Along Barcelona’s Passeig de Gràcia, a row of façades occupies an entire block between the streets Consell de Cent and Aragó. The block includes buildings by Josep Puig i Cadafalch, Enric Sagnier, Lluís Domènech i Montaner and Antoni Gaudí who were among the most noteworthy architects of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and vied for pride of place on the site. The first building – Puig i Cadafalch’s Casa Amatller – and the last – Gaudí’s Casa Batlló –, were constructed barely eight years apart. Nevertheless, their styles couldn’t be more different. The first-floor apartments, which had separate staircases from the other neighbours, were usually set aside for the developers who wanted to leave their own individual imprint on the building. The architects were only too delighted to comply with their wishes. The buildings were always named after the families who owned them – Casa Amatller, Casa Lleó Morera, Casa Mulleras, Casa Bonet, Casa Batlló – and the flourishing Catalan bourgeoisie wanted to stand out from the rest rather than blend in with their neighbours. The art nouveau, or modernista, movement also favoured the picturesque medievalist and anticlassical style. 

The satirical Catalan press, which frequently lambasted the excesses of the art nouveau style, soon gave proof of its sardonic ingenuity (which is extremely rare today) when it came up with the term manzana de la discordia, a Spanish pun referring to the disparate nature of the buildings (block of discord) and the conflict of Paris and the Golden Apple (apple of discord), which led to the Judgement of Paris in Greek mythology. 1 

The audacity of the thriving bourgeoisie died out in a couple of generations, but this splendid book shows that the discord between neighbouring buildings has endured for many years. Some architect friends from Paris or London are surprised at our admiration for the uniform nature of their buildings set out in rows stretching for hundreds of metres. They find the Rue de Rivoli, the Place Vendôme, the many squares in Belgravia and other London neighbourhoods boring, whereas the higgledy-piggledy nature of our city extension, the Eixample, excites and delights them.

It goes without saying that the houses with which the families sought to outdo one another gradually died out, and successful developers emerged with a repetitive style, some of them even specialising in the chamfered corners, known as chaflanes, that are so typical of this part of Barcelona. However, the desire to surprise and entertain survived among smaller property developers.

This book is to be commended for several reasons: for the undisputed quality of the photographs; for the way all superfluous details have been erased (you can barely see the tops of the shady plane trees which are such a frequent presence along our streets and extremely comfortable for pedestrians, but the bane of photographers); for the flatness of the images; for they way they have been put together (based on how close the buildings are to one another, their similarity or contrasting styles); and even for the sympathetic way the indispensable photo captions have been included (indispensable because having to turn to a list at the end of a book in order to understand what we are looking at is the bane of all readers). However, the author’s master stroke lies in the fact that he hasn’t restricted himself to taking photographs of façades by noteworthy architects. Gabi Beneyto has taken a fresh look at the buildings through the eyes of a layman. Some architect friends may have suggested he produce a work of historical importance, but he has understood how to reveal the interesting aspects of façades we would never have considered. The splendid pages of this book feature buildings of heterodox architecture, of an ignoble style, of a disconcerting naivety. They are still part of our city’s richness, part of its appeal: not all Barcelona could belong to Gaudí, Sagnier, Duran Reynals, Mitjans or Coderch.

During the lengthy discussions I have had with the author, I have pointed out that there are many curtain walls in the book, many of them excellent in design. I don’t believe that they give our city its character, but recognise that they are inevitable. Just as all European cities, without exception, from Rome to Wien, from Praha to Madrid, are irreversibly losing their distinctive historic shops to replace them with international chain stores that all look the same, Mies’ cutting-edge curtain wall is repeated, with varying degrees of success, in every city throughout the world. Fortunately, the questionable and rigid guidelines governing our city’s expansion district strictly prohibit the curtain wall. This means that, at least, in this part of town, which «is» Barcelona to the collective memory, crazy architects can still express their discord with the backing of a daring developer.