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When we talk about the current Center Esportiu Municipal Colom de las Ramblas 18, many are unaware of the history of this old building.
It was built in 1892 by Francesc Rogent i Pedrosa, at 15-17 Antigua Rambla de Santa Mónica. Over the years, El Fotógrafo Napoleón, Cine Napoleón, Frontón Colón and, currently, the Colomb Municipal Sports Center have been located here.
Rogent i Pedrosa, among other works, had reformed the house of Santiago Rusiñol, as well as restored the Ripoll monastery and built the bridge that linked the Ciudadela park with the Gran Cascada water tank, for the Universal Exhibition of 1888 .
On the Rambla de Santa Mónica, he built a four-story building, in which the harmony of its lines stood out. A first floor with two exits to the outside and a balcony. In the second, although it continued with the balcony followed, the two exits to the outside had a more severe cut. The third had two individual balconies at the exits to the outside and the fourth was topped by six exits to the outside with a semicircular arch and iron balustrades flush with the façade. It was crowned with a spectacular railing adorned with stone elements.
The Napoleon family had established themselves in various locations in the city: Talleres 31, Escudillers 47, Plaza del Ángel. And they decided to open their permanent studio at Rambla de Santa Mónica number 15-17, currently Ramblas 18.
The Napoleons arrived at this building with the intention of setting up their definitive photographic studio in it. Anne Tiffon Cassan Anaïs, head of the Napoleon saga of photographers, had arrived from Narbonne at the age of 14 and worked as a traveling photographer. She was the daughter of Alexis Tiffon Barrau, who had adopted the nickname “Napoleón” and married Antonio Fernández Soriano, on December 24, 1850, in Barcelona.
Verifying that the place they had chosen was the ideal one for their business, in 1890 they contacted Josep Maria Puig i Cadafalch to carry out an interior intervention on the ground floor and the main floor, where they installed their photographic studio. , placing some shop windows on the stairs and a sign at the entrance, turning it into the Napoleon photographic studios.
The news of the birth of the cinematograph made them study the possibility of taking advantage of the ground floor and the nationality of Anne Tiffon to contact the Lumière brothers, to be the first to exploit the new invention in our city.
They adapted the space on the ground floor as an exhibition venue and this room would soon enter cinema history as it was the first venue in the city to officially screen the first film in Barcelona, ??since the Napoleons had exclusively acquired the projection machine of the Lumières.
Although the Napoleón photographic studio has in its history the honor of having been the first room in Barcelona to project moving images, there are versions that deny it and others do not coincide with the exact date of the inauguration.
I think that in this problem there has been more an excess of knowledge of the subject and a desire for leadership than anything else and I will try to clarify the veracity of the data for those who disagree.
First, I’ll clear up the opening date issue where, with nuances, both versions are right:
The Napoleon Brothers, who had announced the official inauguration for December 14, 1896, seeing the avalanche of requests for that day, not only from the general public but also from personalities and authorities who had requested their presence, decided to hold a private session, four days before, for authorities and guests of the company.
This is just the reason why for some historians it is the 10th and for others the 14th as the date of the screening of the first film at the Napoleon Brothers premises.
The official inauguration for the public took place on the 14th at 5 in the afternoon, holding three sessions, in which the collection of all of them was dedicated to collecting funds for the soldiers of the Cuban war who had returned sick or wounded.
The films that were screened at the Cine Napoleón, at the beginning of the cinematography in our city, according to the now-defunct Diario de Barcelona, ??were: Parade of the Regiment of Lancers of the Queen in Madrid, Passage of a river, by horses and horsemen, Mountains water rollers on Lake Geneva in Geneva, Arrival of a train at the station (original Lumière), Ranch time in a barracks and The watered sprinkler, another original film by Lumière with the subtitle: Silent entertainment.
With the issue that your local was not the first to present a tape with moving images, I think that those who say no, for me they are right, at least according to the newspaper archives of the time.
After having clarified the issue of the date which, as I said, is more a desire for prominence than for information, in this other I modestly believe that, apart from the desire for prominence, there is a little ignorance of what a movie is.
For those who argue that the real date of the first projection was June 4, 1896, a Kinetographe device by George William de Best, which also projected moving images, which was located at the entrance of the Principal Palacio Theater, I would make you go back to May 1, 1895.
That day, in the old undeveloped land of the current Plaça Catalunya, was the Saloncito Edison, a wooden shack located between the first section of the Rambla de Catalunya, which began at the end of Rambla Canaletas (the current Plaça Catalunya), and the Equestrian Circus.
The Edison Salon, by Frenchmen Nel and Dumont, featured an Edison Kinetoscope device, which combined Edison’s last two inventions, a kinetoscope and a phonograph. The program included A Dispute in a Bar, Lie Fuller’s Serpentine Dance, and several screenings of the Parisian illusionist Doctor Nicolay.
To the best of my knowledge, Edison’s Kinetoscope was a one-person viewing device, so we can’t really consider it a movie projector, although we could consider it the first device to offer moving images.
The problem of a place adapted for the cinema, the competition of the first years with places dedicated to the seventh art and the bad management of the Napoleon in the subject of the cinematograph, led in 1907 to transfer the operation of the cinema to the company Ribas Vila S.A. On April 10, 1909, he was transferred to the Asilo Amparo de Santa Lucía, an entity that managed him until February 2, 1910.
In recent times, the advertisements gave the impression of an announced death, since they only said “Great movie program, premieres every day. The last one that appeared in La Vanguardia was on Saturday, January 15, 1910. On August 12, 1910, the press published the following: “Napoleon Cinematograph. Due to the definitive closure of the premises, it is rented for other purposes.”
Anaïs Napoleón, head of the saga, died on July 2, 1912. Her husband Antonio Fernández Soriano died on February 3, 1916.
Part of the work carried out by Puig i Cadafalch disappeared in 1941 with the motive of converting the building into the disappeared Frontón Colón.
