* The author is part of the community of readers of La Vanguardia
Today I am going to talk to you about another of the primitive department stores that were close to Plaza Catalunya in Barcelona, occupying the ground floor of the first buildings built at numbers 17 and 19 on Caspe Street. I am referring to the Tivoli Warehouses (former Gisbert Warehouses).
They were owned by the Gisbert family and the stores had specialized in the wholesale sale of clothing used by hotels, restaurants and bars.
Its first appearance in La Vanguardia advertisements took place on Sunday, May 25, 1919 on page 20. The figure of a black cat stood out on one side, but it also had five legs, a logo that the family kept later. .
With the death of Olegario Gisbert i Padró, in August 1919, the family changed the name of the company and, on Sunday, January 16, 1921, an advertisement appeared in La Vanguardia with the liquidation of Almacenes Gisbert and the opening of the new ones. Tivoli warehouses.
The logo of the five-legged black cat continued to be the mascot of the stores, however, there was a change in terms of product sales. They continued with the previous line, but added the rugs. And they specialized in sales and clothing in something that then became fashionable in large companies: employees of large companies were in uniform.
During the times of the Republic, it tried to attract customers by inserting advertisements in Catalan. Their way of attracting customers was very different, since, although they sold to individuals without any problem, their approach was based on contacting companies that used uniforms and making them offers to make their employees uniform.
However, despite being stores that took care of advertising to attract customers by giving their children inflated balloons with the famous black cat with its five legs, they never became one of the most visited stores.
This caused them to try to bring customers closer to the establishment in many ways, with offers dedicated to attracting attention. In December 1959 they announced the gift of giant balloons in an advertisement in La Vanguardia.
In this announcement they announced that on January 5, a Garras de Astrakhan coat would be celebrated among all those people who had participated in the "T" contest. However, at the beginning of the sixties the company closed its doors and the premises were divided.
Currently, the building is divided into two premises occupied by two restaurants. At number 17 is the recently created Casa Carmen Restaurant and at number 19m is the old Mussol restaurant, opened in 1994, the first of a chain of six Catalan cuisine restaurants spread throughout the city.
