa: At the time of which we speak, a family that had eighty duros a month lived wonderfully well. The best apartments in the Eixample cost ten duros to rent. The meals were tasty and complete. Ladies felt that their first duty was to take care of the kitchen. Service staff were still from this country, as the system of having cooks from other countries of prehistoric or troglodyte cuisine had not yet been implemented. 

Newspaper boy: In 1885, thirty locals were having an aperitif. The bitters and vermouth didn’t go down well. Neither did the absinthe, but what an incomparable delight was absinthe! Did anyone doubt that a good absinthe, perfectly measured and ice cold was not the drink of the gods? Too true. Wonderful beverage, portentous and divine liquid that had produced so much sharp and exquisite poetry and so many delicious fantasies! Later the cocktails appeared, mixtures counter to the interests of humanity, having no effect on sensitivity, which contributed generally to progressive cretinization. 

Maria: And the shows? They really were a dream! Barcelona saw Réjane, Duse, the unbearable and fantastic Sarah Bernhard, and some excellent Italian companies. The Mario Company from Madrid, of thirty well-dressed persons. Entry and seat: three pesetas. The dazzling Liceu. When the immortal Adelina Patti first came to Barcelona they had to price the seats at twenty pesetas! 

All: Twenty pesetas? What an exaggeration, twenty pesetas! As if she were the Queen! Twenty pesetas, what were they thinking of? 

Maria: Imagine the riot. Of course, people were accustomed to paying ridiculous amounts to hear heavenly voices. And then the theatre was as interesting both inside and out. It was surrounded by a halo of adventure, of sensual and sinful intrigue that impassioned people. 

Newspaper boy: Eclectic Barcelona. 

Lluïsa: Modernist. 

Newspaper boy: Symbolist. 

Maria: Bohemian. 

Lluïsa: Noctambulist. 

Newspaper boy: Urban and progressist. 

Lluïsa: The Barcelona of the Eixample. 

Maria: Right and left. 

Newspaper boy: Criss-crossed with avenues of flower sellers. 

Maria: Of plans of comedies. 

Lluïsa: Of comedians. Of travellers. 

Maria: Of universal exhibitions. 

Newspaper boy: Of private exhibitions. At the Sala Parés, for example. 

Newspaper boy: Where they dreamed of being stars in the sky over the Paral·lel. 

Maria: And those who drove open-top cars along the Passeig de Sant Joan. 

Newspaper boy: There. 

Maria: My father. 

Lluïsa: Santiago. 

Maria: Jaume, because he thought it sounded more Catalan. 

Newspaper boy: Mossèn³ Tiago. 

Lluïsa: Mus, as Ramon Casas called him. 

Newspaper boy: At 16 or 17 years. 

Maria: Rusiñol runs into his old mentor, Senyor Quim. 

(Enter Santiago Rusiñol with a portfolio under his arm. In something of a hurry.) 

Rusiñol: Good day, Senyor Quim! 

Senyor Quim: How are you, Tiago? You must be a successful businessman by now. 

Rusiñol: We’ll see. But for now I paint canvasses. 

Senyor Quim: You paint canvasses? What kind of business is that? 

Rusiñol: Bad business, Senyor Quim. It’s the kind of work that pays little and you eat more bread than cake. (Senyor Quim laughs uncertainly. Rusiñol addresses the audience:) The schools of Fine Arts serve to teach. Under no circumstances are they suitable for learning. 

Senyor Quim: Ah, Santiago! You’ve always been a restless animal! 

Maria: I won’t speak of how my father, Santiago Rusiñol born in 1861 in the Carrer Princesa, of how he desired to be a painter and his father did not want that.  

Lluïsa: They were of the same social class, had the same likes, the same ideas, identical hobbies, and were invariably in the same places. Ramon Casas called him Mus. Rusiñol gave Casas the name Cisco, and the third member of the trio, the encyclopaedic Miquel Utrillo, was Senyor Domingo. They knew about Paris. 

