A Student at La Pedrera

I did not live in La Pedrera, but between 1980 and 1984 I studied BUP and COU at the ICEJ (Centre for Economic Studies), an academy that was located on the ground floor on the Provença Street side and extended as far as the corner with Passeig de Gràcia.

Although it feels like yesterday, many years have passed and everything has changed greatly.

ICEJ was an academy where, at that time, students studied BUP, COU, and the university entrance exam for those over 25. ICEJ stood for Instituto de Ciencias Económicas y Jurídicas. Apparently, it originated as an academy located elsewhere on Provença Street that offered reinforcement classes for Law and Economics students, but in the early 1970s it moved to La Pedrera, where it remained until the late 1980s, shortly before the Olympic Games.

The first time I entered La Pedrera through the Provença Street entrance in 1980, to submit my school record before the start of the academic year, it struck me as a sad, dark place. The building had never been restored and everything was grey; the ceiling serigraphs had deteriorated, and the building—especially the interior—had an air of neglect and decay. This, however, was typical of Eixample buildings before the “Barcelona posa’t guapa” campaign launched by Barcelona City Council prior to the 1992 Olympics.

The academic year began in September, and I soon became integrated into the building. La Pedrera was like a magical castle: a labyrinth full of corners and details waiting to be discovered. During my first year I studied in the classroom located at the corner with Passeig de Gràcia. The floor was wooden, original from Gaudí’s time, darkened by the passing of years. There were no right angles in the walls or ceilings, and every door and doorframe was different and unique, as were the door handles. The walls were painted white from halfway up to the ceiling and dark brown from halfway down to the floor. The lighting was not very glamorous: fluorescent lamps hung from chains descending from the high ceilings, which we sometimes used as a net to play volleyball with balls made from breakfast aluminium foil. To relax between classes, with my head full of numbers and mathematical, physics, and chemistry formulas, I would stare at the ceiling, which reminded me of the surface of the Moon turned upside down—full of craters and small hills.

Tourism was not nearly as abundant as it is today. Only in spring would you see a few Japanese tourists with their shiny Nikon and Canon cameras taking photos indiscriminately; those of us who studied there must appear in countless Japanese photo albums.

The school was not only on the ground floor; it also occupied an apartment on the fourth floor. You had to go up by elevator—an old, worn elevator with unique marquetry—under the watchful and inquisitive gaze of the porter. Going down by elevator was forbidden under threat of a scolding from the porter, so you had to use a dark staircase that felt like a cave. I never studied on the fourth floor, but one anecdote I remember is that residents on the opposite side of Provença Street called the director to complain because students were throwing paper airplanes with their tails set on fire out of the famous La Pedrera windows, gliding over Provença Street to the alarm and scandal of the neighborhood.

Another facility of the academy was the bar. It was located in the Provença Street courtyard, in a semi-basement space, and was run by the physical education teacher and his wife. It was a small but cozy place, with prices affordable for students. One day, a rat had to be killed there amid the screams of the female students.

There was also the basement. It was accessed via a twisted ramp that led to an underground courtyard where, it was said, horses had once been kept to pull carriages when the building was inaugurated. It was also said that in more recent times there had been a hippie market there, though I cannot confirm this. What I do know is that the school director parked his Mercedes in that underground courtyard. It was very dark, and the ramp—in pure Gaudí style—coiled like a serpent. There were mirrors on the walls, apparently to help orient the few cars that used it as a parking area; some had broken over time. It smelled of shoemaker’s glue because there was a cobbler’s workshop in one corner of La Pedrera, and this smell, along with the noise of the machines, was constant. In the basement, the school had its assembly hall and the physics, chemistry, and biology laboratories, as well as a technical drawing classroom where I suffered through assignments using Rotring pens in order to pass the subject. School parties were held in the assembly hall. I remember the Carnival of 1983 or 1984 being particularly memorable, with students performing La Trinca’s Hermanas Sister number. There are photos, I know—perhaps someone will contribute them. The laboratories were well equipped, and I remember that in the biology lab there was a skeleton into whose mouth students placed cigarette butts, to the horror of the teachers.

Another space was the music classroom. It was located in a small courtyard behind La Pedrera that the academy had adapted. Using prefabricated aluminium profiles like those used for office construction, they built a long, modern classroom equipped with loudspeakers, where music classes were held in the first year of BUP, along with chalk wars between rows of desks, much to the despair of teachers and the director.

La Pedrera was different in those days. It was very multifaceted, like Passeig de Gràcia at the time, combining a residential atmosphere with business activity. It was warm, welcoming, and very human. There was a bingo hall advertised with neon lights attached to the façade; the cobbler’s workshop; the Parera clothing store, which closed only recently; a printing shop; a bar offering a “tourist menu” where some teachers ate; and, most endearing of all, Mr. Solé’s grocery store.

Mr. Solé’s grocery store was located on the corner with Provença Street. It was an old-fashioned shop, with shelves full of all kinds of food and drinks, selling products no longer found anywhere else in Barcelona, such as Sali milk. Mr. Solé was a small, bald man with thick-framed glasses whose hyperopic lenses made his eyes look large. He had a counter with baskets full of Chupa Chups, chewing gum, and sweets carefully arranged and priced at five pesetas. On another counter there was a large glass bowl always filled with small bread rolls, with which he made ham, cooked ham, or cheese sandwiches. Mr. Solé told stories about the building to anyone interested. At that time, he had had his shop there for more than forty years, since before the war. He claimed that only the ground floor and first floor of La Pedrera were made of stone, and that the upper floors were concrete. He also explained that he hired shop assistants from an orphanage, and that one of them had started as an apprentice and retired working for him. As Mr. Solé grew older, he began to confuse coins, and if you bought sweets for five pesetas he might give you change for twenty-five or fifty. The shop, too, succumbed to the Olympic Games.

And so four years passed, filled with laughter, many hours of study, first loves, unforgettable friends, and countless anecdotes—like the snowball fight we had during the small snowfall of the winter of 1983 at the corner of Passeig de Gràcia. From that school emerged prominent figures of today’s society, and even a few couples.

Once, when opening a door, a doorknob came off in my hand. It was an original doorknob designed by Gaudí—no two were alike—made of twisted brass. I was tempted to keep it; there was no one around. But civic conscience prevailed, and I gave it to the caretaker, who showed me a drawer full of doorknobs and told me they kept them because they were unique works of art, thanking me for returning it.

And finally, this is my testimony about La Pedrera. I have no photographs of myself in the building. It is curious. Students—there were no digital cameras back then either—did not take photos in La Pedrera, perhaps because subconsciously it was a kind of prison for us, where we spent many, many hours in class. We were the generation of ’66 of La Pedrera.

Juan Bernardo Nicolás Pombo. Student at ICEJ, 1980–1984