exposicio-gaudi-pages-i-lobrera-2026-09-28

Based on the documentary research conducted for the first time in this exhibition, it is explained that Gaudí built his first three buildings in Mataró: the house of Salvador Pagès (1878), the whitewash hall (1883), and the latrine building (1883); that Gaudí, then a young architect of 25 years, showed interest in and contributed to improving the living and working conditions of the workers, and that none of this would have been possible without Salvador Pagès, the soul and leader of the L'Obra Mataronesa Cooperative Society, who commissioned Gaudí to give shape to his cooperative ideal. Gaudí distributed the urbanization of the L'Obera land into three well-defined spaces: the production area, the residential area, and the services area. It was due to a cooperative commission that Gaudí built his first house; he experimented with the development of arches as supporting elements in the whitewash hall, and used ceramic tiles for the first time as a decorative element in the latrines. Gaudí, Pagès, and L'Obra cannot be explained without each other in what was the beautiful and ephemeral dream of the most important production cooperative in our country in the second half of the 19th century. This activity is framed within the commemoration of Gaudí Year.