* The author is part of the community of readers of La Vanguardia
The original Smart cinematography room was built on the old site previously occupied by the stables and later by the Can Tralles garages, on the old Salmerón street (current Gran de Gràcia) numbers 108-110, corner with Ros de Olano.
With the urbanization of the area, the land was acquired by businessman Francesc Sala, one of the leading businessmen of the early 20th century, owner of the Trilla, Mundial and Principal cinemas, who wanted to expand his film empire.
The venue was built with the most innovative elements known up to that date, which is why it quickly became the favorite cinema for the people of Gracia, bringing together the neighborhood’s residents with a higher social level in its seats. It had a capacity of 870 seats divided between the stalls and the amphitheater.
It was inaugurated on May 7, 1910, without any announcement and its programming did not appear on the La Vanguardia billboard, it only noted that the premises had been built for cinema.
It was a time when cinemas were more responsible for announcing the orchestra that accompanied the projection of films than the film itself, since sound had not arrived and businessmen were looking for projections with spectacular photographs.
But the Smart and its owner knew how to make a splash and, in 1929, when word of the new discovery of talkies spread among moviegoers, the Smart gave a first that other cinemas in the city had not presented.
On Thursday, April 4, it appeared on page 5 of La Vanguardia, programming, along with the Comedia cinema, the magazine Bombero a la Fuerza; Because the Sailor Sinks, by Nick Stuart, Sally Phipps, and the funny couple Sammy Cohen and Ted Me. The big event was the screening of The Jazz Singer, by Al Jolson and May Me Avoy.
But if this was already a programming triumph in the Smart Cinema, the film would be projected with the synchronized accompaniment of music and singing by the wonderful device The Orchestrola, from the house of Riba.
It was the first step in sound cinema that would arrive on Thursday, September 19, 1929, with The Song of Paris, with Maurice Chevalier, which definitively marked the explosion of the seventh art.
In the period of the civil war, the cinema, after being collectivized by the CNT/FAI, made a program of two films and appeared on the billboards somewhat more prominently than many other cinemas that, in principle, seemed more important.
On Sunday, October 18, 1936, he screened Modern Times and Melodía del corazón, along with the corresponding drawings. Once the civil war is over, he appears programming without any problem until the month of September, when on Tuesday, September 12, he appears as Smart with the magazine Diseños, Limpia, fixa y da esplendor, by Anny Ondra, and Morena Clara, by Imperio Argentina.
The next day and due to demands from the dictatorship government not to allow names that were not in Spanish, it was renamed Cinema Projections.
In 1947, after a comprehensive renovation commissioned by the architect and decorator José Plantada, who specialized in setting up movie theaters, it opened its doors again on Monday, October 6, 1947 with the screening of Born for a King and Perdition.
In the last years of its existence, the cinema was acquired by the brothers Juan and Javier Gratacós, who, due to the circumstances that the city was going through at that time, were unable to revive the cinema.
It closed its doors on Sunday, April 12, 1970, with the screening of the films Almost Public Relations and Tangier. On Tuesday, April 14, when readers looked at the billboard of La Vanguardia, they found that the Proyecciones cinema had already disappeared.
