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The missing Gralla house, built on Portaferrisa street in Barcelona, ??has a complex history that begins in 1306, when Pere Desplà, lord of Alella, decided to move his residence inside the wall of Jaume I to the then central street of the current Portaferrisa (then Portal de la Ferrissa).
Pere Desplà bought a small house built within the first old center of the city, so that he could rebuild it and turn it into a mansion for his Barcelona residence, where he could receive his friends there.
Portaferrisa street in those times was the most stately street in the city and they did not want their friends to have to travel to the town of Alella for the continuous meetings.
The restoration work was exceptional and they managed to get people from the high society of those times to spend the night there, including the Gralla lords, the Marquises of Aitona and the Dukes of Medinaceli.
Two of the important ones were the Prince of Viana in 1461, a title held by the heir of the extinct Kingdom of Navarra, established by King Carlos III for his grandson, the Infante Carlos (since 2014, the holder of this title is Princess Leonor of Borbón y Ortiz). Another of the guests of honor was King Ferdinand the Catholic.
In 1516, the Desplà house was demolished to be transformed into the Palau Gralla, the most sumptuous Renaissance palace built at that time in the city.
During the following centuries the palace took shape due to the continuous expansions carried out by the family’s successors.
Historians attribute it to Damià Forment Cabot, a Valencian sculptor, painter and draftsman during the time of the Crown of Aragon.
Forment was one of the first introducers of the Renaissance in Spain. He not only dedicated himself to the production of altarpieces, but also made paintings, works of metalwork and stained glass, and sculptures for private devotion, among which is the Oratory of Saint Jerome the Penitent that is preserved in the Prado Museum.
Later, the mansion was acquired by the Duke of Medinaceli (noble title created by the Catholic Monarchs on October 31, 1479 in favor of Luis de la Cerda y de la Vega).
In 1851, the Duke of Medinaceli reached an agreement with Mother Bonnat to rent part of the house to convert it into the school of the Lords of Loreto.
The Diario de Barcelona commented in an article on the transfer of the school to the property of the Dukes of Medinaceli, praising the educational work of the nuns, inviting families to visit the premises, where they would be well received by the director, Mother De Lesseps.
The idea of ??the City Council of those times to connect, in 1956, Portaferrisa Street with Canuda Street, served as a pretext for the demolition of the old Casa Gralla.
In the mid-19th century, Casa Gralla was demolished to open Duque de la Victoria Street, now Duc Street. Despite the protest of the press, personalities and groups sensitized by the architectural loss that its destruction entailed, it ended up disappearing.
Many wealthy Barcelonans tried to buy the building to dismantle it stone by stone so they could build it somewhere else. One of those who fought the hardest to get it was Josep Xifré Downing, son of the owner of Casa Xifré in Plaza Palacio, who bought the house for 5,000 pesetas at the time.
Xifré hired the architect Elies Rogent to number and save the stones of the facade and the patio to rebuild it in his estate in Sant Martí de Provençals. Josep Xifré’s project never came to fruition.
The stones were acquired by Antoni María Brusi i Mataró, owner of the Diario de Barcelona, ??who paid 2,500 pesetas for the pieces of the patio that were used to reconstruct the Gothic patio on his Sant Gervasi estate.
The lintel of the main door is currently guarded by the Martorell Tiling Museum. Other lintels were moved to the Pallaresa Tower, in Santa Coloma de Gramenet.
In the middle of the 20th century, the patio was dismantled again and ended up in a warehouse in Cornellà. They were bought in 1990 by a construction company from Malaga that took it to Mijas. Again in 1995 the owner of a security company in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat acquired them for 25 million pesetas.
But, despite its disappearance, the façade of the Gralla house would not be forgotten forever. One of our most prestigious architects in history Josep Puig i Cadafalch, who knew and had admired the missing work, on the occasion of the construction of the old Casa Serra in 1903, made a copy of the main door of the building.
