The divine cup

Al­though for many peo­ple the abid­ing image of Bo­cac­cio is that of a dis­cotheque for upper-class anti-es­tab­lish­ment non­con­formists, Toni Vall, au­thor of the book “Bo­cac­cio. Where it all hap­pened” (Columna) and cu­ra­tor of the ex­hi­bi­tion “Bo­cac­cio, the tem­ple of the Gauche Di­vine” (Palau Robert, Barcelona, until April 13, 2020), be­lieves it was not an ex­clu­sive place. “You would find peo­ple from cul­ture, film­mak­ers, singers, ar­chi­tects; char­ac­ters from the higher part of Barcelona, where the club was lo­cated [Muntaner, 505], but work­ing-class peo­ple too.” Toni Vall (Barcelona, 1979) may be cer­tain of that fact but he ac­knowl­edges that he never ac­tu­ally vis­ited the leg­endary es­tab­lish­ment “be­cause I was too young.” He has al­ways had a fas­ci­na­tion for the place, how­ever. A great film jour­nal­ist, Vall says “It must have all started when I looked at the mag­a­zine Fo­togra­mas, which al­ways had a lot of ref­er­ences to Bo­cac­cio.” This ob­ses­sion, and his ob­ses­sion as a col­lec­tor, led to the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of all kinds of ob­jects with the fa­mous cap­i­tal B logo de­signed by Xavier Regàs, brother of Oriol, and Toni Mis­er­achs, brother of Xavier. The lat­ter was one of the great sources of sup­port Oriol Regàs had in open­ing Bo­cac­cio in Feb­ru­ary 1967 and turn­ing the es­tab­lish­ment into the high­est ex­po­nent of what Joan de Sagarra would call the Gauche Di­vine.

Turn­gin Bo­cac­cio into a night­club was not enough for Regàs, though. The con­ver­sa­tions that took place there, the music, the ideas that emerged from an at­mos­phere of smoke, al­co­hol and sol­i­dar­ity; he wanted it all to take on a de­fined shape be­yond that of night-time fan­tasy. And so under the Bo­cacció name there emerged a de­sign pub­lisher, a mag­a­zine, a record label, which pro­duced records by Maria del Mar Bonet, Smash, Ice­berg and Alan Stiv­ell, and even an­other Bo­cac­cio in Madrid. Regàs also cre­ated the Mad­dox night­club in Platja d’Aro, Rev­o­lu­tion in Lloret de Mar and Mari­nada and Ar­boleda in Palamós. A ver­i­ta­ble avalanche of moder­nity that al­lowed the last years of the dic­ta­tor­ship to be spent in Bo­cac­cio and its satel­lites.

Vall re­calls that Boc­cac­cio was one of the places where the idea of in­tel­lec­tu­als shut­ting them­selves away in Montser­rat Abbey was first con­ceived. This in­spi­ra­tional no­tion rep­re­sented op­pos­ing Franco by high­light­ing not suf­fer­ing but the de­sire to live well and have a good time.

Vall also re­veals what Bo­cac­cio and its cir­cle of friends rep­re­sented in the world of lit­er­a­ture, and not be­cause some of its reg­u­lar clients were writ­ers, such as Juan Marsé, En­rique Vila-Matas and Joan de Sagarra, but be­cause Jorge Her­ralde, Beat­riz de Moura and Òscar Tus­quets recre­ated and im­bued in that same set­ting the spirit of the Ana­grama and Tus­quets pub­lish­ing houses, re­spec­tively.

The book re­counts the au­thor’s en­counter with key char­ac­ters from the night­club’s his­tory. “No one has re­fused to talk about it, or been re­luc­tant to take a trip back to Bo­cac­cio’s past,” Vall says.

And so in the book we find Oriol Bo­hi­gas, Beth Galí, José Ilario, Mònica Ran­dall, Teresa Gim­pera, Román Gu­vern, Joan de Sagarra, Toni Mis­er­achs, Ser­ena Vergano, Rosa Regàs, En­rique Vila-Matas, Joan Manuel Ser­rat, Oscar Tus­quets, Guiller­mina Motta, Juan Marsé, Col­ita, Elisenda Nadal, Jesús Ulled, Georgina Regàs, Anna Maio, Jorge Her­ralde, Beat­riz de Moura, Sal­vador Clotas and Gon­zalo Her­ralde. The epi­logue is ded­i­cated to the man who was the soul of it all: Oriol Regàs, and Pere Vall says: “If he were alive, he would never have writ­ten this book, which is not in­tended as nos­tal­gia, but if there is some, then that’s not so bad ei­ther.”

The ex­hi­bi­tion is based around the book and de­picts Bo­cac­cio’s vi­sual uni­verse with posters, drink­ing glasses, mer­chan­dis­ing and two orig­i­nal jew­els: the mir­ror from the bath­room and the mod­ernist-style door from the en­trance.

Vis­i­tors will go on a tour of pho­tos, ob­jects and all kinds of doc­u­ments that tes­tify to the aes­thetic and con­cep­tual foot­print of a place that pi­o­neered the cre­ation of a brand image through mer­chan­dis­ing. Bo­cac­cio opened the BRM store on car­rer Enric Grana­dos to sell its prod­ucts, while lend­ing its name to books, movies, de­sign pieces and music.

cul­ture