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The current Rotunda, which is located on Paseo San Gervasio on the corner of Avenida del Tibidabo (next to the current Plaza de John F. Kennedy), was originally a beautiful building (before the atrocities carried out), known as the Tower Andreu.
It was the house of Dr. Salvador Andreu, the main promoter of the urbanization of the foothills of Mount Tibidabo, who acquired the land on the slope of the sea side and urbanized the mountain by ordering the development of an avenue on which a series of single-family houses were built.
To serve the families of the area, a tram (Tramvia Blaul) was built that reached a small square from which a funicular left that went to the top of the mountain, where the Amusement Park was created.
The primitive building was built by Adolfo Ruiz Casamitjana, a prolific architect. Dr. Andreu, who, apart from being a pharmacist, was an investor and promoter, was the one who in 1906 commissioned the urbanization of the Tibidabo mountain.
Once the development of Avenida del Tibidabo was completed, Dr. Andreu decided to convert the building into a hotel and, after the logical restoration, it was inaugurated as the Metropolitan Hotel in 1918. It was one of the most luxurious hotels in the city at that time.
In the 1920s, the tower was expanded by the modernist architect Enric Sagnier, who carried out a restructuring of the most important interior pieces of the building: the mosaic and the trencadís were made by Lluís Bru i Salelles, a ceramist and set designer who, among others, he carried out work for the Palau de la Música, the Hospital de Sant Pau or the Casa Lleó Morera.
With the expansion of the Andreu Tower, the Metropolitan had a capacity of 70 rooms for more than 350 people and 70 rooms. Sagnier was at that time a prestigious architect, well known in Barcelona.
The Metropolitan was, therefore, configured as a building with two L-shaped rectangular bodies, with a cylindrical body crowned by a viewpoint in the shape of a rounded temple, from which it acquired its popular name of "Rotunda", in which it intervened in a the ceramist Lluís Bru is formidable.
The two facades have balconies with iron railings and plant-themed moldings, in which busts stand out on the first floor. In 1952, due to the new construction of the building's elevation, a large part of the decorative themes with mosaics of festive and sports themes disappeared from the building.
In the 1960s, the American artist Rock Hudson and the tenor Alfredo Kraus performed or passed through its rooms, who, apart from taking up residence in the hotel during his performances in Barcelona, performed several times in its rooms. Other celebrities who visited the Metropolitan were Alexander Crichlow Barker, Jr., known as Lex Barker, who debuted as Tarzan in 1949.
Finally, its distance from the city center was the handicap that the Metropolitan had in establishing itself as one of the preferred hotels in the business, political and entertainment world, which is why it ended up closing its doors.
In 1960 the building was renovated again, this time under the project of the architect José M. Sagnier, son of Enric Sagnier, who together with the interior designer Jordi Galí, transformed the old Metropolitan Hotel into the new Clínica Rabassa terminally ill center, which It also ended up closing.
In 1999 it was acquired by the real estate company Núñez y Navarro, which undertook the last remodeling, which was carried out by the architect Alfred Arribas between 2010 and 2016.
Alfredo Arribas only preserved the modernist façade designed by Enric Sagnier, demolishing the rest and converting it into an office building. The lack of control by the municipal authorities of the time once again destroyed a historical work that was impossible to recover.
In times of the dictatorship we blamed Porcioles, today the Rotunda shows that we continue with the similar lack of control that protects authentic works of art.
Without a good team in the city council to control these messes, Barcelona will gradually deteriorate due to builders who only look at their business and politicians who do not know how to do it.
Currently there is a neighborhood association Save the Rotonda. The Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) declared the reforms made to the Andreu Tower null and void, decreeing that the improperly erected construction must be demolished.
Before the start of the works, the neighbors alerted the City Council to study and preserve the building that had been cataloged by modernist experts as one of the 115 works on the Modernism Route in the Barcelona Architectural Catalog.
