Before all this was field. So many times you have heard, half jokingly, the happy phrase. And so few times have you managed to imagine that stone Barcelona, when the city was still a sprawling village and the lands were measured by palms.
We cross the city to remember the splendor of those old housestoday converted into civic centers, schools and restaurants. The old farmhouses they return us to the rural pulse and the vertices of the past. This is a walk through time that ends in sunsets smelling of firewoodthe touch of the plowed earth and the echoes of a distant barking.
1. The farmhouse of Can Planes
More than a ‘More‘
if we say the farmhouseWe all know what we mean. What was the residence of the youth of the lower categories of Barça Until 2011 it was still owned by the club, although for years it had not hosted the team’s promises. The farmhouse of Can Planes (Maternitat, s/n), formerly known as Can Freixes, It was built in 1702, as we can read on its portal. It was a farm linked to the agricultural past of the parish of Les Corts. In 1950, the last heir to the Planes de Les Corts, Francesc Planes Buera, signed the sale to the sports entity for about six million pesetas. Nothing compared to what is paid now for the stars of the club.
2. Can Fargues
shady garden
Now turned into a municipal school of music wrapped in a romantic garden, Can Fargues (Avenida de Frederic Rahola, 2-8) is still standing thanks to the efforts of its neighbors. Their original tower defense it was extended to house a farmhouse at the end of the 11th century. Later it was transformed into a residential house, hence their agricultural activity gave way to gardens and groves. Even today you can enjoy the shade of its arches made of branches, culminated in the song of the birds and the small pond surrounded by wooden benches. The construction also preserves a good part of its original structure and appearance. Since 2009 it passed into municipal hands, and only the neighborhood demand managed to avoid its demolition to give rise to the music school. I can’t think of a better place to learn.
The neighborhood dominates it from its great vantage point, the Casal Mas Guinardó (Salvador Riera square, 2), an ancient and powerful farmhouse with panoramic perspectives, headquarters of a multitude of legends and stories of bandits.
3. Can Cut
medieval magic
From Horta, go up the Campoamor street until the Can Cortada restaurant (Avenida del Estatut de Catalunya, s/n) is already a fascinating walk between old farms and chalets with gardens, brimming with classical ornaments, geometric sgraffito and stunning pediments. By the time you arrive at this old farmhouse, the show is served in every way. The mouth opens in a ‘crescendo’ as you approach its beautiful facade, decorated with ivy and flowers always in conjunction with the season of the year. On the grounds where we now find a fabulous restaurant, formerly there was a roman villaa from which the lords of Horta built a medieval defense tower. During the fifteenth century it became a agricultural farmhouse that supplied the nearby markets.
Its current inhabitants also seem from another era: at the door, fermin receives you as if he knew you, and unleashes which minstrel his stories about the mansion; inside, the director, Christian Abelairafurther raises the magic of the place with his humor and energy. At the table, the charm of the house is multiplied with delicacies in the form of grilled meat, rice and fish Serving since 1994.
Very near here, Can Travi Nou (Paseo de Maragall, 178) is another great Catalan farmhouse converted into a rustic restaurant. Its bougainvillea cover gives it a special charm. Wild nature, feudal tournaments and Celtic weddings: in these farmhouses, you can still experience it.
4. Can Castello
sunny peace
The gardens on a slight upward ramp lead through a spiral of greenery to the gates of the Civic Center Can Castelló (Castelló, 1). Located in Sarrià-Sant Gervasi, this old bourgeois farmhouse built at the end of the 16th century was remodeled in the 20th century, giving it the modernist and clean aesthetic that presents today. Harmony is breathed in its environment. Retirees, some of them from the ‘great people’s house‘ which houses the same building, are lost in thought in the sun. Some entertain themselves reading on the benches of that garden of ‘pittosporums’ and palm trees that spreads over the lower wall of the farm. This little refuge from noise has the best testimony of his past the ceiling of the noble room, with wooden ornamentation. Formerly the farmhouse was known as Can Galvany until, as a result of Rosa Galvany’s marriage to Gabriel Castelló, it was renamed Can Castelló. Things from before.
5. Can Canet de la Riera
manor elites
You will hardly be able to enjoy the full views of this work included in the Architectural Heritage of Catalonia, unless you have a deep pocket, athletic demeanor and excellence in clothing. At the entrance of the Royal Tennis Club Barcelona-1899 (Bosch i Gimpera, 5-13) a man in a white shirt will welcome you from his cabin on the steps. He will clarify that from that point the step is exclusive for members and you will have to turn around. We will have to settle for the distant glimpses of what was Can Canet de la Riera, manor house that welcomed a large peasantry. The last inhabitants were the Llobatera family. Its rectangular floor plan houses a gallery dominated by a large balustrade. But you can imagine that, because from the sidewalk you can only make out the large voussoir arch from your portal.
6. Can Trilla
mystery and landslide
Not all visits to farmhouses have to discover splendid images. The Old farmhouse of Can Trilla (Gran de Gràcia, 177) is protected as a cultural asset of local interest, but presents a rather dilapidated appearance and abandoned. Even so, if you go to the confines of Gràcia to contemplate the two rectangular floors of its simple architecture, partly protected by a fence that hides the passage where the main entrance is located, you will feel a tenderness that crosses borders of time. The balconies with wrought iron supports of the main house, facing the sea, with the wooden shutters of the ground floor where the landlords lived, and that sgraffito sundial make up an admirable set. Formerly, the house had a large expanse of farmland, between dry and irrigated. It is still preserved scrawny baroque chapel attached to the building.
Another former glory that presents a pitiful aspect today is Can Miralletes (Sant Antoni Maria Claret, 310), whose reform is taking longer than expected. At least while they convert the old house where the muleteers had breakfast in a new children’s spacewe can continue to enjoy your mediterranean gardenrecreation of the agricultural past of Camp de l’Arpa.
7. Can Raspall
ethics and aesthetics
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as it happens in the aesthetic medicine center that now welcomes, the farmhouse of Can Raspall (Paseo de Manuel Girona, 37) has undergone several ‘facelifts’ and modifications. In the 20’s, Antoni Biada carried out a reform that attaches a body of the building to the right and a porch to the left, modifying the façade at the same time and surrounding the house of gardens, statues and other decorative elements. If we appeal to its 17th century origins, we have to appeal to a basilical farmhouse sgraffito with classical motifs, where two balconies with Gothic windows and a loft illuminated by a gallery of arches stand out. All in all, it must be said that time has suited him like a fable.