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The primitive house of Tomás Santos de Lamadrid in Barcelona, ??designed by the architect of the Barcelona bourgeoisie Enric Sagnier i Villavecchia, was built in 1900, on the current 240 Muntaner street, corner with 1 Buen Pastor street and Argüelles Avenue (current Diagonal).
Santos de Lamadrid was a descendant of a Hindu family, who had achieved a significant fortune in the Caribbean area of ??Central America and had decided to establish his residence in the Catalan capital, so he sought, by purchasing the apple, to expand his empire. financially and live comfortably.
On their return to Barcelona, ??they had acquired practically all the land in the block formed by the streets: Muntaner, Aribau, Travesera de Gracia and Buen Pastor. He had reserved what for him was the best area, the corner located on Argüelles Avenue, to build his family residence.
He left the rest of the plots to be able to negotiate with builders who were looking for plots or with possible individual owners who wanted to build a mansion.
Santos de Lamadrid commissioned Sagnier to build a building that would truly surprise you and worthy of that area that, according to surveys, would be one of the most luxurious in the city.
The mansion had a straight façade. Small windows had been built in the lower part that gave light to the basement of the building.
The noble area would be located on the ground floor with an entrance door in the center finished at the top with a semicircular arch. The door was guarded by two windows, followed by rounded bay windows to end with a window joining the neighboring buildings.
On the first floor, where the family bedrooms would be located, there was a long balcony with a stone railing with three exits with doors finished with filigree at the top. On both sides of the balcony, on the left side, there was a curved viewpoint with columns or glass and, on the right side, another somewhat simpler viewpoint. The two viewpoints on each side looked like the ends of the battlements of medieval castles.
The enclosure in the central part was completed with a gallery with columns closed with a roof in which straight figures stood out.
Sagnier had wanted to curl the curl of the central façade by giving the corners the change of direction with the streets of Muntaner and Buen Pastor, with two different viewpoints on each side, in which a total asymmetry was observed.
While on Muntaner Street the building continued the finishing of the rest of the building, on Buen Pastor Street a pyramidal dome stood out, which gave the impression of belonging to a small church with a semicircular stone railing balcony.
Inside, in the entrance hall, two round columns stood out that seemed to want to support the first floor. From there started a spectacular staircase with a beautiful wrought iron railing, which upon arrival found a circular hallway in which colondas attached to the railing supported a glass dome that gave light to the interior of the building. The mansion, in the extension with Muntaner Street, had a spectacular garden.
In 1935, the Santos de Lamadrid family, seeing the boom that the current Diagonal Avenue had taken, decided to demolish the old palace in order to erect a new six-story building, designed by Emilio Gutiérrez Díaz, in a monometallic style.
It was planned in three sections, the ground floor, with a portal finished in a semicircular arch, flanked by commercial premises.
A central section of four floors, with four powerful fluted columns. On the two upper floors separated by a terrace that acts as a cornice, the fluted columns are transformed into panels with reliefs of human figures.
In 1936, the beginning of the civil war paralyzed the works on several occasions, and it could not be inaugurated until well after the war ended.
In its basement, for a time, a branch of the original French Bookstore was installed, founded by the brothers Alphonse and Joseph Piaget, Swiss by birth, but of French nationality.
