* The author is part of the community of readers of La Vanguardia
The Price Room was a multipurpose room installed at 3-5 Casanova Street, on the corner with Floridablanca, built on part of the site of the now-defunct La Bohemia Modernista dance hall.
The Gran Price was projected by Marino Canosa Gutiérrez. It had a circular shape, with a ground floor, where there was a track with a parquet floor (which could be adapted to the show that was taking place), which was surrounded by boxes, used by spectators who wanted to witness the show from a place privileged).
In front of the entrance door there was a stage, not very large, with a mobile platform to welcome the musicians in the dance sessions, the personal performances of artists or the people who accompanied the speakers at meetings and congresses. At the top of the stage was a clock that indicated the time at all times.
Three stories high, the first two housed a series of small boxes for groups and the third was for the general public.
The installation was completed by the basement floor in which two gyms shared space with showers and changing rooms for training and as a changing room for participants in the boxing and wrestling evenings, as well as for the artists who performed in the venue. Two bars had been built inside the premises for the comfort of spectators and a large outdoor cafe for the most sophisticated.
It was inaugurated on December 31 (New Year’s Eve) 1934. La Vanguardia published an announcement of the news of the inauguration, in which it made reference to the performance of: Jemmy Stanfort, Les Fíurri and Simone et Cardona.
On Sunday, April 14, he appeared twice in La Vanguardia. In the shows section, he announced the dance sessions and the gift of a bottle of perfume to all the ladies and commented on the boxing match that would take place on Tuesday the 16th, between the Spanish champion Lozano and the Romanian Jon Sandú, who had performed a null match with Popescu.
The following day the city press commented on the news with this comment:
“Last night in the old premises of the Modernist Bohemia, magnificently restored and very suitable for holding shows of this type, the inauguration of the boxing sessions at the Gran Price took place.”
During the General Elections of the beginning of 1936, in the Second Republic, the rallies of the different political parties were held.
In September 1936, a couple of months after the start of the civil war, the CNT/FAI confiscated it to house the rallies of those people who belonged to the Republican bloc: Lluís Companys, president of the Generalitat; Andreu Nin, top leader of the POUM; Dolores Ibárruri La Pasionaria, leader of the Communist Party; Julián Gorkin, journalist and politician and Alejandro Lerroux, Republican politician who during the Second Republic held the presidency of the Council of Ministers on several occasions.
With the end of the war, the venue returned to activity on Thursday, October 18, 1939. The next day, La Vanguardia commented on the opening of the National Games of Youth Organizations the following day. The revenge of the Spanish Championship on the road at the Circuit de Montjuïc and the opening, at the Gran Price, of the boxing season organized by the Catalan Federation.
On Tuesday, June 4, 1940 at 10:15 a.m., the American wrestling sessions were inaugurated, sponsored by José Moscardó Ituarte (General Moscardó, famous for the defense of the Alcázar de Toledo), who held the position of National Sports Delegate) . The evening was introduced by broadcaster Bobby Deglane.
The venue regained the prominence it had previously achieved, with concerts by popular singers of the time, gymnastics championships, basketball tournaments, circus programs, and hairdressing and typing contests.
In 1951, Gregorio Modrego Casaus, Bishop of Barcelona, ??organized the Lenten conferences to prepare the faithful for Holy Week, with the celebration of a closing mass.
In 1957, large commercial companies began to present promotional events for their products. One of the pioneers was Muebles La Fábrica, which delivered 10 floors to couples registered in its Furniture Savings service.
In 1968 the journalist Joaquim María Puyal began to broadcast boxing evenings on Radio Barcelona.
On April 25, 1970, the First Popular Festival of Catalan Poetry was held, organized by the (CCFPC), Coordinating Commission of Political Forces of Catalonia, in which 81 new writers participated. But all the order that existed during the contest became an act of protest by some attendees.
At the end, shouts of “amnesty and freedom” were heard. This fact was not to the liking of the government authorities who imposed a fine of 25,000 pesetas on each of the organizers of the act: the poets Joan Colomines, Joaquín Huerta and Francisco Vallverdú.
The real estate speculation of the sixties and the increase in the cost of programming quality shows, given the capacity of the venue, was impossible to reconcile.
Another of the problems that the organizers encountered was due to the fact that the city had been the venue for the celebration of the II Mediterranean Games, from July 16 to 25, 1955. And the City Council had made the decision to build a pavilion with a greater capacity of spectators.
This fact caused the four owners of the Gran Price, in June 1972, to make the decision to close the premises and sell it to the Núñez y Navarro construction company.
The first was boxing, which programmed the last evening on Friday, September 29, 1972, although a special event organized by Dr. Vicente Gil, honorary president of the National Association of Ex-Boxers, remained to be held until its final closing, in order to raise funds for ex-boxers. It was organized for October 6 and meant the last event to be held in the building, which had been active for 38 years.
However, after the announcement those days of the reappearance and return to the ring of José Manuel Ihar Urtain, a Basque heavyweight European champion boxer, also known as Morrosko de Cestona, the venue opened its doors again on October 27.
The evening was a disappointment for the thousands of fans who filled the Price. His opponent was Black Sonny Harris, a boxer just looking to cash in. He dropped before the first minute of the fight, a fact that upset the fans and led to the withdrawal of the bag by the Spanish Boxing Federation.
On November 30, the date on which the lease term expired by the National Sports Delegation, the property was officially sold for 48.5 million pesetas.
