My name is Pilar Paulí, and I was born on 18 October 1926 in La Pedrera

My grandfather, my mother’s father, was a coachman for the Milà family, the owners of La Pedrera, and he drove horse-drawn carriages there. Years later, when horse-drawn carriages were no longer in use, he learned how to drive automobiles and became a chauffeur.

My grandparents lived in La Pedrera, on the ground floor, next to the porter’s lodge. As far as I know, my grandparents were the first residents to live there, because before the first tenants moved in, the workers did: the mechanic in charge of maintaining the boilers and my grandfather, who, as mentioned, was the coachman, both with their respective families. My great-grandmother (my maternal grandmother’s mother) also lived with them and died there in an accident. She had hung the laundry on the roof using the freight elevator, but the installations had not yet been completed, or perhaps due to the lack of safety regulations at the time (there were no doors)… In any case, the freight elevator started up and killed her while she was taking the laundry basket out. As you can imagine, I know all of this only through family stories; I never knew this great-grandmother.

My mother, Pepita, married my father, Lluís, at the age of 19. He was the chauffeur of Mr. Antonio Feliu, who lived in the same building and was a textile manufacturer. As was customary at the time, a single man, despite living alone, had many servants: a chauffeur, a valet, maids, a cook, and a housekeeper.

When my parents married, my grandparents gave them their apartment and moved into another one. And that is how it came about that I was born in La Pedrera. We later moved away because my mother opened a shop in the Sant Antoni neighborhood, although we continued to visit for many years afterward.