Other traces: Mallorca, Artigas, and Reus

These three projects often appear together on lists of "other works by Gaudí," and it's a mistake to lump them together because they are not the same type of thing. The renovation of the cathedral of Palma is a documented project, with a contract, dates, and invoices. The Jardins Artigas are an attribution without any documentation to support it. And Reus is not a work: it is the place where there is nothing.

We've grouped them together on one page for that very reason. Seeing them one after another highlights the three levels at which the "Gaudí work" formula is applied: what he actually created and signed, what local tradition attributes to him, and what people assume to be true, even if it doesn't actually exist.

The commission was formalized on March 17, 1902, and the work took place between 1903-1904 and 1914. It was not a new building; it involved liturgically reorganizing a Gothic cathedral, which means the type of work where an architect has to remove things that others have done. Joan Rubió i Bellver, a collaborator of Gaudí, effectively directed the project, and Josep Maria Jujol was responsible for the decoration.

And here's the detail that almost no one writes about, and which we think is the best part of the entire page: the baldachin that hangs today above the main chapel is the provisional model. Cardboard, wood, and wire. It was hung to see the effect before manufacturing the definitive version. The definitive version was never made, and it has remained there for over a century. Thousands of people photograph it every year, believing they are looking at a finished piece.

The row of stained glass windows deserves a comment. Of the nine that are visible, only three are from the period of the renovation. The other six were created in the 1980s, based on designs by Pere Cánovas. In other words: two-thirds of what people see as "Gaudí's light" were created sixty years after his death.

The main criticism of this intervention doesn't concern what was added, but rather what was removed: Gaudí demolished the Corredor de los Cirios, a Mudéjar feature of the cathedral. This is the kind of decision that today would not be approved by any heritage committee, and it's important to mention it when discussing him as a restorer. It also wasn't without its challenges at the time: the polychromy that Jujol applied to the choir using a spray technique caused conflict between the architect and the clergy of the church.

There's a widespread misunderstanding about how it ended. It's said that the renovation stopped when Bishop Pere Joan Campins, who was driving it, died. The dates don't add up: Campins died on February 23, 1915, and the work was abandoned in 1914. The cause was the conflict with the contractor and with the cathedral chapter. It's the same pattern as in Astorga, with the difference that there the client really did die first.

In Pobla de Lillet, in Berguedà, there is a garden with bridges, grottoes, and railings made of concrete that imitate tree trunks, which most guidebooks present as a work by Gaudí. The documentation says something different, and it says so with unusual frankness. The Diputació de Barcelona registers it as "Antoni Gaudí (?)", with the question mark included, and the Generalitat states that "no existeix cap document que ho corrobori": there is no document that corroborates it.

It's worth following the entire series because it's a textbook example of how an attribution is created. A fire destroys the sketches, an indirect witness recounts what they remember three decades later, a respected researcher collects this testimony and publishes it in a newspaper, and from there, the attribution essentially replicates itself.

That the chain is fragile does not mean that it is false. It means that we are dealing with an established local tradition, not archival documentation, and that the two things are not the same. In addition, a significant portion of the sculptures that are seen today are by Ramon Millet i Domènech, which further reduces the area of the garden that can be discussed as being Gaudinian.

Very close by is the Xalet del Catllaràs, and the story there has changed very recently. In February 2026, a study by Galdric Santana for the Generalitat confirmed the authorship: the project is by Gaudí, but he did not oversee the construction, which was carried out and modified by third parties, and that is why he never claimed authorship of the final result. It is the same mechanism as in El Capricho, and it helps to understand why the catalog of this architect is so ambiguous.

In Reus, there isn't a single building by Gaudí. Not one. And yet, it is the city most associated with his name after Barcelona, to the point that in 1975, its City Council proposed moving El Capricho, the building in Comillas, there. The proposal was rejected, but it illustrates the extent of the connection.

The reason for the connection is birth, and that's where the problem begins. Gaudí was baptized on June 26, 1852, in the priory church of Sant Pere de Reus, with the name Anton Placid Guillem. The record is preserved in the Archidiocesan Historical Archive of Tarragona, and it does not indicate the place of birth: in 1852, there was no Civil Registry, and the church recorded where someone was baptized, not where they were born. The evidence that would resolve the issue is precisely the one that remains silent.

The rest are clues, and the most perplexing one came from him himself. Until around 1915, Gaudí always stated that he was from Reus. From that date onwards, he began to say that he was from Riudoms. Joan Bassegoda, in El gran Gaudí (1989, p. 552), suggests an explanation: resentment over the rejection of his project to restore the sanctuary of La Misericòrdia in Reus. This is a hypothesis that explains the change in his statements, not the place of his birth.

This page does not take sides, and not out of caution, but because there is no basis for doing so. The line containing the epitaph also has a revealing detail: the tombstone is also wrong about the age. If the text accompanying a body since 1926 fails on such a simple detail as the years the person lived, it is not the source to use to settle a discussion about the place of birth. And there is an asymmetry that is worth noting: the only first-hand testimony, that of Gaudí himself, changes its answer halfway through his life.

There's one last thing to say about the Camp de Tarragona, and that is that its absence from the guidebooks is not a oversight. Gaudí was trained and worked in Barcelona, and his home region appears in his biography as a landscape, not as a commission: the mountains of Prades, the gorge of Fraguerau behind Reus, places where he went to see how things were made. Anyone who travels there looking for a building will be disappointed; those who travel to understand where his ideas came from, will not. What exactly he studied in those places is explained on the Gaudí method page.