Peeling paint on the walls and ceiling. Wooden blinds in poor condition. A broken and unmarked paving stone at the entrance to the first pavilion. A soulless and cold room, with a low-quality screen that tries to tell the story of modernism. The windows of the second pavilion closed, without views of the garden or natural light, and with paper posters stuck to the windows. A promising garden, but colonized by weeds and with maintenance tools left behind here and there. Almost no indications can be found inside the enclosure, in the same way that it is not evident at its entrance either. The signs are scarce and it seems that the environment attaches little importance to this architectural complex that is part of the monumental legacy of Antoni Gaudí himself.
We are talking about the Güell Pavilions, the first large-scale project of the great name of modernism. Its presence on the list of modernist monuments in Barcelona goes unnoticed. Visits come in drops and most are disoriented tourists looking for access to the Pedralbes gardens. Even the guards at the entrance ask if we know what the enclosure is before entering. The indifference with which the pavilions are treated is directly linked to their state and interior image. A surprise if one takes into account that Barcelona is the world capital of modernism.
The exterior image, with the gate of the impressive dragon that presides over the entrance, does not correspond to the sloppiness of the interior, for which you have to pay a general rate of six euros or half price for minors, students or older than 65 years. Once inside, the few visitors are not exactly pleasantly surprised. “The neglect of the maintenance of the enclosure is shameful”, has expressed the non-profit organization Amics de Gaudí.
“We have known for a long time the poor condition of the infrastructure and we have used all our resources to encourage a good restoration process, but all efforts have been useless,” Ricardo Gómez Val, secretary of Amics de Gaudi. The impossibility of action is due to the network of transfers to which the land is subjected.
The Güell Pavilions are located at Avenida Pedralbes number 7, behind the Faculty of Law of the University of Barcelona (UB). They were built as access points to the grounds of the summer palace of the Güell family, the current Royal Palace. With the death of Eusebi Güell, the summer estate was ceded to the State and, in 1958, an important part of the land was purchased to build the current university city, including the land of the Güell Pavilions. For this reason, the modernist complex is currently part of the heritage of the UB.
In addition, in 2015 a ten-year lease of use was approved to the Municipal Institute of Urban Landscape, a responsibility of the Barcelona City Council, to carry out “a master plan for the comprehensive restoration of Gaudí’s work, the replacement of the walls opacity of the enclosure by transparent closures and the regeneration of the garden”, according to the Gaudí Portal. However, already at the gates of 2023, the supposed restoration is still not bearing fruit and the interior spaces of the pavilions are “in a lamentable state”, claim Amics de Gaudí.
According to Montserrat Prado, technical director of the Urban Landscape Institute, “the restoration project is underway and aims to be completed by 2024.” From 2015 to today, only the fence that delimits the perimeter along Avenida Pedralbes has been fixed and the little house where the tickets are sold has been installed. The comprehensive restoration of the first pavilion, which served as the doorman’s house, will begin in 2023. The project for the second pavilion, the stable house, will be presented at the end of this year, with the intention of beginning the restoration at the end of 2023 For the end, the fence at the entrance has been left, which has the emblematic dragon, the protagonist of the camera lenses, and the entire garden.
“The pandemic paralyzed the reconstruction works. In addition, all these processes take longer than expected,” Prado explained. However, the total confinement due to Covid was in 2020, five years after the transfer of use to Urban Landscape began.
“Our ambition is that one day the Güell Pavilions could become a center for dissemination and research on the legacy of Gaudí”, concluded Ricardo Gómez Val, but “now, our situation is a bit complicated, because until it is finished the agreement with the Institute of Urban Landscape, any action that we want to carry out is not going to be of any use”.
This is how Agustí Alcoberro, vice-rector for Heritage of the UB, made it known since 2021. “The agreement for the restoration was drafted in 2014, a time when we viewed tourism with great optimism. That is why the pandemic was a very hard blow for the maintenance of the Pavilions ”, affirms Alcoberro. Also, due to not having obtained the income that was expected from the sale of tickets, the UB and Paisaje Urbano are going to extend the cession of use for another ten years.
“Our key date is 2026, which will be the Gaudí Year and also the year in which Barcelona will be the world capital of architecture”, underlined the vice-rector. Until then, there is still most of the restoration work to be done. Alcoberro is satisfied with the work of the municipal institution and points out that although the project had been frozen for many years, it is now progressing at a satisfactory pace.