Maria: They knew a lot about everything.  

Lluïsa: And that coach trip? They travelled all over the country. Nothing could stop them. Him, Casas and a worker from Manlleu called Serra. They were Catalan Bohemians. They created an authentic uniform for artists: a wide hat, Rubens-style, cravat, dark clothing and smooth trousers. They were bearded, as they did not shave or cut their hair. 

Casas: And what is brushing?  

Rusiñol: Using a brush. 

Casas: What is a brush? 

Lluïsa: Now, the fellow of this generation who broke all the records was the painter Brull, who went for years without washing or touching his beard or hair. He ended up with a kind of yellowish fat about the face, like a gypsy from under a bridge. 

Rusiñol: It is easy to become bohemian, a good life . . . 

Scene 2. Paris

Maria: The first time we went to Paris I was eleven. My father was ill, in Dr Solière’s clinic, and we rented a flat in Passy to be closer to him. There we got to know Isaac Albéniz and his family. They were lovely: any bohemian who turned up in Paris, was a bohemian picked up by Albéniz. He was kindness personified. It is as though I can still see him playing his very Spanish dances on the piano. He would close his eyes in a daze of love, and more than once we saw a tear of longing roll down his face. Paris was a Mecca for every good bohemian. 

Rusiñol (in Spanish): Montmartre has an advantage over the other Parisian neighbourhoods: a quarter of an hour more light in the morning and half an hour more at night. 

When in the grand boulevards the lanterns are already flickering yellow on the dark background of advancing night; at this indecisive hour when the streets are overrun by growing shadows that that envelop all in ultramarine and cobalt, there is still light at the top of Montmartre, from the last rays of the setting sun. An achromatic scale of light violet beating on the rooftops, gradually receding to a dull matt. The roof tiles, wounded by rays the colour of fire, take on the appearance of a city dying alight, slowly sinking to the bottom of the ice. 

So appears the hill of the Moulin, when the sun deigns to visit it in these days of fog, an aspect that lasts but an instant to give way to night, arriving with an entourage of stars that seem to shiver in the cold. And at this time of mysterious transition, in the solemn stillness, Montmartre seems lethargic and sleeping in the depths of its narrow and fantastic streets. 

Although it is not, thankfully. 

Montmartre never rests. 

(Parisian waltz: «La discrette».) 

Rusiñol (in Spanish): The great artery, those famous outdoor boulevards are full of stages on which a first measure of motifs are served as unripe fruit. They take tentative steps across the boards of a bad cafe as humble debutantes who will later become celebrated artists. There, as unknown actors, they take their first stand and learn to look the audience in the face, before they are crowned with celebrity. 

Maria: The writer, the poet, the painter, the sculptor, showgirls, dancers, singers and cocottes, they flood through Paris from all over the world. 

Lluïsa: All of them. We spent many long stays. Going to receptions we had to hire outfits for. To soirées. To the Odeon to see Réjane’s Lady Elizabeth, to Montmartre, where for a time Spanish artists showed their work. 

Rusiñol (in Spanish): El Picador Petit is the song of the day. Couplets extolling, as they should, svelte figures and gentlemanly manners. Two "Carmen"-style wenches with implausible cleavage throw us some 'Oles' as Iberian as their Parisian throats allow. The only authentic Spaniard, an old Castilian who came to sell products from his homeland, went bust and was hired as a bolero dancer at the Moulin Rouge. Worker by day, dancing to exhaustion at night and, pale, skinny and costumed, like a puppet of flamenquismo imported into the place. 

Maria: The trips on the Seine. Oh, and when father showed us where he lived in his youth. A frightful mill in Montmartre. 

Lluïsa: But the disease also followed him to Paris. Santiago wants to come home, says he is tired of the fog. Au revoire, cité des rèves... 

Scene 3. Sitges 

(Habanera.) 

Lluïsa: Sitges was a white spot on the sea. From the roof to the pavement it was dazzling whiteness. There had been no summer vacationers, or architects, or the new rich. There was no style, and that made it so pretty. 

