You know what? The paving of Bellesguard, Part I

By: Ferran Garcés 

When Gaudí built the Bellesguard Tower between 1900 and 1909, Barcelona was undergoing profound urban changes. In 1854, the demolition of the medieval wall had begun, and by around 1860, the first stone of the future Eixample was laid. The inauguration of the Tibidabo avenue was celebrated in 1901, and that of the Via Laietana in 1908. Stone up, stone down, in a short time, the buildings we see today would take shape, but there was still one essential detail missing: the pavement of the streets. 

Despite the magnificence of the new modernist buildings, the state of the ground was so lamentable that Barcelona soon became known as “Can Fanga.” This nickname was coined by the satirical magazine *L’Esquella de la Torratxa*, and it was the Barcelonans themselves who were the first to use it. However, the solution would not be long in coming… 

The Forgotten Paving 

The project to modernize the pavement of the Eixample began to be managed in 1906. The following year, the first catalog of the tile competition was published, as they were called at the time. In the copy preserved in the Municipal Archive of the City of Barcelona, there are eighteen models. The best-known, of course, is number 4, in the shape of a flower, a design whose origin is still a matter of controversy, but which has become an icon of the city. However, what interests us here is number 9 because it is the one we find in the entrance hall of Bellesguard Tower. 

The exact date of this first auction by the City Council is January 19, 1907. However, a little later, on May 16 of the same year, a new selection was published, with only five models. In it, the Bellesguard paving had disappeared. We do not know who designed it. We only know that, since the end of the 19th century, the two main factories of hydraulic mosaics at the time, Orsola Solà and Cia and Escofet, included it in their respective catalogs; in other words, the private use of these tiles predates that of the City Council. In the catalogs of Orsola and Sola, the forgotten paving is assigned number 954. In those of Escofet, number 553. 

Which of the two factories supplied the pieces used in Bellesguard Tower? Next week, we will reveal it. For now, which one would you say did?… 

Notes

(1) Esparza, Danae (1982), Barcelona a ras de suelo, Barcelona, University of Barcelona, pp. 110-113. 

An online edition is also available: Esparza Lozano, Danae (2010), “The model of public space and urban design: The configuration of the ground and an image of the city”, University of Barcelona: Master’s final project. 

In the following link, you can access a good number of images and anecdotes about “Can Fanga”: Martínez, David (01/23/2023) “Can Fanga, when Barcelona was the city of mud,” Blog Histories of Barcelona. 

(2) Esparza, Danae (1982), Op. Cit., pp. 113-126. 

(3) Ibíd., pp. 124-126. More information can be found in chapter 7 of the same book. 

(4) (4)Ibíd, p. 118-119