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The current Palau Robert, the official headquarters of the Tourist Office of the Generalitat de Catalunya in Barcelona, is located at Paseo de Gracia 107, on the corner with Avenida Diagonal and Calle Córcega.
It is the former private residence of Robert Robert i Suris. Influential man, well-known financier and adviser to the important companies of the time. He was elected in 1913 president of the Chamber of Commerce and the Hispano Colonial Bank.
Like almost all the important men of the time, he dedicated himself to politics, militating in the Conservative Party. His involvement in public life earned him several distinctions throughout his life.
In 1888, Pope Leo XIII granted him the title of Marquis de Robert. In 1891 the regent María Cristina named him Count of Serra and Sant Iscle. In 1907, he was Count of Torroella de Montgrí with Greatness of Spain and, finally, in 1912 he received the Grand Cross of Merit.
Robert, who had acquired some small palaces that had been built on the land where the Palau that bears his name stands today, contacted the French architect Henry Grandpierre, whom he had met in France, for having participated in the realization of the Universal Exhibition of Paris in 1900, so that it carried out a completely different project from the modernist buildings that were being built in the area.
Henry Grandpierre designed a French-style neoclassical building, built with stone from the Montgrí massif. The works were directed by the architect Joan Martell i Montells, lasted five years, began in 1898 and ended in 1903, at the time of Casa Milà and the buildings that were built in the so-called Manzana de la Discordia.
They were the first buildings that began to give status to the emerging Paseo de Gracia, which was born on the disappeared Camino de Jesús, which had served in the 19th century to unite the old city of Barcelona, still walled, with the nearby municipality of Villa de Gracia. .
Henry Grandpierre built a rectangular building around an open inner courtyard with a skylight. It had a garden adorned with palm trees from the Universal Exhibition of Barcelona in 1888, designed by Ramón Oliva, municipal gardener, who in 1904 obtained a mention in the annual competition for artistic buildings established by the City Council.
Robert Robert i Suris died in 1924 and his son, the next Marquis de Robert, commissioned the architect Francesc de Paula Nebot, a new project to convert the building into a hotel, theatre, ballroom, cabaret and pediment, which would come to be called The Lido, but the tumultuous times of the Republic period and the subsequent coup, caused the project to be dismissed due to lack of investment.
With the beginning of the civil war and the eagerness of appropriation of the leaders of the time, the building was requisitioned in November 1936 by the first counselor of the Generalitat Josep Tarradellas i Joan, who converted it into the Ministry of Culture. . There they also moved the headquarters of the Association of Catalan Writers.
During part of the civil war period, the building also served as a shipping office for fighters on the Republican side.
In 1939, once the war had ended, for a few months it was converted (by the authorities of the dictatorship) into the donation collection office for the Franco government.
At the beginning of the 40s, the relatives of Robert i Suris recovered ownership of the mansion and, immediately afterwards, sold it to Julio Muñoz Ramonet, who, together with his brother Álvaro, built a commercial empire of more than 20 companies.
Muñoz Ramonet established the headquarters of his financial activities in the Palau Robert. His wedding with Carmen, the daughter of a director of the Central Bank, had opened the doors for him to obtain a quick and easy bank loan for his activities.
After buying Casa Robert, he acquired the El Siglo and El Águila department stores, on Calle Pelayo (coincidence! Both businesses ended up destroyed by fire). He founded El Águila Real Estate, the International Insurance Company, Comar Sociedad Anónima, the Muñoz Navigation and Foreign Trade Limited Company and the International Cork Company.
His companies came to have about 45,000 workers. But soon his continuous commercial mismatches brought him into conflict, despite his daughter Carmen having married Ignacio Vilallonga, owner of the Central Bank, who, finally, ended up seizing the property of the land and the Palau Robert building.
Once democracy was restored and after the attempted robbery of the Central Bank on May 23, 1981, that same year the Palau Robert was acquired by the Generalitat de Catalunya, which carried out a profound restructuring to convert it into the Tourist Information Center of Catalonia, which officially opened its doors on November 18, 1997.
In 2003, remodeling work was carried out on the old premises used to store the vehicles of the former owners, which were directed by Sílvia Farrio, who turned the space into two multipurpose rooms for holding all kinds of exhibitions.
The part of the garden on Córcega street covered by a wall was opened to the public, replacing it with a fence to give visibility from the outside. Bet Figueras was in charge of its design in the gardening part and in the furniture that adorns the enclosure, Miguel Milá.
