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The Restaurante Casino del Parque de la Ciutadella was a building from 1916, very distant in time from those built for the celebration of the Universal Exposition of 1888.
The building would not be the first casino to be built in the city, since it had already inaugurated, on July 19, 1911, the Gran Casino de la Rabassada.
But the distance from the city to Parque de la Rabassada and the difficult communication with the casino was not the solution for many of the Barcelonans, who wanted to go and could not, especially with the problems to return.
With the new casino that would be installed inside the Ciutadella Park, fans of games of chance did not have to make long trips to participate in games of chance.
The authorities, although they were willing to authorize its construction, did not want the place to be very visible to the public, so they decided to locate it inside the Ciutadella park, on a small esplanade between the monumental waterfall and the lake. .
For its construction, they contacted the architect Josep Plantada i Artigas, to present a project for a low-rise building (ground floor and one floor), so as not to break the harmony of the place.
Josep Plantada was a controversial architect, son of Josep Plantada i Forés. In 1911, he won the prize in the Barcelona City Council’s annual competition for artistic buildings for the construction of the Ideal Cinema. And he was the author, in 1924, of the project for the Hospital del Mar, although he did not give himself entirely to his profession.
Between 1930 and 1931 he was president of the Catalan Football Federation and president of the Jupiter Sports Club and director of FC Barcelona during the presidency of Arcadi Balaguer i Costa. In 1932 he was appointed head of the Hygiene and Sanitation Building Service.
For the casino, he designed a building in the French Renaissance style, suitable for accommodating an upper class, which is the one that normally attends these places.
A café-restaurant was installed on the ground floor and the upper floor would be dedicated to the casino premises. The back part connected with the small bridge that went into the lake, with an area as a lookout.
The building built with an oval shape, housed the cafe restaurant on the ground floor. It had an entrance door in the center, which was reached through two steps with a mat that served to remove the exterior dirt from the park floor, from the interior of the premises and four round columns at the ends, which separated the large windows. from the two sides of the cafe restaurant.
It was divided into two spaces, in order to be able to hold private banquets and normal restaurant service at the same time.
From the center of the ground floor, the upper floor was accessed through an elegant marble staircase, with an attractive elliptical-shaped roof, through which the clients whose destination would go directly to the casino went up.
From inside there was access to a terrace, where apart from being able to have a few minutes of rest in the game, you could enjoy a coffee or a soft drink or admire the waterfall, the lake and the lush vegetation of the park.
Soon the restaurant, due to its capacity and its location in an idyllic location, turned out to be the ideal restaurant to hold large social and family banquets for the Barcelona bourgeoisie.
In 1917, a tribute banquet took place to Àngel Guimerà, born on May 6, 1845, son of a Catalan father, Agustín Guimerá i Fonts and a Canarian mother, Margarita Jorge Castellano. In December 1853 he moved to live in Catalonia. He was one of the greatest exponents of the late 19th century Renaissance of Catalan literature.
With the arrival of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship, in November 1924, the Casino was turned into a mere café-restaurant, which suffered no problems during the civil war period. With the arrival of the dictatorship again in 1939, it reopened its doors and private parties and social events returned.
On Sunday, May 7, 1961, the XIII International Esperanto Railway Congress was inaugurated in which Austria, Sweden participated. Denmark. Finland, Great Britain, France, Italy, the Netherlands. Norway, Switzerland, Germany and Belgium and Spain.
The Vanguard of Tuesday 9, on page 20, commented:
“On Monday morning, at the Casino de la Ciudadela, an act was held in which the layout and width of the laying of our railways with respect to those of the rest of the continent was debated.”
On Sunday, September 29, 1963, on the occasion of the Mercè festivities, it hosted the Barcelona Publishers and Booksellers Guild fair, one of its last mass events.
A few months later, on February 29, 1964, the building of the old casino in Ciutadella Park was demolished. Mayor José María Porcioles, famous for destroying the city’s architecture, justified its demolition to improve the view of the lake from the esplanade in front of the monumental waterfall.
