1928-2008: Ochenta años de historia del pabellón de Suecia de la exposición internacional de Barcelona de 1929

Abstract

Based on original, unpublished graphic documents, this article describes the history and architecture of the 1929 Barcelona International Exposition’s Swedish Pavilion. The building’s decades-long evolution began on Montjuic Hill, the site of the Exhibition, where it was built by Swedish architect Peder Clason. Its unique watchtower showcased the architect’s zeal for modernity. The tower’s design broke new ground and involved the use of Swedish materials and woodworking techniques. Shortly thereafter, Barcelona City Council’s Culture Delegation issued a tender open to all mountain municipalities in Catalonia at least 500 meters above sea level with developed land available that was suitable for building the Swedish Pavilion. The aim was to establish a permanent school for 300 students in the Pavilion. The Permanent School of Berga was designed by architect Josep Goday and included the Swedish Pavilion, which was adapted to create eight classrooms, as well as additional rooms, a library and a large meeting space to be used as an auditorium, theater and lecture hall. On February 2, 1939, in the final stages of the Spanish Civil War, General Francisco Franco’s troops occupied the city of Berga and the Permanent Educational Community. The facility was converted into a military hospital, then used as a barracks for the Fourth Catalan Mountain Hunters’ Battalion and remained occupied for the next fifty years. In the late 1980s, the Berga military barracks lost its strategic value as a garrison and the Spanish Ministry of Defense decided to dismantle its facilities there. The Berga Town Council seized the opportunity to strike up negotiations with the Defense Ministry in Madrid in the hopes of recovering for city use the land in the Pla del Alemany area and all its facilities. Negotiations on the agreement to transfer the property from the Ministry to the Berga City Council started in the last quarter of 1993 and the agreement was signed in the first quarter of 1994. Once the agreement was signed, the Berga City Council decided to completely overhaul the area and furnish it with the administrative, social, cultural and educational facilities the city needed, in addition to a residential zone in the section of the property adjacent to the city. It was against this backdrop, a year before the agreement was signed, that a young, recently graduated, Berga-born building engineer, Josep Camps i Boixadera, submitted his Final Year Project for the university to the city council, which consisted of plans to rebuild the old Swedish Pavilion and transform it into the auditorium of a small regional university. Josep Camps alone should therefore be credited with the idea of rebuilding the Pavilion. As a result of this and other favorable circumstances, the city council took the initiative to recover and rebuild the Pavilion designed by Peder Clason for the 1929 International Exhibition in Barcelona. The Pavilion was to remain on the Pla de Alemany premises in Berga, but would once again be given a new purpose: it would be fitted with lecture rooms and exhibition spaces. This meant that although the building’s external dimensions and features would remain the same, the new interior would not be an exact copy of Clason’s original designs.