Rusiñol (showing signs of summer dehydration): An horchata, for the Love of God . . . A cool horchata . . . (Suddenly, something catches his attention and he gazes into infinity.) 

Villager woman 1: Good day, Rusiñol! What do you see with that lost stare? 

Rusiñol: These houses... one must live well in those... 

Villager woman 1: (paying no mind): A glass of malvasia? 

Rusiñol: Thank you! Wonderful! 

Villager woman 1: So, Senyor Rusiñol, when will you be doing our portrait? 

Rusiñol: Right now! Fetch me a pencil and paper from the tavern and we’ll get to work. But you’ll have to keep still! 

Villager woman 1: As the dead, Rusiñol, still as the dead. (To the audience:)  

And in the café, by the sea,  

Rusiñol drew our portraits

And gifted us these sketches

Making a show of his art. 

And all of Sitges listened 

In the café, by the sea  

How the artist recited

Until it was time to leave. 

Maria: Later we went into Can Chiquillo, the best pork butcher in Sitges. The proprietress, beautiful, fat and cheery, as soon as she saw him she would give him an embrace of the kind that would hurt anyone. And my father reciprocated. Hug here, hug there, as if he were the woman’s brother just returned from the Americas. 

Rusiñol: Right, we must go for dinner, Maria. Say goodbye and thank you. 

Maria: Goodbye and thank you. 

Chiquilla: Goodbye Rusiñol, till next time, Rusiñol, see you tomorrow, Rusiñol. 

Rusiñol: Goodbye everyone, and goodbye, Chiquilla. Oh, and don’t get any fatter or you’ll need a bigger store. 

(Chiquilla’s jaw drops.) 

Maria: In the house where we lived, in Sitges, we had a monkey called Marianna. I was afraid of her, she didn’t like me, but she adored my father. You be the monkey Marianna. 

Lluïsa: Me?  Why me?   

Maria: Come on, you do it really well. Sit down. And you, David, you be a clown. At the Líric they did “Alegria que passa”.⁴  

Clown: See the monkey eat and you’ll know what it is to be hungry. 

Maria: Marianna played the role of the monkey. 

(Circus music. Final verses of the “l’Alegria que passa”.) 

Lluïsa: Poor monkey! She’s been through a lot! One night, after the show, we left her in the theatre and she spent three days there. On the third day, remembering her role, she ate the clown’s costume in pieces. 

Rusiñol: This monkey knows a lot more than many who do comedy. We’ll make her an honorary actress! 

All: Santiago, what do you want? It’s a monkey! 

Rusiñol: Simpletons! This monkey is worth her weight in gold. We’ll throw a party for her. Go and get some cakes and good wine. And you, Marianna, get ready; you’ll be the star tonight.  

Maria: And so we had the party in the presence of Marianna, who did those cute things of hers. What happened to Marianna? Who knows?. The future for a monkey . . .  there couldn’t have been many roles for a monkey in the theatre: there were none. She must have died in a corner, as so many do in life, without being cute or being called Marianna. 

Oh, and Crickboom, the famous violinist, who was welcomed by my father and the great Morera on the platform at the station. After a slap-up meal, and “cheers” to the North, South and all points in between, Crickboom took his Stradivarius and showed his appreciation for the hospitality with a magical melody that floated like a gauze of pure transparency through the rooms of the Cau Ferrat.  

Lluïsa: Ah, yes.

Maria: Cau Ferrat.

Lluïsa: La fada⁵ , by Enric Morera. 

Maria:

Of the old gardens of the world  

We are the rhythmic voice,  

We are the echo of times past  

Crying where all rests.  

In the depths of the dark trees,  

Of the dry fountains  

We guard the song  of the water,  

Listening to the voice  

Of God who sings the air.  

Take for yourselves the shelter,  

We are the dying echo  

Of old memory;  

The ancient song  

Told by history.  

We are the fairies praying  

Explaining the legend  

Told us by the forest.  

