The mayor of Barcelona, Pasqual Maragall -perhaps influenced by the fact that Madrid's mayor, Enrique Tierno Galván, had inaugurated an important monument by Salvador Dalí in the capital, while in Barcelona there wasn't even a small passage dedicated to the artist-, decided to put an end to this anomaly. He proposed that the old Plaça Nova was renamed after Salvador Dalí and that it was dominated by a monument designed by the artist himself. Although the commission came too late for Dalí, he came up with the idea of his sculptor friend Xavier Corberó erecting one of his razor-sharp cones, a very tall stainless steel spire that would cast its shadow over the square and the facades to the north. A kind of giant sundial. Naturally, Xavier was very willing, and like Salvador, he suggested that I participated as the architect. Since I knew that a parking garage was planned underneath the Cathedral Square, and one of its exits would need to be located near Plaça Nova, I proposed that Corberó's spire did not rise from the level of the square, but rather from the crater that would contain the spiral staircase for this exit. In this way, it would acquire a mysterious monumentality.

The monument project was blocked as soon as it reached the ears of Oriol Bohigas.