* The author is part of the community of readers of La Vanguardia
Ever since I started trying to discover the origins of some of the department stores that the city of Barcelona had, one of the ones that caused me the most impact was Casa Vilardell.
Also known as Can Vilardell, the building that housed it is located on Vía Layetana and, since February 2012, has housed the Ohla hotel.
As a child, they told me that it was one of the last department stores that had opened in 1928 and, logically, I, who had been born in 1942, believed it. Besides, they told me that it was the central building, with a series of branches.
In my search for information I found in La Vanguardia, on Monday, October 2, 1916, an ad that appeared as “Knitwear and Shirt Factory, Hospital Street, 36 and 38. Conde Asaeto 8 Branch. Elegant knitted coats , Madam, at 3.80 pta”. It had been inaugurated in 1911.
In 1916, the branch at Calle Carmen 73 was opened; that of Fontanella, in 1922 and, in 1928, the branch of Salmerón 17 (by the way, current Gran de Gràcia street).
The building, in an eclectic monumentalist style, was built by Joan Roig between 1924 and 1926 for Heribert Salas and Gloria Bilbenaen. It was built on land through which passed the old route of one of the aqueducts (Acequia Condal) that brought water to the old Barcino and, also, the old Palace of the first Count of Barcelona Guifré el Pilós.
It consisted of a ground floor, seven for homes and an eighth for service housing, which continued with two floors finished in a dome. It is said that a lodge was housed there.
Given the location of the premises, the owners of Casa Vilardell acquired the basement and the first floor of the building so that Eusebi Bona i Puig could remodel the interior and turn it into the headquarters of Can Vilardell.
Eusebi Bona was a professor at the Barcelona School of Architecture. His was the remodeling of the Royal Palace and the construction of the building of La Unión and the Spanish Phoenix, on Paseo de Gracia.
It was inaugurated taking advantage of the Mercé festivities, on Friday, September 21, 1928. The day before, La Vanguardia, in an advertisement, gave an account of the inauguration.
Almacenes Vilardell had from the beginning a very aggressive type of sale for those times. If we look at the advertisements they published in the press, we will see that they were pioneers in stimulus sales, which is very normal nowadays.
During the civil war they continued with their aggressive policy, inserting an advertisement from 1938, in which they presented a building with a dark background in which planes could be seen bombing the city.
During the period of the civil war, the company was collectivized and it was not until the beginning of the 40s that it returned to belonging to the private company, remaining active until the end of the 70s.
Casa Vilardell started in the clothing store business:
In the 1980s, the stores closed their doors, the building was occupied by the offices of a National Police station and the premises that sold the national identity document, as well as the passport.
Subsequently, the residents who lived in the building were evicted and, now completely empty, they proceeded to demolish it completely, keeping only the façade to rebuild it and turn it into a five-star hotel.
The construction of the new building was carried out by Alonso, Balaguer y Arquitectos Asociados, preserving the old façade, but with a work by the sculptor Frederic Amat, who placed a thousand needles into which he inserted ceramic eyes.
Amat justifies the work by loading it with profound poetry: “My intervention is born from the will of a correspondence of glances between the artistic creation and the hotel guests or the passers-by in one of the busiest pedestrian streets of Barcelona”. In this way, it is “acupuncture to a building with needles as pupils, offering the viewer a constellation of eyes and their shadows. A dance of iris”.
