Lluís Domènech i Montaner was a complete man of broken stone. There were so many aspects of him that he could well have been dispersed when tempted by the numerous and very diverse fields that strongly attracted him, but he knew how to avoid superficiality and worked hard to seek the deep.
Thanks to the excellence of the vast profile that his great-grandson and architect Lluís Domènech Girbau was able to draw, the character finally had the biography that he had so deserved.
He was by far the oldest among the group of colleagues who participated in that modernism that was more than a simple style; Unlike Europe, here it meant at the same time trying to build a country like this. He went ahead, then, in theorizing in writing (1878) about a national architecture and also in exhibiting on a façade the first local coup de fouet (1881, Montaner i Simon house: the four bars in the semi-basement).
It is astonishing to detail the fields in which he dedicated himself with exemplary professionalism: architecture, applied arts, writing, heraldry, teaching (professor and director of the Escola d'Arquitectura), history, archaeology, design, editorial direction (artistic and literary), traveler, talker. He dedicated a good period to committed politics. And he did not have a family of seven children.
He was able to carry out all this by being a tireless, organized worker with a practical sense, as evidenced by the drawing table he created for himself and of course the solutions he provided to establish and erect the colossal hotel of the Universal Exhibition in just a few days. .
Some works reached an enormous dimension: Hotel Internacional (very short schedule), Institut Pere Mata, Palau de la Música Catalana (economic shortage), Sant Pau hospital.
The distance was no impediment: Comillas, Mallorca, Olot or Reus.
He was brave, enterprising and seemed capable of anything.
It was something elusive to be portrayed. He accepted this pose upon learning of the confessed admiration that the prestigious photographer Pau Audouard had for him. It was not in vain that he enjoyed the privilege of being the first occupant of the entire lower part of the Lleó i Morera house, where he installed his studio. It was not just any space, but completely ornamented under the inspired modernist omnipresence of the masterful Gaspar Homar.
