November 2012 - Barcelona

Arts
Edited by Josep Lambies
jlambies@timeout.cat
La Pedrera turns 100
La Pedrera, the last major work Gaudí saw to
completion, is celebrating its centenary. Before the
candles are lit, Eugenia Sendra dusts off its history.
The peephole opens, and behind the
wooden doors and a wrought-iron
grille appears Carmen Burgos Bosch.
She moved into Casa Milà in the 1950s
and is the most high-profile of the
house’s four remaining residents –
something of a living national
treasure. She is the last to receive
visitors in the original interiors that
Antoni Gaudí designed in 1906, and
despite her 81 years, is happy to show
me every corner of her 300 m2 flat.
She says it was a wise move to follow
the advice of her husband, notary
public Ramon Maria Roca Sastre – he
told her to keep the coal-fired oven. The
kitchen cabinets are ideal, not too high
and not too low, she adds, opening and
closing them with brio. What brought
this well-known family of lawyers to La
Pedrera? ‘My father-in-law fell in love
with it, but everyone told him it was a
monstrosity, far too dark,’ she explains,
in what was her husband’s bedroom.
She leads on to the bathroom, pointing
out all the doors – there are five – and
the column in the middle of the room.
Her mother used to wonder out loud
what they had done to deserve such an
impractical bathroom.
In the plaster of the living room
wall, Gaudí created – ‘and signed,’
adds Carmen – a sgraffito of a cross,
the Catalan flag and a heart. She talks
about the luminosity and the quiet
inside the house, emphasising the
24 Time Out BCN Guide November 2012