Arcadia Spain

Students taking BACL250 Rags to Riches: The Transformation of Barcelona course had the opportunity to visit The Güell Colony, a small working colony located in the municipality of Sana Coloma de Cervelló (Barcelona). It is considered one of the references to study the architecture of Antoni Gaudí and discover the social and working conditions for the workers in industrial Catalonia at the end of the 19C and beginning of the 20C.

The Güell Colony was founded in 1890 on the initiative of the entrepreneur Eusebi Güell, an industrialist and Maecenas of Catalan arts and letters. Here he took the textile industry he had in Barcelona to get away from the social conflicts of the city.

The new industry was conceived within the framework of an industrial colony with the workers houses alongside the factory and on the property itself, forming an urban center with its own character and the social and economic life provided by the company.

Eusebi Güell gave the Colony cultural and religious equipment and incorporated the modernist style into the new constructions, in particular, the construction of the church to Antoni Gaudí. Gaudí started to build the church in 1908. However, the ambitious project which planned the church with two naves remained unfinished, leaving only the lower nave finished, popularly called the crypt.  This building includes practically all of his architectural innovations together for the first time.