An enigma of love in La Pedrera

In 1906, the architect Antoni Gaudí witnessed the laying of the first bricks of his project on the plot that would become an icon of Modernism: the Casa Milà building, “La Pedrera,” on Barcelona’s Passeig de Gràcia. That same year, the writer Eugeni d’Ors published in La Veu de Catalunya his first glosses on Teresa, La Ben Plantada—the extraordinarily beautiful woman, admired by all and an enigmatic muse who would become an icon of Noucentisme and the very essence of a reborn Catalan identity. These two milestones, marking the emergence of two antagonistic and opposing artistic—and intellectual—movements, surprisingly shared a common point: my great-grandmother, Teresa Mestre de Baladia, wife of my great-grandfather, whom I knew as “el Padrí.”

Two years later, the most modernist of all artists, Ramon Casas, secretly painted a portrait of my great-grandmother, and when Eugeni d’Ors saw the painting that inspired his Ben Plantada, he declared it to be the foundational stone of Noucentisme and decided to promote a bold initiative: the Gallery of Beautiful Catalan Women, as a complement to the already existing Gallery of Illustrious Catalans. The first portrait, he proclaimed, would be that of my great-grandmother. The poet Joan Maragall enthusiastically joined the initiative and mobilized society to bring the project to fruition.

But, as so often happens in this country, everything fell apart. Aunt Ramona, the enormously wealthy and corpulent bourgeois matriarch of the Baladia family, was scandalized by so much artistic frivolity and decided to lock Teresa away in the stately, castle-like house that architect Josep Puig i Cadafalch had remodeled for them in their summer retreat in Argentona. The Museu d’Art de Catalunya also requested the portrait of La Ben Plantada from Ramon Casas. Casas sought permission from my great-grandfather, the Padrí, who agreed to let the museum keep the work. However, to avoid further conflict, Casas required a clause whereby the museum committed that Teresa’s portrait would never form part of a gallery of portraits.

The beautiful and admired Teresa could not endure Aunt Ramona’s punishment, and one night she escaped at full gallop on horseback. She left behind her husband and their three children—Gip, Niní, and Ninus—under the aunt’s control. Teresa settled in a house the family owned in Barcelona, believing that her husband and children would follow her. Her husband was madly in love with her. He adored her. But that did not happen. Aunt Ramona told the Padrí that if he returned to his wife, she would disinherit him. Months passed and nothing changed. Teresa wrote letters to her family, and Ramona intercepted them all. Preserving discretion, secrecy, and the family’s good name was Aunt Ramona’s highest priority.

Teresa moved between the various houses the family owned in Barcelona. One of them was La Pedrera, and family legend has it that this is where she lived during her most turbulent times. The apartment in La Pedrera, although measuring three hundred square meters, was kept as a pied-à-terre—a central, practical, and relatively small place to stay on nights when they returned late from the Liceu, the Palau de la Música, the theatre, or a social gathering and did not have time to go back to the Isabeline palace on the Riera de Mataró or the stately home in Argentona.

Aunt Ramona forbade Teresa from seeing her children again. She kept them with their father in Argentona. Teresa grew desperate. Then she was helped—and loved—by a young and attractive admirer: the multifaceted cultural activist Josep Pijoan, founder of the Institut d’Estudis Catalans and one of the most promising figures of his generation, until the powerful Puig i Cadafalch, a close friend of the Padrí, declared war on him precisely because of the love scandal involving Teresa. The story of Teresa Baladia and Josep Pijoan became one of the greatest scandals and enigmas to shake Catalan society during the Belle Époque, and it was dubbed “The thunderous and mysterious escape.” It is very difficult to know what really happened, as many mysteries still surround it today. It is not known exactly where they stayed, when they left, where they went, or—most compromising of all—whether Teresa was already pregnant by Pijoan while they were still in Barcelona. A scandal had to be avoided. Both Teresa and Pijoan always avoided giving further details about the escape, and when they did speak, it was only to add even more confusion.

Great-grandmother Teresa never returned home. With Pijoan she had two children, and together they traveled the world, always surrounded by prominent figures of their time. She died in New York, accompanied by a close friend, Andrés Segovia, who played the guitar at her bedside in the clinic where she passed away. Pijoan later remarried his secretary, much younger than himself, and they settled in Geneva. The Padrí, wounded by heartbreak, lived almost like a monk, largely confined to the stately house in Argentona. Many years later, I learned that he continued paying his wife’s membership fees to the Centre Excursionista de Catalunya until the day he learned of her death—perhaps in remembrance of the happy times they had shared together in the Pyrenees and the Alps. And when he learned of his wife’s passing, the Padrí wore a black tie for the rest of his days.

The apartment in La Pedrera remained almost always empty. No one used it. The heir, Gip, already had a principal apartment on Passeig de Gràcia, at the corner with Carrer València, as well as a tower at the top of the building that he used as an “artistic studio,” although it seems it was actually intended for more festive purposes. Niní lived in a tower at the foot of Vallvidrera. My grandfather Ninus, while studying in Barcelona, stayed almost always at the property of his fiancée, Rat de Ferrater Llorach, in Sant Gervasi. When they married, they moved to Mataró to be closer to the factory. Only my great-grandfather, very occasionally, spent a night in La Pedrera before quickly returning to Argentona. Yet he continued to pay the rent until the early 1930s. It seems far too long to keep an apartment that no one used. Another mystery.

One thought keeps circling in my mind: perhaps the Padrí kept the apartment in La Pedrera for so many years in the hope that one day, perhaps without warning and unexpectedly, his beloved Teresa—his eternal Ben Plantada—would return there.