April 8, 2023 will be the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Pablo Picasso, Before that, the year dedicated to him will have begun, with exhibitions and acts throughout the planet, and the anniversary will catch the house of genius in Barcelona well arranged, or so their managers hope. The Picasso Museum needs to a stone facelift in its five facades -the palaces of Berenguer d’Aguilar, Meca, Baró de Castellet, Mauri and Finestres- and this will begin in the summer to end 11 months later, with the events in the world dedicated to the cubist artist already underway, but with the great exhibition scheduled on Montcada street still to begin. The intention is that when the exhibition that will focus on the friendship between Picasso and Joan Miró open doors -on fall 2023-, the canvases of the works have already been removed.
1.59 million
In the museum they admit that the schedule is tight but that the improvements must be made and the municipal budgets set the pace, not in vain the center of Montcada street is under the umbrella of the town hall. The works were approved in the government commission on January 20, they have an executive project -submitted to public information until Friday-, a budget of 1.59 million euros and are pending bidding. This does not mean that, during the time in which the workers and the ‘Picassian’ year coincide, the five palaces that make up the museum are covered: the works are designed so that at no time will the scaffolding and green tarpaulins occupy more than two of the five buildings of the complex. And, what has been said, they are scheduled so that in the fall of 2023 they will already be history.
Now the protective mesh covers everything. This is so since in July de 2016 there was a small detachment on the façade of the Palau Berenguer d’Aguilar, which was repeated in October 2018 in the courtyard of the Palau Baró de Castellet. The studies that were done then did not indicate an imminent danger since the buildings They are not in poor condition, but they do need maintenance, above all focused on cleaning, both from the dirt produced by pollution and from that derived from animals and plants -the droppings of pigeons wreak havoc and there is vegetation that appears in the most unexpected places-, and focused on stabilizing curbs and stuccoed.
protected set
In October 2021, two of the museum’s four courtyards began to be polished, Berenguer d’Aguilar and Meca, whose work will finish shortly to begin improvements to the Baró de Castellet and Finestres courtyards, which will be ready in November. when the works will have already begun on the facades of Carrer de Montcada, in the five palaces. These must take into account that all together they form a unique set, the first of residential architecture in Barcelona to be protected by the administrations. It was 1947, when it was declared Architectural and Artistic Heritage and the distinction entails servitudes such as that of maintain the original elements and their current uniformity. A protection that has also slowed down the start of the works since, in addition to the necessary tastings, the pertinent historical and heritage studies have had to be carried out.
A uniformity achieved above all in the first half of the 20th century, when it was decided to give the oldest part of the city a patina of medieval glory that was lacking and that if at some point he had, he no longer kept. This idea of monumentalizing the urban heritage included the stately street of Montcada and its palaces, which, to be fair, never were, since in discreet and inconspicuous late medieval Barcelona they spoke of ‘cases grans’, and those on the street in question were not inhabited by the nobility but by merchants. The fact is that the historicist reinterpretation that was carried out under the baton of the architect Adolf Florensa (1889-1968) gave them more or less the appearance that they look now.
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six decades
Before there were more modifications, the biggest ones were made in the 18th century, in the Baroque period, although those that in the 19th century converted some of the buildings into tenement houses or those that gave them an industrial use -one of them housed the Casa Mauri jam factory. There have also been modifications in more recent times, those derived from converting the complex into a museum. These began in the Palau Bereguer d’Aguilar when it was decided to install the center dedicated to Picasso, the only one created during the life of the genius and at his express wish. opened in 1963, in 2023 it will celebrate its 60th anniversary, and it was expanded to occupy the current space: in 1970, the Palau Baró de Castellet; in 1981, the Palau Meca, and in 1999, the Mauri and Finestres houses.