As a student, I was able to enjoy experiences that I probably wouldn’t have had otherwise.
A wedding at Palau Falguera
One day, Mr. Joan called Toni Peñalver, another schoolboy from my quinta, and me to tell us that we had to play schoolgirls at Palau Falguera. A son of the Marquis was getting married, whose last name I believe was Cabeza de Vaca.
We did a dress rehearsal of the wedding ceremony with Mrs. Marquesa and she told us that we had to wear black patent leather shoes and white gloves, which she herself paid for and the Misses Marquet gave us new white albs and red capelins with the border of white leather.
The celebrant was the Archbishop of Barcelona, Dr. Modrego The Palace was adorned with white flowers everywhere. Since the Palace chapel was very small, they set up an awning that covered the entire terrace for the guests, with gilded and padded chairs as if it were a movie from Louis XIV’s France. Inside the chapel, between the altar, the bouquets of flowers, the recliners and the seats of the bride and groom and the Archbishop, there were only a few relatives and witnesses, the rest followed the ceremony outside on the terraces.
At the end, we were invited to sweet ham brioches and pastries. Apparently, Toni and I did a good job, since Mn. Joan and Miss Marquet praised us.
A summer at Torre dels Rosers
Another place where I spent good times was the Torre dels Rosers. And I also went there with my friend Toni Peñalver.
The owners of the Torre dels Rosers were the Carreres Valentó family, owners of “Calcetines Punto Blanco”. Every year they came to spend the summer months at their farm and were interested in finding “trustworthy children” to go play in the afternoons with their youngest son, Ignasi. The porters, the parents of Joan Ferrer, married to Rosa Fontanet, told my friend and colleague Toni (his aunt worked at Cal Fontanet’s patisserie) and Mn. Joan told me. It seems they had seen us playing schoolboys, as they were a daily mass family. The lady, the aunt and a maid came to shop at the house store.
And so you have us on our way to play at Torre dels Rosers. I remember a romantic garden from the end of the 19th century, with a lake and lush vegetation, many rose bushes, and large hydrangea bushes, trees with swoons over the lake. Artificial rocks making caves that led to stairs that went up to the lake, like the ones that used to be in Nadal Park, and you went down by other stairs that went back to the caves, where we hid while playing. And we happy with life!
Students in other churches
Sometimes, we were also students in other churches that were not the Parish. When the feast of Our Lady of Mercy arrived, we used to play schoolboys in the chapel of the Merced Nuns and we would climb to the top of the cambril.
For Our Lady of Mount Carmel, we were students of the Carmelite Nuns who were also called “the Watchers” because at night they went to watch over people who were about to die. At the end of the mass, they gave us a snack in the courtyard next to the chapel. Since the chapel was entered through Josep María de Molina street, I assume it was the courtyard that is still there.
And for Santa Anna, we went to the chapel that was in Torreblanca, owned by the Marquesos de Monistrol, and which is no longer there today. We were schoolboys at morning mass and in the afternoon, there was chocolate for all the rascals. It was the only day of the year that you could enter the chapel and the estate’s gardens.
Footnotes:
Summering in Sant Feliu: from the end of the 19th century until well into the 1950s, industrialists and owners from Barcelona came to our city to spend the summer, taking advantage of the proximity. In the story, the Carreres family in the Torre del Roser, but there were many more, as recorded in Fet a Sant Feliu. The Sayrach family in the disappeared Torre dels Dimonis, where the Complex and the Rambla car park are now. The Marquises of Monistrol in their Palau de la Torreblanca, now gone and located where the Parc de la Torreblanca maze is now. The Fargas family (Barcelona’s well-known patisserie) in the Pins d’Or tower, on Carrer de les Roses, where the Hospital Sisters Mental Health Center is now located. The Vilallonga family, owners of Palau Falguera, also regularly summered there.
Cambril: it is a small room that is behind the altar, a little elevated and with an image that presides over it and that receives the veneration of the parishioners.