We usually associate Rationalism with the orthodoxy of GATCPAC, an essential reference point for local modernity. However, beyond radicalism, black and white, we find a range of greys where we can include other types of architecture which, to a greater or lesser extent, and with different references and aspirations, applied the precepts of avant-garde architecture. With influences that always came from experiments beyond the Pyrenees, we can say that there are many examples that already point to a definitive overcoming of Catalan Art Nouveau or Noucentisme, or that, little by little, are becoming a phase of their metamorphosis. And many of these approaches predate the presentation of GATCPAC to society in April 1929.
In the 1930s, all these neighbourhoods could be considered peripheral, except for their own centres. And it is here that we find what we often do not want to see or do not need to see in the city centre, the classic English “not in my backyard”: a hospital, a radio station or, taken to the extreme, social housing for workers. At the same time, in some of these neighbourhoods, the petty bourgeoisie established a first or second residence, fleeing the city environment; class tradition continued, but style changed.
This situation of isolated mountain neighbourhoods on the outskirts of the city would continue until the end of the 20th century, when the joyous 1992 Olympic Games arrived with the urbanisation of the Vall d’Hebron and Teixonera areas, where you will be surprised to find a misplaced Pavilion of the Republic. A pavilion rebuilt for the occasion following the original in Paris in 1937, but which in fifty years’ time we will have made our own.
