Casa Mulleras: A legally house

The prolific architectural work of marquis Enric Sagnier in Barcelona ​​has another of its characteristic – and oldest – exponents in the Mulleras House, located in the very Illa de la Discòrdia and with a similar life history, as far as its owners are concerned: the Mulleras family, from ancient and thousand-year-old Catalan lineage originating in La Garrotxa.

The Mulleras family has more than 1,000 years of history that have focused mainly on the Garrotxa region. In the 19th century, Camilo Mulleras i Garrós emigrated to Barcelona where his family settled, while the properties of Sant Joan les Fonts, Olot i la Vall de Bianya became the place of leisure.

Originally, the Casa Mulleras was known as the Ramon Comas house, another Catalan businessman who in 1868 commissioned the construction of the house to the master-builder Pau Martorell. The property was bought at the end of the 19th century by the textile industrialist, Ramon Mulleras i Pons, who commissioned the architect Enric Sagnier to remodel it.

He left his imprint of ornamental sobriety and classicism on the façade, with small rococo floral details, distancing it from the prevailing modernism in the Casa Lleó i Morera and the neo-baroque of the Casa Josefina Bonet, both contiguous. A curious detail of the modernist era: the urban study La manzana de la discòrdia (UIC, 2015) reports that, of the five buildings built on this street, only Casa Mulleras had the proper papers, while the other four they had to pay fines to the city council for not meeting the requirements, including exceeding the agreed height.

According to Sagnier’s design, the façade uses the “colossal order” that allows the building to acquire a scale of monumentality by eliminating the cornices that separate the ground, main and first floors. As if the building itself only had two giant floors.

You can visit Casa Mulleras at the 37th, Passeig de Gracia.