Fifth chapter of the series Hotels with history and history of hotels, which we publish every two Fridays in The New Barcelona Post. This time we start in Sant Gervasi. The intersection of the current Balmes and Vía Augusta forms the Plaça de Molina. When Sant Gervasi de Cassoles was still an independent municipality, its town hall wanted to honor Francesc Daniel Molina i Casamajó there, an architect from whose mind and drawing board came the Plaça Reial, the facade of the Teatre Principal after one of its fires, the Plaça del Duc de Medinaceli, and the opening of Carrer Princesa.
Molina also designed the current number 9 of Passeig de Colom, the building on the corner with Carrer de la Plata and which today houses the Serras Barcelona, the protagonist of this story. In that same building, Pablo Ruiz Picasso, a fifteen-year-old boy recently arrived from Malaga with his family, opened his first painting studio on the rooftop.
His father had just won the professorship at the Llotja School of Fine Arts, a stone's throw away. The son was admitted and studied for two years. On that rooftop, with spectacular views of the port, now converted into a small pool, a terrace, elegant sun loungers, and a discreet bar, young Pablo, who still signed 'P. Ruiz Picasso' to honor his paternal surname, traced the first lines of what would be his great debut: Science and Charity.
The hotel remembers it with a sign, a corner dedicated exclusively to the painter and, above all, respecting the studio window that overlooked the sea. The painting, a monumental oil of almost two meters by two and a half, was born from an idea of the father: a realistic allegory in the Spanish academic style, with a tuberculous woman on her deathbed, a nun holding the baby as Charity and a doctor (José Ruiz Blasco himself modeled) taking the pulse as Science. Picasso painted it with obsessive brushstrokes for months, with his father correcting the nun's hands and the background.
In 1897 he presented it in Madrid and obtained an honorable mention that catapulted him: medals in Malaga and Barcelona, the press dubbed him a prodigy. Despite everything, even then he disowned the work. "It was too much of my father," he would say decades later. In 1970 he donated it to the Picasso Museum in Barcelona, just a few minutes' walk from the Serras. To close the circle, the frame that today protects the canvas is sponsored by the hotel.
A building facing the sea
During the 20th century, the Molina building lived a quiet existence: it housed homes and offices related to maritime trade. Picasso's mark faded like that of so many neighbors and businesses that occupied the house, built in 1846. The veteran property turned 165 in 2011, the same year that Compuspar, a Catalan multinational of technological components, was sold to the American Syncreon.
Here another circle closes. The founder of Compuspar, Jordi Serra, was a traveler in the broadest sense of the word. His company had taken him all over the planet and, once he sold the business he created in 1984, he could finally dedicate himself to what had been on his mind for years: hospitality. He set his sights on number 9 Passeig de Colom.
He bought it and, over the following years, he had a blank canvas to develop the type of hotel and service he had imagined as a guest in establishments in Asia, America, and Europe. He wanted a true boutique hotel in Ciutat Vella. Some told him he was crazy. He, along with his family, hence the name Serras, brought it to fruition by hiring professionals from high-end international hospitality.
Discreet luxury
The Serras Barcelona turned ten years old in 2025. It opened in the spring of 2015 and one of the guests was Xavier Trias, in his last weeks as mayor. The City Council asked Serra to scrupulously respect the facade. This was done; in fact, by restoring it, it was improved, as it recovered its original colors and splendor. Inside, 28 rooms and suites that surprise with their calm. Sleeping on the Moll de la Fusta and Passeig de Colom makes one think of inevitable noise… and there is none. The silence is absolute.
Helping with sleep are also 2 × 2 meter beds signed by Hypnos, the brand that for almost a century has held the Royal Warrant of the British royal family. Its mattresses have watched over the sleep of George VI, that of Elizabeth II for sixty years, and they continue to manufacture the beds of the current King Charles III. Details that don't shout, but are there. Details that the Serras shares with the Ritz or the Savoy in London.
Its gastronomic offer is also local luxury: they convinced Fabio Gambirasi and Roser Asensio to move their Agreste restaurant from the Coll neighborhood, in Gràcia, to the port. They opened Agreste Mar and the clientele that used to pilgrimage to the unknown Funoses-Llussà street now does so facing the sea. These things, such as exceptional cuisine, royal mattresses, the history of the building, calm, discretion, and impeccability, make the Serras a hotel with history and stories despite being only a decade old. Intense, yes, like the months of the America's Cup, during which the hotel was home to the owner and shipowner of one of the participating teams and their guests: an impeccable home facing the sea and its base.
This first hotel has been the germ of Serras Collection: two establishments in Andorra, one opening imminently in Seville and, who knows, perhaps future chapters in hypothetical The New Andorra Post or The New Sevilla Post… Time will tell.
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