Robert Robert, Marquis of Robert (yes, all in one person) was a Catalan aristocrat, financier, and politician. In 1903, the construction of the family residence, a neoclassical palace (designed by Henri Grandpierre), was completed. It was built at the top of Paseo de Gràcia, next to the Cinc d'Oros square (before it had that name or any other, as it was just an intersection). To do this, he demolished the old "xalets d'en Salamanca," a complex of seven houses with a ground floor, two stories, and a garden, designed by another marquis, José de Salamanca (who gave his name to the popular neighborhood in Madrid).
The palace, built on all its facades with stone from Montgrí, featured an extensive garden with palm trees (extracted from the 1888 Universal Exposition). But after Robert's death in 1929, the family put the palace up for sale, and it went from being a hotel project (with a ballroom, cabaret, and fronton) to the headquarters of the Department of Culture of the Republican Generalitat. Afterwards, the war and a return to the hotel project; and finally, in 1981, the Generalitat definitively acquired the building, and since 1997, it has been the Information Center of Catalonia. 25 years. That is to say: we celebrate that it has been for everyone for 25 years, but the Palau Robert is 119 years old. It must be said so that no one gets confused.
Recently, they said the gardens had rats. But all the authorities are, five minutes before six in the afternoon, outside the gardens, waiting for the first pass of a spectacular light and scenic show curated by Albert Sànchez Piñol, with artistic direction by the great Franc Aleu, music and audio by Marc Parrot, and voice by Magali Sare. Before us, branches of letters rise up the neighboring wall of the garden, reciting the mantra that will accompany us throughout the tour: "creativity, solidarity, integration, stereo projections, resistance, integration…", all in various languages and slaloming skyward.
This same concept, that of letters, will trap us in a forest full of concepts scattered among branches, bushes, sandy areas, poetic installations and even a figurant who, as still as she is, looks like a wax statue holding with a rope the main mast that proclaims "effort". Everywhere, letters, scattered or grouped, rest or float or vanish in mid-air, in a rather unprecedented effect: it seems that the projections can write not only on the branches, but in the air, even causing a feeling of claustrophobia or a true enchanted forest. Aleu has transformed an aristocratic garden into a witches' forest, lush and creative, dangerously dark and dangerously lit, where Lluquet would undoubtedly say to Rovelló "jo vull tornar a casa!", because our novecentismo does not understand the urgent need to get lost. And that's how we are, negotiating lavish returns home.
The center of the idea is words, or rather letters, even if they are piled up on a small unintelligible hill. In one part of the journey we can sit in front of a mirror, where faces will be projected that will disfigure our face by merging with it, an invitation to open our identity and mix it with strange or foreign souls, as if Alice's dream could not have an exit without fully entering the dance. When I talk to Aleu, who is sitting on a bench next to Sànchez Piñol and Bernat Puigtobella, he tells me to especially wait to see the mapping and that everything, as always in this country, was a hair's breadth from not happening. Prior to the mapping, Òscar Dalmau will briefly present the event, giving way to short speeches by figures such as Natza Farré (curator of the exhibition Feminista havies de ser) or Minister Vilagrà saying, in summary, long live the Palau Robert. The moment of the mapping quickly arrives.
The music accompanying the images projected on the stone of Montgrí is sweet, easy, simple, and Magali Sare sings it under a cascade of letters that flows from the central window. Again we witness a whole sea of mixed letters, with a waving flag, which will later give rise to a sensual anthropomorphic tree (Aleu brand) and a series of scenes that will at all times evoke Catalonia's desire for external projection. The celebration ends here, with an awareness of the informative and communicative centrality of the Palau and its objective, which theoretically is to highlight our most international talents and our best initiatives. We trust that it will continue this way, and that the two little shepherds will choose to grow without limits instead of wishing to return home. Returning home can be negotiated at a table: growing up, being able to be grown up, is never negotiated.