The Royal Academy of Fine Letters could soon have new inhabitants. The Department of Culture intends to make Palau Requesens, its current headquarters, the future Casa de les Lletres and bring together different cultural entities linked to the book sector.
It is a project that is in a very early stage, so it is not known which exact groupings would move there, but some resonate, such as the Institució de les Lletres Catalanes, the Catalan PEN, the Associació Col· Legial d’Escriptors de Catalunya (ACEC) or the Association of Catalan Language Writers (AELC). Most of these entities prefer to remain on the sidelines until the project becomes official, but the AELC, which also does not confirm whether it will change its location or not later, remembers that this is a claim that it has made for more than two decades together with other authorial entities and which he hopes can be specified in the terms included in the National Book and Reading Plan, the framework in which the operation is framed.
Sources from the Royal Academy of Letters tell La Vanguardia that the proposal came to them “six months ago” from the Department of Culture. Until now, there was an agreement between the two parties, but Cultura would have decided not to extend it and propose a new one “linked to reconstruction works because the Palau Requesens needs to be reformed urgently. We need an elevator, to change the electrical installation… A serious intervention, which is not a matter of four days”.
For now, the only thing that is certain is that “the new agreement is scheduled to be signed this year and, probably before the summer, the prospect of works will be finalized. In any case, there are no dates for them to start, as it depends on the Generalitat. The route to follow would therefore be to make the project, approve it, include it in the budgets and put it out to tender”.
When all this happens and the palace is in better condition, it will be possible to accommodate these institutions, which “will leave their current premises and will be installed in some spaces between the second and third floors”.
The Academy, installed in the palace for more than a hundred years, will remain “on the main floor, the first, and in part of the second. There will be some shared spaces, such as the room dubbed “tinellet” – so named for its resemblance to the Tinell in Plaça del Rei -, and others that would be occupied by entities linked to the department”.
From the Academy they assure that, although “it is not an immediate project” and that, therefore, “it would not be a reality this year”, the idea for them is “very positive”, since the palace “would become in a center of powerful cultural dynamism both for the neighborhood and for all of Barcelona”.
The Palau Requesens in Barcelona is a monument listed as a Cultural Property of National Interest (BCIN). Located two minutes from Plaça Sant Jaume and the Basilica of Sants Mártirs Just i Pastor, in the Gothic quarter, it was the largest residential building in the city in the medieval period. He belonged to the Requesens family, one of the most important of the Catalan nobility.
Despite the fact that it is an architectural gem located in the center of the Catalan capital, many Barcelona residents do not have the pleasure of knowing it, nor all the treasures it houses, among which its nineteenth-century courtyard stands out. Partly because it is in the dark dead end of Carrer del Bisbe Caçador.
If the Casa de les Lletres finally becomes a reality, everything points to many more visitors coming to it.
