La construcció del Montserrat modern = The construction of the modern Montserrat

Abstract

This PhD Dissertation studies the process of construction of the modern Montserrat after the Napoleonic destruction of the old shrine-monastery and its disendowment in 1836, and shows how this process was not the reconstruction or restoration of the old destroyed monastery but the construction, or the "invention", of a new one. This process was initiated in 1844 when the shrine was reopened and was developed until the first half of the 20th century in parallel to the definition of the contemporary Catalonia and Spain. Therefore, and understanding the modern Montserrat is the result of the complex interaction between all the agents who are implied in its construction process, the dissertation addresses in eighteenth chapters the main themes and the individuals and groups who intervened in it. These eighteen chapters are in turn structured into five groups according to the major alterations in the equilibrium of influences between the agents involved in the process at each moment. The first group of chapters specify the ¿architectural, political and social- problems of the first works, as well as the decisive intervention of Victor Balaguer and his attempt to define a Montserrat symbol "for all" within the wide national and federal symbolic universe he created; an interpretation based on the romantic approach to the mountain defined in good part during Humboldt's visit in 1800. Balaguer's intervention was centered in the valuation of gothic architecture and in the first attempts to define an architectural project; but it was frustrated with the end of the reign of Amadeo I, and the federal dream. It was then when was defined the first culture of the catalanism, and when the "group of Vic" take a step and alter, with their "patriotic-religious campaigns", Balaguer's symbolic construction to their own advantage, what carried out the definition and valuation of Romanesque architecture, as well as the definitive popularization of the mountain. The second group of chapters, then, studies the intense symbolic construction of the mountain that takes place during the end of the 19th century as the consequence of the tensions generated by the campaigns of the "group of Vic". The construction of the rack-and-pinion railway, the rosary monuments, the panorama in the Exposition of 1888, the architecture of Gaudi and others, or the popular reproductions of the mountain, are some of the cases analyzed. The architectural consequences that this symbolic construction had over the construction process are analyzed in the third group of chapters that culminates with the general project defined by Puig i Cadafalch. That incorporates the unique mountain as an element of project and it goes well beyond the dilemma on styles. But despite the construction of this project was initiated, it was never completed due to the Spanish Civil War. The fourth group of chapters is only one chapter that makes a brief digression on Montserrat and the Western modern cultural construction of the mountain together with its relation with the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries' architecture. The fifth and last group of chapters returns to the chronological order and studies the process of construction during the first years of Franco's dictatorship, as well as the projects that were done then. And that failed due to the changes that took place after the "Enthronement festivities" of 1947; and that provoked the definitive wreck of the architectural construction of the modern Montserrat. Finally, the epilogue raises some of the most important questions the dissertation makes evident, emphasizing the importance that tourism and modern mass mediums had during all over the process, and how Montserrat, in a wider context, is a paradigmatic example of modern heritage-making processes. The annex contains the cataloguing ¿by the author- of all the documents forming the "Architectural Archive of Montserrat" and that, together with other materials, are analyzed in the dissertation.