* The author is part of the community of readers of La Vanguardia
This is the story of the saga of Pelayo cinemas in Barcelona, ??located at 8 Pelayo Street and which later closed as Lauren Universitat in 2015.
The first Pelayo Cinema was inaugurated, according to movie buffs, in November 1948, however, during that month there is no reference to its inauguration on billboards or newspaper archives. It was a time when there were no billboards in newspapers, only small statements on a page dedicated to show business.
However, this date surprises me, since a little before and on the billboards of La Vanguardia on June 16 and 22, the Pelayo programming was published and it did not appear again until January 18, 1949.
On June 16, he screened Tres Mosquítelos and Man of Conquest, and on Tuesday, January 18, 1949, the newspaper archive of La Vanguardia discussed the sensational premiere of The Kneeling Goddess, performed by María Félix and Arturo de Córdoba, and Alien from Rio Grande.
From that moment it appears on the billboards without major advertisements, until the month of July, when it appears for a few days with an advertisement in which it offers advertising in the lobby’s windows for rent, while on the billboard it announces the screening of The Idiot and Sergeant York.
On the occasion of the summer season, on Monday, June 27, 1949, the refrigeration of the premises was inaugurated and the screening of The Red Corsair and The Phenomenon Man was presented, with ticket prices preferably at 5 pesetas and the amphitheater at 3 pesetas.
Little by little, cinema gained importance by inserting corporate billboards and personal advertisements on Sundays in the Cinemas and Shows section. On Sunday, June 29, 1952, it announced the premiere for Monday of María Morena, a film starring Paquita Rico. and directed by José María Forqué and Pedro Lazaga.
In 1954 he remodeled the premises and installed the new panoramic screen, premiering on Tuesday, May 25, the film Spartaco (not the Kirk Douglas film), but the one directed by Riccardo Freda, in 1953, played by Massimo Girotti, Ludmilla Tcherina, Yves Vincent and Gianna Maria Canale.
In November 1955, the Pelayo Cinema Company and Paramount Films of Spain, S.A., established a prize of 1,000 pesetas for viewers who took part in the Alfred Hitchcock and Rear Window Contest and discovered in which sequence the brilliant producer appeared in person. and director.
In 1962, the Petit Pelayo was inaugurated in the basement, a room with a smaller capacity. Later, on Sunday, May 26, 1968, it closed its doors to carry out a major renovation after 20 years of existence, screening My Wife’s Boyfriend and The Long Journey.
The renovation carried out affected all aspects of the premises, the new decoration, elegant and modern, the projection equipment, were adapted to the 70 mm system. The renovation placed the Pelayo in a line of comfort and elegance that put it on par with the most prestigious cinemas in the city.
On the occasion of the reopening, the company invited representatives of the news media and a large group of friends to visit the premises on the afternoon of Monday, November 18, 1968, in order to verify the excellent quality of the new system. projection. A screening of a documentary and a fragment of the film that was to be released that night was offered at the event.
The official reopening was celebrated in the evening by screening, in conjunction with the Windsor Palace Cinema, Follow That Blonde, which was played by German artist Elke Sommer. The film was a pantomime of the Olympic Games.
The next day, La Vanguardia published a commentary on the premiere alluding to the fact that the works and the reopening coincided with the 20th anniversary of its inauguration and glossed the magnificent renovation that had been carried out, among other things, saying:
Truly, the important renovation that it has undergone has placed it in a line of comfort and elegance that puts it on par with the most prestigious cinemas in the city.
Again in 1985 it closed its doors for another comprehensive renovation. The demands of competitiveness with other venues led him to convert the venue into a multiplex with three independent rooms that opened on November 8, converting the venue into Pelayo 3, three mini-rooms,
That day he premiered three films that achieved great success: Room 1: The Honor of the Prízzi; Room 2: Yo el Vaquilla, this was the film that initially caused the greatest expectation for narrating the life of Juan José Moreno Cuenca, and Room 3: Cocoon (El secreto de la tuerza).
El Vaquilla, nickname of Juan José Moreno Cuenca, had started his criminal career when he was only 9 years old, stealing cars and escaping with them, mocking the police. His worst crime was the accidental murder of a woman when he tried to steal her purse. Drugs and a bad life led him to die at just 42 years old on December 19, 2003 at the Can Ruti hospital in Badalona when he was 3 years away from being released.
Located on Calle de Pelayo 8 and Calle Tallers with Plaza de Castilla, it was built in the basements of the Pelayo cinema and although its main entrance was on Tallers street, it was also entered through the lobby of the Pelayo cinema, by an escalator that took spectators to the small lobby of the Petit Pelayo, for an easier way to evacuate. Its main entrance was on Tallers Street, where it had a much more important façade than that on Pelayo Street.
It opened its doors on December 24, 1962, premiering in conjunction with the Atlanta and Arcadia cinemas, the film Two Ride Together. Subsequently, for quite some time it shared the bill with the Montecarlo, Niza and Aristos cinemas.
With the proliferation of multiplexes, their owners decided to convert the two cinemas into 3 homogeneous rooms. The old cinemas closed their doors on September 15, 1985, showing: Dementia and Blow for Blow.
For two months, the workers and decorators built three venues that were baptized as Pelayo 3, which were inaugurated on November 8, 1985, with the premiere in Room 1: The Honor of the Prízzi; Room 2: I the Heifer and Room 3: Cocoon” (The secret of strength). Pelayo 3 continued operating until 1993.
At the end of 1997, it was acquired by the Lauren company, which converted the premises into a 5-screen multiplex, with a total capacity of 1,000 spectators and with the novelty of anatomical seats. It was inaugurated on June 26, 1998, with great fanfare with a full-page advertisement in La Vanguardia as the new Lauren Universitat cinemas.
For the opening program I present a series of films that had a great appeal.
The bankruptcy of the Lauren company caused them to close all their cinemas in July 2015.
