Casa Comalat

Barcelona is a city currently being choked to death by its own fame. You’ve seen the lines at the Sagrada Família; you’ve seen the throngs of people holding up selfie sticks in front of Casa Batlló like they’re worshipping a neon-lit altar of tourism. But if you want to see what happens when the late-stage Modernisme movement really went off the rails—without the €35 entry fee and the soul-crushing crowds—you head to the intersection of Avinguda Diagonal and Carrer de Còrsega. This is Casa Comalat, and it is an architectural personality disorder rendered in stone, wood, and ceramic.

Built between 1906 and 1911 by Salvador Valeri i Pupurull, a man who clearly looked at Gaudí’s work and thought, 'Hold my vermouth,' Casa Comalat is a tale of two cities. On the Diagonal side, the building wears a mask of bourgeois respectability. It’s formal, symmetrical, and carved from heavy stone. It’s got that grand, Eixample ego—the kind of place where a 20th-century industrialist would keep his secrets and his mistress. The balconies are ornate, the door is massive, and the whole thing screams 'old money.' It’s impressive, sure, but it’s the back side that tells the real story.

Walk around the corner to Carrer de Còrsega, and the building lets its hair down in a way that’s almost indecent. This is the 'party in the back' of Barcelona architecture. The facade undulates like a living thing, covered in a riot of polychrome ceramics and trencadís—those broken tile mosaics that define the best Modernisme Barcelona has to offer. The wooden galleries are curved and warped, and the green ceramic shutters look less like window coverings and more like the scales of a sleeping dragon. It’s a visceral, jarring contrast. It’s as if the building spent all day at a funeral on Diagonal and then spent the night at a rave on Còrsega.

Now, here is the honest truth: you can’t go in. Casa Comalat is a private residence, which is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a curse because you’ll spend ten minutes staring at that magnificent, heavy wooden door, wondering what kind of stained glass and wrought iron madness lies behind it. It’s a blessing because it remains one of the few truly authentic things to do in Eixample that hasn’t been turned into a gift shop. There are no audio guides here. No one is trying to sell you a miniature ceramic lizard. It’s just you, the street noise, and a building that looks like it was designed during a fever dream.

Is Casa Comalat worth visiting? If you give a damn about architecture that has actual balls, then yes. It’s a reminder that Modernisme wasn’t just about pretty flowers and soft curves; it was about ego, experimentation, and a total disregard for the 'sensible.' It’s one of the best things to see near Passeig de Gràcia if you’re tired of the polished, sanitized version of the city. You stand on the sidewalk, you look up, and you realize that even a hundred years ago, Barcelona was a city that refused to be boring. It’s a quiet, beautiful middle finger to the bland glass boxes of the modern world. Grab a coffee at a nearby café, find a spot on the pavement, and just stare at the Còrsega side for a while. It’s the best free show in town.