Carrer de Barcelona, 13
The Carrer de Barcelona is currently one of the main commercial hubs of the city centre, but also a street full of details and buildings for you to see what Mataró was like in the eighteenth century. Just lift your head and don’t be seduced by the shop windows.
One place to stop at is in front of the building popularly known as the Minerva Printer’s, built in the eighteenth century. In this two-storey building, Antoni Marfà and Josep Viladevall founded a typographic establishment in 1923 to publish El Diari de Mataró, the first city newspaper published in Catalan.
This printer’s produced many of the monographs of local history; but being incapable of adapting to new technologies, in 1986 it was forced to close. Though absent now for many years, many people of Mataró still call this building by its name.
In the façade the stone jambs and lintels of the openings stand out, as well as the noucentist sgraffitos that incorporate figures and garlands by Francesc Canyelles i Balagueró, in reference to the activity of the establishment.
By the way, don’t miss the blinds on the first floor. In Spanish they are called ‘gossips’, but actually this is the name given to the wooden windows located on the main floors of many houses from the end of the nineteenth century. From these windows the ladies of the house could see what was happening in the street without being seen. Many houses in the centre of Mataró had such windows. If you go to the Peixateria square, there is another just before you get there.
