Casa Lleó i Morera - Domènech i Montaner

Casa Lleó i Morera (1905), located in the famous block of discord named for the controversy that arose when five buildings of very different styles were built in 10 years, is considered one of the best modernist works. On the first floor examples of the finest Catalan modernista stained glass can be seen.

Although at the moment you can not visit the interior of the building, the decoration of the interior spaces is one of its great values. Not in vain in its design worked more than 40 artists directed by Lluís Domènech i Montaner. The journalist and essayist Lluís Permanyer said that Casa Lleó i Morera is a magnificent modernist work and compared it with the Palau de la Música Catalana.

Machine gun nest

The templete that crowns the building was used as a nest of machine guns during the Spanish Civil War. Due to the bullet impacts it received, it had to be rebuilt.

An anecdote: Noucentists against modernists and Salvador Dalí

Casa Lleó i Morera was a victim of the hatred that the Noucentists had for modernism. That hatred was evident in 1943 as a result of a reform project on the first floor. The responsible architects decided that the building had to have less modernist elements and eliminated the modernist windows and the sculptures of Arnau. The heads of the sculptures were recovered by the keeper of the building, who eventually sold them to Salvador Dalí. The genius of Ampurdán placed them in the wall of the courtyard of his Theater-Museum of Figueras.