Gardens abandoned,  

Nowhere in the world do we enjoy  

Such sweet poetry. 

Maria: What a great event! They came for the music of Morera, artists and bohemians from the four corners of the world. 

Lluïsa: Eugène Isaie, Guidé, Gillet, Madame and Monsieur Chausson, the Granados, Ixart, Almirall. 

Maria: Manuel de Falla wrote part of El amor brujo on the piano at Cau Ferrat. 

Lluïsa: La intrusa by Maeterlink had everybody trembling. 

Maria: Miss Füller, the exquisite American dancer, who caused a storm throughout Europe, danced on the stage built over the water. 

Morera: Welcome, artists, who have come to hold our hand to keep us on the path of dreams. We have not the strength to run like you, but our hearts go with you. Your example gives us hope. 

Lluïsa: And the music of the celebrated Crickboom, continued to resonate in the walls of the Cau.  

Rusiñol: And behold, it was the hour when the fishermen went down to cast their nets from the beach of Sant Sebastià. When they were in front of the Cau, they were surprised by the music. They removed their clogs to avoid making noise and entered as if the place was a church. When the maestro finished, the men were still there, mesmerized, completely still. Their hearts beating with a new feeling they had never before experienced. And Crickboom, realizing this and seeing that these poor fishermen in stopping to listen had forgotten that the boats were waiting to take them on the high seas, was so impressed that he shouted out in Catalan: Per a vosaltres!⁶  

Scene 4. Mallorca

If you suffer from neurasthenia, 

Or think of suffering;

If you are confused 

By the noise of civilization, 

By the anxiety of going quickly  

And arriving early at a place with nothing to do;  

If business has filled with numbers  

That thing we call the mind, 

If the cinemas have spoiled your vision

And agitation has become chronic, 

Follow me to an island I will tell you

Where calm reigns

Where the women don’t get old

And men without hurry 

Waste not even words 

Where the sun does stay

And even Mrs Moon 

Is infected by laziness. 

The Island of Calm, the Island of Calm. 

(Enter two Mallorcan ensaïmades that begin to dance the Parado, now and then munching on Quelitas.)⁷  

Rusiñol: We have reached the point, gentlemen, where if we don’t sing the praises the ensaïmada deserves, it would be like going to Rome and not mentioning St Peter. 

The origin of the ensaïmada is lost in the darkness of the Middle Ages. The resemblance to a turban suggests that maybe the Arabs were its inventors, and the form of a Persian cupola, climbing in a spiral seems to confirm this. Ensaïmadas may have gone from being Moorish to Christian, Christian to Mallorcan, and from Mallorca to feed all Christendom. 

As Brillat-Savarin said, “Tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are”. Men can be divided into three types: those who eat chocolate in the morning: the disagreeable, workers, selfish and ugly. Those who eat melindros⁸: too sweet, too sickly. And those who eat ensaïmadas, who never get worked up or carried away. They are unhurried, but never late, and are so balanced that they neither rise nor fall. Judges ought to eat them. In the newsrooms of newspapers there should always be one in sight, and a law should be declared making this mandatory. Yes, ensaïmada, you are almost a symbol! 

Mallorca be with you, and be with Mallorca! And in the morning, with chocolate, present yourself, radiant and soft, to take away our dark thoughts. Liberate us from worry and leave us to live and meditate on your island of calm, the longer the better. 

All: Amen.

Scene 5. Pepet the Gypsy

Maria (looking at some drawings in the portfolio:) Look who we have here! Pepet the Gypsy! When my father went to paint in Girona, he had a friend of great class. Pepet the Gypsy. Within an hour after my father arrived, even the stones of the city knew about it. 

Pepet: Mossèn Tiago has arrived! Mossèn Tiago Rusiñol has arrived! 

Maria: He called him Mossèn because he believed it was a sign of respect. 

All: Go on, Pepet, now you can smoke cigars! 

Pepet: Oh and I will, because Mossèn Tiago is not like you, you mangy lot! 

