Cal Gual

Cal Gual is one of the first witnesses of the urban growth that, after the Third Carlin War, Sant Sadurní projected beyond the walls. In 1880, Josep Parés i Marrugat commissioned the Barcelona master builder Josep Torres Ferran to build a comfortable but representative house, finally built on the new Diputació street.
The most seductive element is the curved double staircase that, from the front garden, lifts the visitor to the front door of the first floor. The cast-iron railings, curved with industrial elegance, generate under them a porch that today gives access to the parking lot. The ground floor retains two bull's-eye and former service spaces, while the noble floor exhibits a symmetrical composition of door and windows framed by simple but effective moulded profiles.
The ornamental repertoire combines eclecticism and modernist details: the door under a roof supported by brackets with human faces, balustered windowsills and a moulded cornice that gives way to the roof railing, conceived as a viewpoint over the neighbouring orchards. The rear facade opens onto a landscaped courtyard that guaranteed light and ventilation to the rooms.
Despite its antiquity, the building has reached today in good condition, transformed into a private residence. The POUM grants it BCIL 8940-I status (Sheet 15), and the protection includes both volumetry and singular scale and forgings. His example shows the transition from the affluent peasantry to the emerging wine bourgeoisie, which invested in urban housing without giving up the garden.
Cal Gual is not offered for the visit, but the facade can be seen from the street and remains a lesson in how the subtlety of a staircase can turn a modest house into a small work of domestic art.

Open to visitors: No
More information: Link 1