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The history of the disappeared Turó cinema has nothing to do with the experiences of other cinemas in the city of Barcelona that also disappeared, as a consequence of the arrival of television, the birth of video stores, nor because of the change in customs on the part of the spectators.
The Turó cinema closed (or rather, they made it close), due to the danger posed by its continuity, in the event that it remained open, due to the lack of security, both for the spectators and for the residents of the building in which it was located. was located, due to the serious problems discovered inside that advised its closure.
The beginning of the problem began with the fever of the governments (municipal and state) to accommodate the thousands of people who had arrived in Barcelona after the end of the civil war. Then the madness of raising buildings in suburban neighborhoods occurred, without control of the construction that was carried out.
The cement companies released a new, cheaper cement that set faster, and the builders who demanded a price and speed dedicated themselves to using it without conscientious approval. The result was none other than the birth of aluminosis.
For speed in construction, the new Aluminous Cement (CAC-R) was used with priority in the joists that had to support the weight of the work. They gave faster construction and their use represented a great cut in the time to start and erect new buildings.
The block of flats that suffered from the aluminosis problem on Aneto street had been designed in 1954 by the construction company of Román Sanahuja. The building with number 20 located in the center of the block of buildings was the one with the main entrance to the cinema and, in the Turó cinema, it was in the first place that the first voice of alarm was raised.
The cinema was built at a time when the lack of a neighborhood fabric was evident, since those apartments had been built on old farmland, with devilish speed to house emigrants from other parts of Spain.
The neighborhoods lacked centers to concentrate social life and entertainment venues for parties. Television had not appeared with which to entertain themselves and there were no meeting places and in some neighborhoods they had not built markets to make the daily purchases.
The Cine Turó had arrived to animate the new neighbourhood, the residents waited for the weekends to go to the only place that could give them a bit of entertainment in the Turó de la Peira.
El Turó was a room with a large capacity, since it extended through the interior of the lower part of the buildings in the block that made up the block, it had an audience with 813 spectators and an amphitheater with 253, which gave a total capacity of 1,066 spectators. . The main entrance was on Aneto street, with emergency exits on Montmajor and Montsant streets.
A wide entrance hall of almost 300 m2, which gave access to two ladders, some to go up to the amphitheater and other descendants that brought the hall back. The stalls were shaped like a trapezoid. Three corridors, one central and two lateral, were used for spectators to access the seats.
The inauguration of the premises took place on the occasion of the celebration of a series of religious conferences (very common at that time), organized in the new Parish of Our Lady of Fatima by the Parish Crusade for a Better World, held in May 1958, and that La Vanguardia commented on May 3. They were conferences that were closed by the then Archbishop of Barcelona, Gregorio Modrego Casaús.
Although its lack of publicity on billboards and its lack of a film history make it possible to celebrate its first film screenings in October 1958. According to some residents, the cinema belonged to the grandparents of the tennis player Àlex Corretja.
The Turó cinema was closed on Sunday, July 19, 1970 with the screening of Camelot and El día de la ira. The aluminosis problem was not only in that block of buildings.
Between the late 1990s and up to 2004, a total of 11 blocks with 142 buildings had to be fully rehabilitated. Another five blocks were demolished and rebuilt, with 54 newly created buildings.
On November 7, 2015, the EFE agency issued this teletype:
The collapse of a block of flats in Turó de la Peira in Barcelona on November 11, 1990 caused a bitter controversy 25 years ago about the uncontrolled growth of the city in the 50s and 60s and opened a wound in this neighborhood that for many still today have not healed.