Maria: Pepet's father, who must have been a very practical man, thinking he would have to maintain him, gave his son the worst beating any gypsy had ever received. But he survived. So there! Lost, he came and went through the streets of Girona, without knowing where to settle. The second or third day, about to die of hunger, Divine Providence, which knows so well how to do things, laid before his very eyes, in the middle of the road, a bulk. He approached it. 

Pepet: A melon!

Maria: Bless me! From that moment that melon was the centre of the world. All events revolved around the melon, and when he passed through the streets, the children addressed him with shrill cries of derision. 

Pepet: Five years before finding the melon, my father caught pneumonia. A month after the melon, I was invited to a glass of wine. A year after finding the melon, Mossèn Tiago came to paint in Girona and hired me as his assistant. 

Rusiñol: Look, Pepet. Come every day to the Hotel Inglés and help me carry my equipment to the cloisters of the Cathedral, which is where I paint. It's a place where you will be very comfortable. It's cool and you can think. Thinking will do you good, because you are a philosopher. 

(Pepet was dumbstruck and understood nothing.)

Maria: Half an hour before he had been told to be there, Pepet was already waiting at the door of the hotel. It was sunset, and my father and Pepet roamed the narrow, humid streets of Girona. Father in front and Pepet a good distance behind. 

Rusiñol: Listen, Pepet, why don’t you walk here by my side? 

Pepet: Because the youths sneer at me, Mossèn Tiago. And if I were by your side, you could think their gestures were for you when they are for me. 

Rusiñol: Pepet, you have a refined spirit. You are a thinker. 

Pepet: What do you mean, Mossèn Tiago? 

Rusiñol: You think things that many who believe they think would not think. 

Maria: When they arrived at the cloister, my father prepared the canvas, paints and set to work. Pepet, sitting on the floor, looked on in awe. Everything was quiet in that cloister. Occasionally, the swallows shrieked over the cornices. The bells slowly rang out the Angelus or the Rosary. The light went and my father took advantage of last remaining visibilty. 

Rusiñol: Listen, Pepet, have you never been out of Girona? 

Pepet: Yes, Senyor; I once took the train to Caldes. 

Rusiñol: And what, did you enjoy Caldes? 

Pepet: Yes, but what I liked most was what the moon did. 

Rusiñol: The moon? What happened to the moon? 

Pepet: Well look, Mossèn Tiago. When I got on the train, the moon was there in front of the station already waiting for us, and it followed us all the way. And since it was there the next day, we brought it back to Girona. I thought it didn’t move, but apparently it travels too. 

Rusiñol: Pepet, did you have this kind of thought before you found the melon? 

Pepet: What’s that?  

Rusiñol: Nothing, pick up my things, we can no longer see. Look at the moon. Now it will follow us home. 

Scene 6. Quatre Gats

(“Duetto buffo di due gatti”.⁹ Rossini.) 

Newspaper boy: Barcelona’s most famous bar ran on a curious commercial principle: the open contempt the proprietor showed for his customers. 

Maria: Pere Romeu, tall, skinny, bony, sunken eyes, a real athlete, ruled over the Quatre Gats, an establishment in the pure style of the Chat Noir, where you perhaps did not eat so well, the portions were scanty, but you were guaranteed a night full of emotions. 

In the modernist cafe 

Decorated with cobwebs 

And a certain German aftertaste

You ask for a drink

And they serve you whatever they like

You ask for stew 

And you get an open sandwich. 

My, my, my, Romeu 

You’ll have not a single client

My, my, my, Romeu 

If you treat people that way. 

Rusiñol: Pere, when you can, some nice long cutlets and a bock lager, I’m famished . . . 

Romeu: What? And this lot also want dinner? What are you thinking? This simply cannot go on any longer; it must stop! 

On the rooftops of Montsió¹⁰  

Four cats watching the moon 

Discuss what’s going on

With so many people down below

It’s that there was a function

A night of puppets

Titella and Cristeta 

Throwing fuel on the Devil’s fire. 

