Antoni Gaudí biography

Gaudí's life is always described using the same four facts, and many of them lack the documented evidence they are supposed to have. The director of the school's statement, the patron's instant admiration for a display case, the architect's ascetic lifestyle from a young age: these are recurring elements that are repeated because they are repeated.

What follows distinguishes between what is proven and what is merely transmitted, and indicates when evidence is lacking. The resulting biography contains more gaps than usual, and features fewer definitive statements.

The question has been open for a century, and it is almost always answered by choosing a side. The oldest document is the birth certificate from June 26, 1852, in the priory church of Sant Pere de Reus, which registers him as Anton Placid Guillem and is preserved in the Archdiocesan Historical Archive of Tarragona. That's where the problem begins: the document does not indicate where the birth took place. The Civil Registry did not yet exist, and the baptism was celebrated in the family's parish.

What is known is what he said, and he changed his declared place of origin around middle age. Until approximately 1915, he always stated that he was from Reus: in 1880, in the records of the Fortuny Theater, he called it "my unforgettable hometown." From that point on, he began to say that he was from Riudoms, where the family had the farmhouse. Bassegoda, in El gran Gaudí (1989, p. 552), suggests an uncomfortable explanation for the change: resentment over the rejection of his project to restore the sanctuary of La Misericòrdia in Reus.

None of the five options directly answer the question, and that's the key. Anyone who writes "born in Reus" or "born in Riudoms" without further explanation is making a choice, not providing information.

The father, Francesc Gaudí i Serra (1813-1906), was a tinsmith, as had been more than five generations before him. They didn't make kitchenware; they made large copper containers for distilling alcohol from wine, and sheet metal pieces with double curvature that must be viewed as a whole before cutting the material, because the material is unforgiving.

Biographers repeatedly return to that workshop, and not out of sentimentality. A tinsmith works without blueprints, focusing on volume and curved surfaces. The son ended up building with curved surfaces and preferring the model to the blueprint, to the point that his method of work is what sets him apart from all his contemporaries. The connection remains a hypothesis, but it is a hypothesis with a workshop behind it. How that method worked is described on the page dedicated to him.

The mother was Antònia Cornet i Bertran (1819-1876). Antoni was the fifth child of the marriage.

Of the five children, only three reached adulthood; the other two died young. Rosa lived from 1844 to 1879. Francesc, born in 1851, studied medicine and died in 1876, at the age of 25, before he could practice. The mother died that same year, 1876.

The result, when added together, is this: In 1879, at the age of 27, Gaudí had lost his mother and all his siblings. This is the most difficult piece of information in his biography, and it rarely appears, probably because it doesn't help anyone to build the image of the eccentric genius. From that point on, he took care of his niece, Rosa Egea, who had a mental disability, and who died in 1912 at the age of 36. His father lived with him until 1906 and lived to be 93 years old.

He arrived in Barcelona in 1868, although Informative Notebook 3 of the basilica states 1869. He entered the School of Architecture in 1873. He was an irregular student who, according to the school's own reports, "excelled in projects, drawing, and mathematical calculations" but was lacking in other areas. The degree was awarded in Madrid on March 15, 1878.

Between 1875 and 1878, he served in the military, but was excused for health reasons for almost the entire period. He did not fight in the Third Carlist War, contrary to what is sometimes read.

And we arrive at the phrase. It is said that Elies Rogent, the director of the school, said when signing the diploma that he didn't know if he was giving it to a madman or a genius. This is the most repeated quote from all of Gaudi's bibliography, and it has no primary source. It circulates in six distinct variations; the Spanish and Catalan Wikipedias both link to the same dead link, a Mexican page from 2007; and the official "Cuaderno Informativo 3" prints it in its short version without saying where it comes from. The correct thing is to attribute it to the tradition of the profession and not to Rogent, and to state that, because the fact that the phrase has no documentation is, in itself, information.

Eusebi Güell (1846-1918) commissioned six works from him over forty years, and without him, half of Gaudí's work would not exist. He was the son of Joan Güell i Ferrer, who amassed his fortune as a slave owner in Cuba; he married Isabel López i Bru, daughter of the Marquis of Comillas; and he became a count in 1910. The money that paid for the Palau Güell, the Park Güell, and the crypt of the Colònia came from there, and it deserves to be mentioned in the same sentence.

How they met is the anecdote that opens almost every biography. Güell is said to have seen, at the 1878 Paris Exposition, the display case Gaudí designed for the Comella glove shop, and to have asked who made it. It probably happened, but it's worth knowing where the story comes from: it's told by Joan Matamala in a book of memories published in 1960, and Matamala was born in 1893. He is passing on workshop tradition eighty-two years after the events. It's not a tour-guide legend, but it isn't contemporary documentation either, and the difference matters. What survives of the display case is a sketch on a business card and an engraving in La Ilustración Española y Americana of September 22, 1878.

