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On the occasion of the official creation during the reign of María Cristina of Habsburg of the General Corps of Posts and Telegraphs through the Royal Decree of March 12, 1889, the first thing the monarch did was appoint Ángel Mansi Bonilla, general director of this service.
One of the first measures made by Mansi Bonilla was to vacate the post office building in Plaza Bonsuccés in Barcelona due to the cancellation of the lease contract. So he had to make a temporary transfer while a new building was built in accordance with the importance of the city.
At first, the solution did not seem easy, since Barcelona was in a moment of transformation with the creation of the Vía Layetana, so the best thing would be to find a new plot of land on the new road to build a large building and while searching a temporary location to be able to locate postal services during that time.
Soon a new building was found in Plaza Obispo Urquinaona, 9, on the corner of Junqueras Street, which after being rehabilitated would serve as a bridge while Vía Layetana was urbanized and the new building was erected.
The transfer took place on March 4, 1904, according to La Vanguardia, without any special fanfare. On the occasion of the move to the Plaza de Urquinaona, the old building was demolished and in its place an art deco-style building was built, intended to offer the new films of the incipient Urquinaona sound cinema, which on April 1, 1937 became a Cinema Francisco Ferrer, in honor of Francisco Ferrer Guardia.
It was not until May 19, 1943 that, with the passion of Enric Borràs’ 80th birthday, the premises became the Borràs Theater. Later, he returned to film and, currently, works in theater again.
Regarding the Post Office service, once the Vía Layetana was opened, the construction of the new headquarters began. To this end, the Government had previously called a competition in which the best architects of the moment participated, including Lluís Domènech i Montaner and Josep Puig i Cadafalch, but the competition was awarded to the architects Josep Goday i Casals and Jaume Torres i Grau, who presented in 1914 a project in a baroque classicist style inspired by Florentine Renaissance architecture.
The site on which the new building was to be built included the block formed by Vía Layetana and the streets Àngel Baixeras, Fusteria, Hostal d’en Sol and Plaza de Correos.
Goday and Torres recovered the ancient forms of pediments and pilasters, combined with others of Baroque origin. They had the sculptors Manuel Fuxà, Eusebi Arnau and Pere Jou, and the painters Francesc d’Assís Galí, Josep Obiols, Francesc Labarta and Francesc Canyelles as decorators in the execution of the project, between 1926 and 1927.
The building was designed according to the situation of the site, with a trapezoidal plan with blunt chamfers. It consisted of a semi-basement, two interior floors, an attic and a terrace, highlighting the bays (pieces on the sides), on Vía Layetana and Àngel Baixeras.
The first two floors communicated with the central lobby and were illuminated by a large glass dome. An iron and glass structure made by the Granell y Rigalt workshop, the same one that manufactured the stained glass on the ceiling of the Palau de la Música.
The anteroom of the main façade consists of a wide staircase through which the building is accessed through a portal with four columns with flowery Ionic capitals, above which a frieze with the inscription “Post and Telegraph” stands out.
On the upper floor, balconies were built with wrought iron railings and doors with floral reliefs, over which runs a cornice with corbels and garlands arranged between the ventilation oculi of the roof, closed by a stone balustrade.
On this floor, four sculptures stand out, topped by the coat of arms of the Royal House of Alfonso that Alfonso XIII had during his reign.
Although the sculptures on the façade are attributed to the sculptor Manuel Fuxà, there has always been a certain doubt as to whether they were made by him or by one of his assistants, since Fuxà died before the building was completed in 1927.
The four figures were designed with allegories to the world of communication. They represent, from left to right, a woman holding a sailing boat in her left arm. The second, a world ball; the third, a carrier pigeon and the fourth, lightning in the left hand and a palm in the right.
Twin Ionic columns separate the three windows topped with triangular pediments and made of Montjuïc stone. At the end of the central façade two Ionic style towers of different heights emerge.
The building at the back has an elevated bridge designed by Roberto Oms Gracia that links the Post Office building with another annex.
In Fusteria Street, on the façade, a shield of the city of Barcelona was made by Eusebi Arnau, in which the count’s crown and the bat of James I stand out. It is supported by two naked young men, the one on the left with a eagle, a sealed envelope and an anchor, and the one on the right with a wheel, also made with stone from Montjuïc.
However, the Central Post Office Building, in 2025, will become part of a new strategy in our city. The disappearance of ordinary mail and the implementation of new communications have brought together Correos, Barcelona City Council and the Free Trade Zone Consortium to create New Post Barcelona.
It will be a complex that will bring together technology companies, entrepreneurs and on-demand training, which will make the old building a place to attract and train new talents in the center of Barcelona.