My, my, my, Romeu

You’ll have not a single client

My, my, my, Romeu

If you treat people that way. 

Maria: The place was dirty, neglected, with a table that was cleaned once a week. It was, actually, yet another character among that gang of bohemians. 

Romeu: Think, act, kill, murder, steal, marry, do what you see fit but, above all, do not touch my cobwebs! 

Rusiñol: Excuse me, Romeu, but I can’t see the Chinese shadow play with this curtain of dust in front of my face. 

Romeu: Careful, be careful! Don’t get too close! Get back, any imprudence will cost you dear! 

To go on a bicycle

One must keep the back straight

Romeu hangs the drawings

Those done by Picasso 

And also by Ricard Opisso 

There’s to be an exhibition

And coming from Barcelona 

All the good and the better. 

My, my, my, Romeu 

Perhaps you have no customers

My, my, my, Romeu 

But you are a good host. 

Scene 7. The death of the artist  

(Rusiñol, debilitated, tucked under some blankets, in a rocking chair.) 

Lluïsa: Oh, Santiago, love. The evenings, nights and mornings are passing you by. Your beard, moustache and hair have all turned white. Santiago . . . 

Rusiñol: Who’s there . . . ? 

Lluïsa: It’s the doctor. 

Rusiñol: Who? 

Lluïsa: The doctor. 

(Pause.) 

Rusiñol: But didn’t we agree that I was ill? Oh well . . .  bring me the nose. 

Lluïsa: For the Love of God! You’re not to move! 

Rusiñol: But for the disguise I want I do not have to move. We must follow the tradition. Bring me the nose . . . (Lluïsa brings him the nose.) I look like Cyrano in his dying moments . . . 

(The doctor enters and auscultates him.)

Lluïsa: How is he? 

Sunyer: His heart is fine, the pulse regular, the wound shows no change; but, to be frank, Lluïsa, his face is so changed, it looks so bad, and I’m concerned. 

Lluïsa: Well, he’s in disguise. 

Sunyer: You’re saying he’s in disguise? 

Lluïsa: It’s Carnival today, Senyor Sunyer, and he wanted to follow the tradition. 

Sunyer: What do you want me to say? I think it’s too serious a time for this kind of joke.  

Newspaper boy: Santiago, how are you, today? (All look at Rusiñol.) 

Rusiñol: As you can see, abstinent and not taking anything . . . Wow, so many people . . . I’m almost more successful sick than well . .  . Lluïsa. Prepare my luggage; I’m going to Madrid to paint. My gardens await; and here I waste away . . . 

Lluïsa: But what are you saying?  

Rusiñol: It’s Molièresque, I know . . . but all of life is Molièresque . . . Maria . . . 

Maria: Father? 

Rusiñol: Maria, how you resemble me . . . 

Maria: When they got to Aranjuez, they told us that my father was in bad shape, but crazy about painting. It seemed as if he had no time to lose. And was in a hurry to finish two paintings he had already begun. On the eve of his death he was working all afternoon. The next day, in the early morning, my mother came into the room . . . 

Rusiñol: Lluïsa, why have they taken the canvas I was painting? 

Lluïsa: Don’t worry, Santiago, I’ll be back with it . . . 

Maria: And she went out in a fright to find the doctor. When they returned, that man that was so balanced no longer recognized anyone. He was dying. His last words were not for his wife or daughter, but for his art. Present in body, he was more beautiful than ever, wrapped in a white sheet, he looked like the great Christ of Velázquez. 

Lluïsa: The gardeners of Aranjuez made an offering of flowers from the garden he had been painting. Santiago . . . 

Maria: Father . . . 

Scene 8. Epilogue 

Maria: Senyor Rusiñol, the doctor is here. 

Rusiñol: Don’t let him in, I’m ill; now I’ll have the illness and the doctor. 

Newspaper boy: Tell me, Rusiñol, why does this man, who is such a good writer, not know how to get the words out of his mouth? 

