2024 will mark the centennial of S'Agaró, Masó's last major project

Saturday, August 5, 2023

The Catalan Government has just declared the S'Agaró Centennial as one of next year's official commemorations

Specifically, it is commemorated that the architect Rafael Masó finished the first villa of the future garden city, Senya Blanca, which was opened on July 24, 1924. For some time now, from the Rafael Masó Foundation we have been working and creating alliances for the celebration of this centennial and thus explain the role of architecture in the history of this urbanization, with other outstanding works by Rafael Masó, Francesc Folguera, Pelai Martínez and Adolf Florensa, among others.

S'Agaró was Rafael Masó's last major urban project, commissioned by Girona industrialist Josep Ensesa Gubert. Masó and Ensesa conceived the urbanization based on the "Noucentista" ideal of a garden city. Masó designed more than twenty chalets between 1923 and the year of his death, in 1935, in addition to the first Hostal de la Gavina, which he himself extended.

During the centennial, we want to commemorate the fact that for 100 years S'Agaró has been a meeting place for architecture, politics, literature, cinema, tourism, fashion and music. It has been the scene of film and television shoots, it has hosted fashion shows and music festivals that were pioneers in their time, and it is also a place of historical memory, since the famous 1937 Decrees of S'Agaró were signed there the Republican Generalitat and during the Civil War it became the hospital of the International Brigades.

Photo: Senya Blanca, c. 1925. Ajuntament de Girona, CRDI. Valentí Fargnoli.