The only known sentimental episode in his life is from around 1884, with Josefa Moreu, Pepita, a teacher at the Cooperativa Obrera Mataronense. Even Bassegoda doesn't confirm it: he writes "apparently." There were two teacher sisters, Pepita and Agustina, and there's not much more to the whole affair than that "apparently." Any version with more detail than what you just read has been reconstructed by someone.

There's a thread in his biography that typical biographies don's follow, and it's found in the property records. Of every ten commissions that Gaudí received, at least five were dependent on a woman, and in three cases, the building ultimately ended up bearing the name of a man.

The plot of land for the Casa Milà was purchased by Roser Segimon in her name on June 9, 1905: a tower with a garden of 1,835 square meters on Passeig de Gràcia. The money came from her first husband, Josep Guardiola i Grau, a wealthy man who made his fortune in coffee in Guatemala. The building is called Casa Milà.

The Torre Bellesguard was purchased by Maria Sagués i Molins (1835-1907), widow of Jaume Figueras, a food products merchant. Gaudí signed the purchase agreement on her behalf on June 12, 1900, because she could not write. The property is protected as "Casa Figueras," named after a husband who had been dead for thirteen years when the work began.

The Casa Calvet was commissioned by Juliana Pintó i Roldós, a widow, who signed the application to the City Hall on April 2, 1898, on behalf of the "Successors of Pere Calvet": the building is named after her deceased husband. In the case of Casa Vicens, the land had come through her mother's inheritance, and it was the widow who ultimately sold it. And in the purchase deed for Casa Batlló, Amàlia Godó, daughter of one of the two founders of La Vanguardia, is listed as a co-owner.

The official Bellesguard website summarizes this by quoting the historian Isabel Segura Soriano: "a memory that is often very selective when it comes to remembering initiatives led by women."

It is the best-documented episode of his entire biography, and it is, curiously, one of the least discussed. The official report, typed, exists in the Municipal Historical Archive, and it was published by Joan Crexell in the magazine Serra d'Or in September 1987. During Primo de Rivera's dictatorship, the events of the Diada were prohibited.

At 8:05 AM, Gaudí attempted to enter the church of Sants Just i Pastor, where a prohibited mass was to be held, and the police stopped him at the door. At the police station on Plaza del Regomir, he stated that he was "71 years old," when in reality he was 72, and that his profession was "architect." They found a crucifix, a rosary, and a mass book on him. When the officer demanded that he speak in Spanish because his profession required it, he responded as follows.

They fined him 50 pesetas, and he didn't have the money on him. He wrote to the rector of La Mercè, asking for 75: fifty for himself and twenty-five to pay the fine for his cellmate, a street vendor of fruit. When the man wanted to return the money, he replied: "Charity is not repaid." He was detained for four hours, two of which were spent locked up. He was 72 years old.

The image of the old, disheveled man who was often mistaken for a beggar is real, but it corresponds to the later years. Zerbst (1985, p. 13) accurately describes the change: he went «from being a young man with the appearance of a dandy, wearing expensive suits, with well-groomed hair and beard, gourmet tastes, and frequent attendance at the theater and opera,» to «the strictest simplicity, to the point that he was sometimes mistaken for a beggar.» Withdrawing from social life was a decision he made around 1900, not an inherent trait. The misanthrope is the final image of Gaudí projected backward onto his entire life.

To avoid replacing one stereotype with another, a counter-example that also doesn't fit the image of the saint. Gaudí took Pere Milà to court over his fees for the Casa Milà and won the lawsuit in 1916: 105,000 pesetas. Milà mortgaged the house to pay him, he didn't sell it, and Gaudí later donated the money, although sources disagree about who it was to: the Catalan Wikipedia says it was to charity, and the Spanish Wikipedia says it was to the Jesuits. Both things are true: the lawsuit and the donation, and an honest biography includes both.

On June 7, 1926, around five in the afternoon, a tram from line 30 hit him on Gran Vía, between Girona and Bailèn. He did not die immediately: that is the first mistake that needs to be corrected. He was first taken to the first aid station on Ronda de Sant Pere, and from there to the Hospital de la Santa Creu. He was poorly dressed and had no identification on him, and no one recognized him.

He was identified the following day by Father Gil Parés and the architect Domènec Sugrañes. When his friends suggested moving him to a clinic, he refused: "My place is here, among the poor." He died on June 10, 1926, at 5:08 PM.

The funeral was held on the 12th. The coffin, draped with the flag of the Association of Architects, was led in the procession by the mayor, Darius Rumeu i Freixa, Baron of Viver. The entrance to the cathedral was through the Santa Llúcia door, and the Orfeo Català sang a requiem. He is buried in the chapel of the Mare de Déu del Carme, within the crypt of the Sagrada Família, and not under the main altar, as is often repeated. The epitaph calls him "Reusensis" and attributes 74 years to him. He died at the age of 73. The tombstone is wrong about the only one of the two pieces of information that can be verified, and it remains there.