THE PLACE: "It was built for the married couple, Rosario Segimon and Pere Milà. Rosario Segimon was the wealthy widow of José Guardiola, an Indiano, a term applied locally to the Catalans returning from the American colonies with tremendous wealth. Her second husband, Pere Milà, was a developer who was criticized for his flamboyant lifestyle and ridiculed by the contemporary residents of Barcelona, when they joked about his love of money and opulence, wondering if he was not rather more interested in "the widow’s guardiola" (piggy bank), than in "Guardiola’s widow".
Gaudi, a Catholic and a devotee of the Virgin Mary, planned for the Casa Milà to be a spiritual symbol. Overt religious elements include an excerpt from the Rosary prayer on the cornice and planned statues of Mary, specifically Our Lady of the Rosary, and two archangels, St. Michael and St. Gabriel. The design by Gaudi was not followed in some aspects. The local government objected to some aspects of the project, fined the owners for many infractions of building codes, ordered the demolition of aspects exceeding the height standard for the city. The Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century Architecture states that the statuary was indeed Mary the mother of Jesus, also noting Gaudi's devoutness, and notes that the owner decided not to include it after Semana Trágica, an outbreak of anticlericalism in the city. After the decision was made to exclude the statuary of Mary and the archangels, Gaudi contemplated abandoning the project but was persuaded not to by a priest.
Casa Milà was in poor condition in the early 1980s. It had been painted a dreary brown and many of its interior color schemes had been abandoned or allowed to deteriorate, but it has since been restored and many of the original colors revived."
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THE NAME: "Pere Mila i Camps (Barcelona, 1874 - February 22, 1940) 1 was a lawyer, industrialist and politician in Catalonia, Spain, son of Pere Mila i Pi and cousin who would be president of the Provincial Council de Barcelona, Josep Maria Mila i Camps.
It was employer of the La Monumental bullring in Barcelona and organized the first race car in the city. With his wife, Roser Segimon, commissioned the architect Antoni Gaudi the construction of Casa Mila (La Pedrera). He was elected deputy for the constituency of Solsona in the general electionof 1907 in Catalan Solidarity's candidacy as an independent monarchist in the general elections of 1910 and 1914.2
Pere Mila, the Regionalist League evolved from the traditional parties to support the dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera. In 1931 he published, unsigned and anonymously, the book Perogrullo, deputy constituent where, over seventy-seven pages, expounding his political theories: the abolition of universal suffrage, hostility to the status of autonomy, praise and criticism of the dictatorship to Francesc Cambo, among other questions
During the Civil War the bullring had taken in the early days, meetings of Republican leaders. The few bullfights held at that time had taken place in the Plaza de Las Arenas, until the Security Department has forbidden. During the second half of the war, La Monumental became a garage and store junk, and removed from the wooden benches to build concrete ramps by circulating vehicles. In addition, Mila had to flee and his Casa Mila apartment was occupied by the government of the Generalitat of Catalonia. After the war ended, they returned and recovered all posesiones."
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