Casa Botines (León)

Almost all guides date this building within a range: "1892-1893" or "1891-1894," depending on which one you read. The museum that occupies it has much narrower dates, and it has them documented: plans signed in December 1891, excavations started on January 4, 1892, construction completed in November of the same year, and inauguration on September 15, 1893. In other words: the building was built in just ten months.

Ten months is a figure worth remembering, because it contradicts the usual image of Gaudí as an architect of eternal works. The Sagrada Família has been under construction for over a century and has occupied almost all of the mental space that people reserve for this architect. In León, he did the opposite: he entered, built an entire building, and left, in less than a year of work.

And there's a second misunderstanding, more fundamental: the building is not called "Botines." Its name is Casa Fernández y Andrés, named after the two merchants who commissioned it. "Botines" comes from Juan Homs y Botines (1798-1878), the owner of the previous business. And it wasn't a transaction between strangers: Simón Fernández was a brother-in-law and partner of Homs. The nickname stuck to the building and has ultimately replaced the real name.

The first row is the one that was least considered and yet had the greatest impact on the project. The lawsuit with the City Council of León was not about the height of the building, as is often repeated, but about the ownership of the land: the city council denied that the entire plot was privately owned. The May 1891 ruling left 800 square meters of buildable area out of the 2,390.5 that the developers had purchased. Gaudí designed based on what remained.

The promoters were Simón Fernández Fernández and Mariano Andrés González-Luna, textile merchants with a currency exchange business. The commission came to Gaudí through the recommendation of Eusebi Güell, and here it is important to pause, because the explanation given by almost all guides, that Güell supplied them with fabrics, is not documented.

What does fit is a banking connection. Fernández and Andrés were representatives in León for the Banco Hispano-Colonial, the Barcelona-based institution founded by the Marquis de Comillas, who was Güell's father-in-law. This is a coherent reconstruction, not proof, and it deserves to be presented this way: the relationship exists, but the exact mechanism is not documented. It is worth noting that Simón Fernández died in 1891, before the work he had commissioned was completed.

The sculptural group on the facade, depicting Saint George and the dragon, was carved by Llorenç Matamala, head of Gaudí's sculpture team. It's the piece that everyone photographs, and the interesting part was inside.

In 1952 or 1953, when an arm and the jaw of the dragon detached, a lead tube was discovered inside the statue. It contained the only two plans of the building signed by Gaudí that are preserved, two copies of the newspaper from the day of the inauguration, and a list of collaborators and suppliers of the project. In 1956, when the statue that is currently visible was placed, a second tube was added containing newspapers from the day of Gaudí's death. Today, there are two of them up there.

It's worth pausing on this for a moment. Only two plans signed by Gaudí survive from an entire building, and they survived because someone put them in a tube, and the tube inside a sculpture. A large part of the workshop's archive burned on July 20, 1936; what was in León was saved by an action from 1893 that no one had considered as a conservation measure.

"Gaudí didn't use straight lines" is one of the most repeated phrases about him, and it's false. The Casa Botines is a prismatic volume of straight walls, with four turrets in the corners and neo-Gothic windows above the stone facade. And it's not an exception: the Palacio de Astorga, the Colegio Teresiano, and the Torre Bellesguard are equally prismatic. Furthermore, there's a geometric argument that settles the discussion: the ruled surfaces that Gaudí used throughout his life are, by definition, generated by a straight line that moves.

Another topic that it's worth debunking: the idea that the project prohibits intermediate pillars, and that the floor is a free space by some structural miracle. The ground floor has twenty-eight cast iron pillars. The solution is clever, not magical.

What is documented is the discussion about the foundation. Gaudí resolved it "as was customary in Catalonia," and local engineers criticized his approach. His response has been preserved, and it provides a good insight into his character:

The anecdote often includes a coda, which claims that the engineer who criticized the invention died shortly afterward. However, this addition is folklore and lacks any factual basis. The core statement of the anecdote is true; the dramatic ending is not.

The building was used as a bank until 2017, which explains why, for decades, it was impossible to enter except to conduct business at a counter. Regarding its opening to the public, sources disagree: one sets the date as April 23, 2017, St. George's Day, which would be a deliberate choice for a building with St. George on the facade; another places the museum's opening, as it operates today, in 2019, managed by FUNDOS. Both versions may be referring to different things: the first visit and the museum's official opening, but it's best not to consider either one as definitively correct.

Like the other two works outside of Catalonia, the Casa Botines is declared a monument by the decree of July 24, 1969, published in the BOE (Official State Gazette) on August 20, and is not a World Heritage Site: it was part of the twelve works that Spain presented to UNESCO in 2005 and was among the eight that ICOMOS rejected.

Placed side by side, the three works located outside of Catalonia behave in very different ways. "El Capricho" was built between 1883 and 1885 with a different architect in charge. "Astorga" began in 1889, lost its architect in 1893, and was not completed until the 1907-1915 period, with another architect. "Casa Botines" is the only one of the three that started and finished within the same commission, and moreover, quickly. The page that compares them puts all three in a single table.