STRUCTURAL TREASURES

Cat­alo­nia has no short­age of spec­tac­u­lar build­ings and boasts a legacy of ground­break­ing ar­chi­tec­ture going back cen­turies. With the likes of Sagrada Família, the Agbar Tower, the Sant Pau Mod­ernist site, the Dras­sanes Royal Ship­yard, Camp Nou sta­dium, and many other land­marks, Barcelona has an em­bar­rass­ment of riches in terms of mag­nif­i­cent struc­tures of all styles, old and new.

Yet even out­side the Cata­lan cap­i­tal there are plenty of ex­cep­tional build­ings, such as the likes of Poblet Monastery, Girona Cathe­dral, the Roman am­phithe­atre in Tar­rag­ona, Car­dona Cas­tle, or Lleida’s La Seu Vella; any­one look­ing for an em­blem­atic land­mark to visit is spoilt for choice.

This issue of the mag­a­zine is de­voted to some of Cat­alo­nia’s iconic build­ings that are per­haps less well-known but that also de­serve at­ten­tion for their ar­chi­tec­tural and his­tor­i­cal value. One re­port on page 12 fo­cuses on cas­tles. Cat­alo­nia has some 150 cas­tles that were built in dif­fer­ent pe­ri­ods of its his­tory, while an­other re­port on page 18 looks at the coun­try’s co­op­er­a­tive winer­ies that were con­structed when Mod­ernism was at its height.

Yet not all of Cat­alo­nia’s struc­tural trea­sures are mon­u­men­tal and there are plenty of ar­chi­tec­tural gems that are more mod­est in scale. One is the Pau Casals Mu­seum, on the Sant Sal­vador beach­front in El Ven­drell. The mu­seum ded­i­cated to Casals is housed in what was the sum­mer re­treat of the fa­mous cel­list, a large two-storey villa with its own gar­dens and a ma­jes­tic bal­cony that over­looks the Mediter­ranean. It is no cas­tle or cathe­dral, but the house-mu­seum is wor­thy of a visit, and in fact the build­ing’s ar­chi­tec­tural qual­i­ties are just part of its at­trac­tions.

With some friends from the UK over last week, I was look­ing for a visit that would be a change from the usual Gaudí/Pi­casso/Barça tourist fare but that wasn’t too far from home. Not being clas­si­cal music fans and with only slight knowl­edge of the fig­ure of Pau Casals, we had some reser­va­tions as we headed to­wards El Ven­drell. I’m happy to re­port that our reser­va­tions were dis­pelled and the mu­seum ex­ceeded our ex­pec­ta­tions.

More than just the house, it was the ex­hibit that made the visit sat­is­fy­ing. Rather than launch straight into Casals the mae­stro and his­tor­i­cal fig­ure, the ex­hibit keeps its pow­der dry, tak­ing its time to es­tab­lish Casals’ cre­den­tials as a mu­si­cian while re­veal­ing his early friend­ships, his local ties and do­mes­tic arrange­ments with a tour of the ground floor rooms and the patio that ends with a short video in the elab­o­rately dec­o­rated gallery where his ex­ten­sive art col­lec­tion was dis­played.

It is only then, after you feel you have got to know the man, that the ex­hibit leads you into an­other part of the house and re­veals the grander side to Casals, ex­plor­ing his anti-war ac­tivism and exile, his major in­ter­na­tional per­for­mances, his re­la­tion­ships with many fa­mous his­tor­i­cal fig­ures, the many awards granted him from all over the globe and, ul­ti­mately, his fa­mous “I am a Cata­lan” ad­dress to the UN that ends with Casals’ own ren­di­tion of his com­po­si­tion that has be­come an an­them to peace, El cant dels ocells.

The visit, which at an hour was just about the right length, ended with a stroll in the gar­dens and an in­ci­dent with a waiter in the mu­seum bar, but that is an­other story.

Opin­ion