The Barcelona City Council has transferred to the Generalitat the ownership of the Palau de Pedralbes and its gardens, an emblematic space located on Avenida Diagonal that covers an area of more than 73,000 square meters. According to the Govern, it is a "free transfer" that represents "the culmination of a long process that had been stuck for some time" and that will allow the Generalitat to have a new representative and institutional relations headquarters.
According to the Govern spokesperson, Patrícia Plaja, the Palau de Pedralbes "will be, de facto, the second Palau de la Generalitat, where the president and the Govern will be able to organize all kinds of events and meetings as is done now, for example, in the Saló Sant Jordi."
With this transfer, which implies that the Generalitat assumes all gardening and maintenance costs of the space, an agreement signed by the Barcelona City Council and the Govern in 2004, under the presidency of Pasqual Maragall, is fulfilled. With this transfer, the Generalitat would have a new space for protocolary acts and, in exchange, committed to contributing to the reform of the Plaza de las Glòries, one of the areas that has undergone the greatest transformation in the city in recent years.
Specifically, the Generalitat explains that as a result of this agreement, it assumed two-thirds of the construction cost of the Disseny Hub, for an amount of 58 million euros, a figure that could be equated, in this sense, to the purchase price of the Palau de Pedralbes. The museums existing in this facility (the Museum of Ceramics and the Museum of Decorative Arts) were moved to the Disseny Hub. The city council had already approved in full the free transfer of the property to the Generalitat in March 2019, but it has not been until now that the transaction has become effective.
The new Generalitat building houses the headquarters of the Union for the Mediterranean and also, for ten years, a summer festival, the Festival Jardins de Pedralbes, organized by Concert Studio and sponsored by Banco Sabadell. This past Christmas, the space became a magical place thanks to Natura Encesa, an immersive installation with surprising projections and light shows.
The Palau de Pedralbes was owned by Count Eusebi Güell and has its origin in an old farmhouse that underwent transformations signed by architects Joan Martorell, Antoni Gaudí, and Eusebi Bona. Between 1924 and 1931, it was the residence of the Spanish Royal Family in Barcelona, and with the proclamation of the Second Republic, the palace became the property of the Barcelona City Council. During the Civil War, it became the presidential palace of Manuel Azaña and, subsequently, the official residence of dictator Francisco Franco in the city. Since the museums moved to the Disseny Hub, the palace has been closed to the public.