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The missing Rex cinema in Barcelona was located at Avenida de José Antonio 463 (current Gran Vía). It was one of the cinemas opened once the civil war ended.
The city began to take off, recovering a normal life and, at that time, there was a lack of places where one could escape a little from everyday problems, since in the houses there were only radio sets.
The original premises owned by Ignacio Coll Portabella had served as a warehouse and garage since 1910. In 1931, it became the headquarters of the Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya of the 2nd district. With the end of the civil war and the suspension of political parties, it was converted in 1940 by the architect Francisco de Paula Nebot into a re-release cinema.
The premises consisted of a ground floor, where the lobby, ticket offices, a bar service, a smoking room, two stairs to the upper floor and toilets for the audience (of 493 spectators) were located.
On the first floor was the amphitheater for 331 spectators, giving a total capacity of 824 spectators and the obligatory toilet service in the small entrance hall. Another staircase led to the second floor, where the projection booth was located with services for the two operators and the security camera for the films.
The Rex was inaugurated on December 24, 1940. La Vanguardia of the day published two advertisements, one in a box with the news of the event on page 6 and another on page 7 as corporate in which it communicated that, as of at 6 in the afternoon, the cinema would show: La canillita y la dama, directed by Luis César Amadori, starring Rosita Moreno and Luis Sandrini; and El Caucho, with the Ufa News.
The company emphasized this slogan:
In a big city like Barcelona. The comfort, excellent program and select atmosphere of a cinema are inexcusable today.
On Monday, October 26, 1953, the famous film My Mule Francis premiered on its screens, played by a mule who was said to speak like people, played by Donald O’Connor and Patricia Medina. O’Connor, who plays Private Stirling, makes his superiors believe that the source of his information is Francis, the army’s talking mule.
In 1969 the cinema was acquired by Pedro Balañá, who closed it on Sunday, March 9, to carry out a comprehensive renovation and achieve a drastic change of style.
Balañá chose the architect Luis Casamor from Espona and his trusted decorator Antonio Bonamusa, who did a sensational decoration job. The premises were converted into a candy bar with a capacity of 580 spectators and converted into a new cinema for the premiere of films by well-known authors, with a total change of the projection equipment.
It was reopened on Tuesday, June 17, 1969 with the presentation of Pietro Germi’s film Signore
This change not only in terms of the decoration of the room, but also in the programming led to a change in the entry of spectators, especially the film-loving public. This meant that the distribution companies considered it a cinema suitable for screening arthouse films or film competitions that were so popular at that time.
It hosted the International Documentary Film Festival (In-Edit-Beefeater) and the Barcelona Asian Film Festival (BAFF) together with the Aribau Club room and the Center for Contemporary Culture of Barcelona (CCCB), which would be held annually.
From October 26 to November 2, 2006, together with the Aribau cinema, he presented the fourth edition of the In-Edit International Music Documentary Film Festival.
Like all the cinemas open in the city center, it began to suffer the damage caused by the arrival of video and video stores, as well as the new fashion of spectators going to the halls of the large hypermarkets, where they parked the car, they chose the movie to watch and then they could enter one of the bars on the premises at the end of the movie session.
On July 29, 2010, the Rex cinema closed its doors forever, screening Radu Mihaileanu’s French film Le Concert. The Rex cinema said goodbye to the billboards with a brief two-line advertisement after 70 years at the service of the spectator and the cinematographer.
But that day also two things were lost forever. La Vanguardia reported on its culture page the death of Maria Remei Canals i Cendrós, better known as Maria Canals, at the age of 96, and the entry of the city into a new stage when the celebration of bullfights was abolished in the Parliament of Catalonia. of bulls in Catalonia by 68 votes in favor and 55 against.