Rusiñol: Because his brain makes him idle; when he writes, tilting his head down, it moves to his forehead, and when he raises his head again it just dances around. 

Lluïsa: When do you like them best, the choirs, Rusiñol? 

Rusiñol: When they shut up. 

Maria: What would you say, to the operas of Wagner? 

Rusiñol: When Wotan is still standing, bearable, because he looks as though he might go away. But when he sits down . . . 

Maria: The man of theatre . . . 

(Rusiñol hands some pages to Lluïsa and the Newspaper boy.) 

Lluïsa: Let me tell you what we said that day in the Jardí del General, if I married you I would be in a bain-marie, it went straight to my heart. I wasn’t born to have emotions, or jealousy, or suspicion, or doubt. I wanted smooth days and smooth years, like the glacises in the Ciutadella, and I wanted to persevere slowly, very slowly, like someone praying the rosary. 

Newspaper boy: You could not have done better, because I am just like that, Tomaseta. 

Lluïsa: I know, and so . . . I’m . . . yours. 

Newspaper boy: And I am yours, and isn’t it strange, you could say we just met, because what happened before was not meeting, and now we have openness, and . . . I love you. 

Lluïsa: That quickly? 

Newspaper boy: I tell you I love you. It could have taken longer, but I don’t know, loving you just came so suddenly. I swear. 

Lluïsa: Also . . .  I . . . love you too, but not suddenly, little by little. We will have so much time to love each other that if we don’t save some love we won’t be able to settle down. 

Newspaper boy: We can save all you like, but not love, Tomaseta. You are my wife.  

Lluïsa: I know. 

Newspaper boy: And you will be forever. 

Lluïsa: For that very reason. 

Newspaper boy: And I want to see you always happy, and I feel very guilty about something, Tomaseta. 

Lluïsa: About what, Estevet? 

Newspaper boy: What happened today. About this, the problem of not being able to go to Montserrat. Not for Montserrat, but for you. 

Lluïsa: Don’t worry, we’ll go one day. 

Newspaper boy: But we would already be there. I’d be there . . . with you . . .  

Lluïsa: Ah, an idea! 

Newspaper boy: What? 

Lluïsa: Listen, Estevet. Since we have spent nothing on that, let’s do something. 

Newspaper boy: Whatever you like. 

Lluïsa: How much would the trip to Montserrat have been? 

Newspaper boy: I don’t know. 

Lluïsa: Add it up. 

Newspaper boy: Six duros. 

Lluïsa: Ok, so, those six duros, we’ll put them in the piggy bank, and every extra expense we save . . . the same. Is that ok? 

Newspaper boy: Whatever you like. 

Lluïsa: Give me the six duros. 

Newspaper boy: Here you are. Here you are. They’re yours, and everything that is mine will be yours. 

Lluïsa: Then in they go. One. 

Newspaper boy: I love you. 

Lluïsa: Two. 

Newspaper boy: I say I love you. I love you much, very much. 

Lluïsa: Three. 

Newspaper boy: I love you . . . because I love you. 

Lluïsa: Four. 

Newspaper boy: Because you are my wife, and I love you. I never knew I could love so much.  

Lluïsa: Five. 

Newspaper boy: I love you.  

Lluïsa: Six. 

Newspaper boy: I love you. 

Rusiñol: What do you think, then, of this scene? 

(Maria and Lluïsa look at him.) 

Rusiñol: Yes, too long. I’ll cut it. 

Maria: But we didn’t say anything . . . 

Rusiñol: The public likes to whistle or applaud. What they won’t stand for even a moment is boredom . . . 

Lluïsa: Always dirty. I don’t know what you do to get yourself all stained this way. 

Rusiñol: They’re not stains, Lluïsa. It’s just wear. 

Lluïsa: This summer you made this white dress. You are very handsome, but for God's sake, don’t stain it! Santiago, don’t dirty yourself with paint. Don’t sit in the street. There is dust, put down a napkin. 

