Carrer d’Argentona, 55
You are now facing the Casa Coll i Regàs, the most emblematic modernist work in Mataró and probably the city’s most frequently photographed façade. This building was constructed in 1897 by the architect Josep Puig i Cadafalch, president of the Catalan ‘Mancomunitat’ and the person behind the Casa de les Punxes and the Fàbrica Casaramona in Barcelona.
The house was commissioned by Joaquim Coll i Regàs, a Mataró city businessman and friend of the architect. Several elements of the façade refer to the textile industry, the owner’s profession and one of the city’s main economic sectors. Can you find them?
The first is very easy. Over the main door stands “La filose”, or the weaver; a girl spinning the wool between the loom and the scales. This work by the sculptor Eusebi Arnau has already become a symbol of the city. So now we have one!
But there is also a cat playing with a ball of wool, spiders weaving a web, butterflies coming out of the silk cocoon, a hare with a cloth and even a monkey dressed in tails, symbolising the revolution of the Darwinian theory of evolution. And on the bars of the ground floor windows there are parts characteristic of knitwear machinery. Did you find it all?
The building, now managed by the Iluro Foundation, consists of a basement for domestic services, a stately ground floor, a first floor for the bedrooms, a loft and a tower.
