A debt and a coincidence are behind the first villa that was built in 1924 in the S'Agaró urbanization, the garden city designed by the businessman Josep Ensesa Gubert and the Noucentista architect Rafael Masó and which has become one of the urbanizations most iconic of the Costa Brava.
The history of that first house, named Senya Blanca, in reference to a small white wall prior to the building that the fishermen used to orient themselves, began to be written in 1916 on land without access to drinking water or electricity, frequented just for some herd of goats.
“My great-grandfather and my grandfather, who had a flour industry in Girona, had a client in Sant Feliu de Guíxols who owed them money. The client settled that debt with some land near the sea, on some rocks, a place without a single tree. My grandfather, who had a great business vision, convinced his father to buy other nearby land and that's how it all started,” explains Virgínia Ensesa Viñas, one of the granddaughters of the architect of the urbanization and president of the S'Agaró 100 Association. .
Entity that has been created to commemorate the centenary of the birth of this residential city that has some 180 homes and the five-star Grand Luxury La Gavina hostel, where actors such as Ava Gardner, Frank Sinatra and Elizabeth Taylor have paraded, among many others.
Since the purchase of the land by the businessman Josep Ensesa Pujadas, eight years passed before the first villa was built on it. That remote and unpopulated area was not very attractive, so the businessman even promised to the first person who wanted to build a house there that he would give them the land.
Virgínia Ensesa explains that a “coincidence” added to the birth of Senya Blanca. “My grandfather then spent his summers in l'Estartit but the rental contract for a small fishermen's house where he was staying was about to expire,” she recalls.
This is how Josep Enses Jr. took his father at his word and assured him that he would be the first to build a house on the land he had purchased. In 1922 the works began and on July 24, 1924 Josep Ensesa Gubert and his family spent the first night there.
Senya Blanca, which is still owned by the Ensesa family, was the embryo of one of the first garden cities on the Costa Brava, located between the beaches of Sant Pol (Sant Feliu de Guíxols) and Sa Conca (Platja d'Aro).
A complex considered a Cultural Asset of National Interest (BCIN) in the category of Historical Complex and which has the luxury hotel La Gavina, founded in 1932, another of its references. Of the six houses that were part of the first housing nucleus of what would later become one of the most exclusive urbanizations, two were not sold.
“Those two independent chalets came together to create the hostel that at the beginning had only 11 rooms,” recalls Virgínia Ensesa, who yesterday presented the activities at an event held on the S'Agaró coastal path, also promoted by her grandfather. which throughout 2024 will serve to commemorate one hundred years since the construction of that first home.
Highlights include an exhibition on the evolution, urban tourism and architecture that will be seen at the Palau Robert in Barcelona between June and September 2024 and later, at the Girona House of Culture, and the creation of a life-size bronze sculpture of the visionary and architect of the complex, which will be permanently placed in the Plaza del Mirador in May of next year.