Rusiñol: Good God, Lluïsa! How one must suffer, to be clean! 

Maria: And taking the jug of wine that was on the table, he poured it all up and down the dress and it was indeed a real shame. 

Rusiñol: Now we don’t have to argue about it any longer, and I can live in peace. 

Maria: The bohemian. 

Newspaper boy: The inexhaustible traveller. Paris, Mallorca, Madrid, Italy . . . 

Lluïsa: The spouse . . . 

Newspaper boy: The hero. 

Lluïsa: And the clown, and Ramon of La Puntual, and the prodigal puppet. 

Newspaper boy: And the grandfather’s testament from l’Auca del Senyor Esteve . . .¹¹  

I go in peace from this world because I leave you all in peace, and I know you will be more in peace when I’m gone because I have abused living. I’ve done enough things that I can go. I founded La Puntual, I reared it, as they say, made it grow, gave you my advice at all times, and so many years of giving advice is tiring: tiring for those who give and tiring for those who receive, and we were all becoming tired. Today I give you the last. Have patience; we are nearing the end. I leave you planted a vineyard: take care of that, once planted it gives grapes, alone, and is never rabassa morta.¹² Do not ever build in a fluster. Take it little by little, with a stone today and another tomorrow you will make La Puntual like a kind of church that will be the pride of the Esteves. I have laid the foundations, Esteve and his father the floors, and now it's your turn, Ramonet: you must build the roof. I will not give much more advice as we are out of time and because I cannot waste it. I'll get to the point, in short. Do not ever trust words, words dazzle and misrepresent things; do not trust so much in signatures, as they are written words; by no means trust women, as they are machines of talk; and do not trust yourselves because you can make mistakes. Facts, just the facts! Everything else is cloud, and there is no business there, in the clouds. Now goodbye, and no tears or nonsense. Facts! Keep a memory of me, but above all maintain my credit. Facts! A simple burial . . .  and it’s done! 

Maria: There are just so very many memories to collect. Lucky we have this portfolio stained with ink . . . (Exeunt all except Rusiñol.) 

Rusiñol: Ultimately, everything happens so fast, and memories are, after all, the small pictures and verses of an auca. 

In the shade of a scrawny pine 

I planted the easel. 

In the shadow of that night 

Where I could paint well. 

There I see some mountains 

Blue, pink and brown 

And here in front a fountain 

That gushes white paint 

And among those green orange trees 

I see the yellow stream. 

My muse is the night 

That inspires poetry 

In the shade of a scrawny pine 

With the bark I do calligraphy. 

I see a black and white village 

Behind the grey haze 

Before this fine morning 

Makes it turquoise again 

And this silent garden 

In Raixa, Aranjuez 

Shows me the beauty 

Of the century commenced 

In the shade of a scrawny pine 

I planted the easel. 

In the shadow of that night 

Where I could paint well. 

Black

And here ends our story

Our Lord holds it in glory. 

1 . A nursery rhyme, roughly translating as: “The dance of tururut, he who moans, he who moans / The dance of tururut, he who moans will get it / Glorious St Ferriol, we’ll dance if God wishes / he who plays the tambourine has lost the flute.” 

2 . Orig. in Spanish: La Fe, el Vapor y la Electricidad: “Te lavarás bien los pies ⁄ cada dos meses o tres.” 

3 . Priest or Father. 

4 . “Passing Happiness”. 

5 . In English: “The Fairy” 

6 . “For you!” 

7 . Ensaïmadas are a pastry typical of Mallorca; Quelitas are savoury biscuits made by the family company Quely. 

8 . Like soft savoiardi biscuits. 

9 . “Humorous duet for two cats”. 

10 . The Quatre Gats (“Four Cats”) tavern was, and is, located in the carrer de Montsió in the centre of Barcelona. 

11 . L’auca del Senyor Esteve is a novel by Santiago Rusiñol that was published in 1907. 

12 . A type of contract where a farmer leased land in return for a share of the annual crop. 