The avant-garde theater that hosted Lorca in Barcelona, at risk of being torn to pieces
“I must be the only person who has lived in there and who, moreover, has acted in the theater”, confesses Carme Masriera, descendant of a lineage to which Barcelona owes a very unique stage. The Studium theater has survived closed and unnoticed in the Eixample, one could well say that intact, as if hardly anything had changed since the days when it appeared on the billboard of the city, before the Civil War. It hides inside the Taller Masriera, that somewhat gloomy and recessed Greek temple on Bailèn street, a nineteenth-century whim built to house a workshop for goldsmiths and amateur panel painters. After a few years of functions reserved for the family, it was opened to the public and to companies of amateur actors in 1932, to avant-garde theater performances and to international groups. “There I did Els Pastorets. And it was frequented by important people from the world of theater, dance, music…”, recalls Masriera. Even Federico García Lorca passed by. Now, the Barcelona City Council guesses how to occupy such a wasted relic. For now, the only project that he sees as viable is to destroy the historic theater.
the consistory I acquired the Taller Masriera through a swap in 2020, with the intention of remodeling it to alleviate the lack of neighborhood-oriented facilities in the district. The operation satisfied a claim in the Eixample, but the positions of the municipal government and the associative fabric are now distant as to what use to give to the disused building and how to reform it from the inside.
The city council raised a list of proposals a year ago. To a greater or lesser extent, all involved mutilating the Studium, to the chagrin of the groups that defend maintaining it. The council now puts a single idea on the table: it consists of move the Sofia Barat library to the neoclassical building to replicate the diaphanous and compartmentalized interior design of the brand new Gabriel Garcia Marquez Libraryin La Verneda.
Occupy the stalls
In a meeting preliminary to the participatory process to reconvert the workshop, the local executive and the Consorci de Biblioteques have accepted that conditioning the bowels of the building to provide it with rooms for neighborhood organizations and training rooms would imply occupying part of the stalls – some 300 seats dusty and partly gutted– and adapt the scenic space, an almost centenary vestige. The approach of the consistory does not match the red lines marked by the Masriera platformthat requires conserving the Studium theater, whatever the project that prospers so that the property revives.
“Our condition is that it be preserved,” says Jaume Artigues, president of the Dreta de l’Eixample Neighborhood Association and member of the group that advocates recovering the stage and that part of the building house an athenaeum for entities. “The agreement was reached to carry out the participatory process after the proposals of the Barcelona Institute of Culture that meant the disappearance of the theater were rejected. It is an important piece of heritage, but now we are at the same point as a year ago”, complains Artigues.
Discarded a theater institute
The City Council had speculated that the Studium would house a performing arts institute, a suggestion more in line with the postulates of the platform. However, the Consorci d’Educació de Barcelona has ruled out the location. Consider that there is a lack of surface to pack classes and other services outside the stage. “It is unfeasible. Although the building is imposed from the outside, its configuration inside is labyrinthine and changes must be made because it does not comply with the regulations”, maintain representatives of the consortium. In addition, the heritage department of the consistory has drawn up a draft on the untouchable assets of the estate in the event that works are carried out. The theater is not included.
No theatrical programming
Faced with criticism from the neighborhood platform, the municipal government maintains that it has collected a good part of their concerns and that it is open to studying other options. He affirms that, if the library is established, the property would be open to neighboring groups beyond the usual opening hours and that it could host some type of scenic activity. “What there are not are agents that have been made known to us that are available to offer a regular program of amateur theater”points out Jordi Matas, counselor of the common in the Eixample district.
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Eduard Llorens is an Architecture student and has been involved in the discussion around the Masriera Workshop, to which he dedicates his final year project. “The Studium is a type of space that is being lost in Barcelona -warns-. It was one of the first fully electric-lit theaters in the city and, with its stage box, changed the way theater was done. As the library is planned, the stage would disappear completelywhen it should be a challenge for Barcelona to conserve places like this”.
Other voices put the emphasis on ending the sense of abandonment that surrounds the building. “It looks grim. It was even worse a few years ago, when it was from a congregation of nuns and people were throwing bags of clothes over the fence. What cannot be done is to leave it stagnant”, ditches a neighbor. For her part, Carme Masriera emphasizes that “there is no theater in Barcelona with these characteristics”. “It would be a shame if it disappeared”, thinks the granddaughter of Lluís Masriera, founder of the Studium. “It would be nice to keep it and let it be forever”ask the town hall.