That Barcelona was progressively cleared away from the Sixties onwards, in a series of drives to make the city more presentable. These efforts can be said to have started with a visit by Franco in 1966, and culminated in the Olympic Games of 1992. Its discrete location meant that Cal Notari escaped these clearances and has even managed to wrest official recognition from the council, although its legal status is still somewhat ambiguous. It doesn’t even have an official name, Cal Notari being the road that leads to it.
Other names that get used are Font del Gos and Lourdes. Green Council leader on the Horta council, Elsa Blasco, denies that it exists in a legal vacuum, saying that since 1976 the houses have been afectadas, or earmarked for demolition, and that plans have been drawn up to re-house the residents in nearby Horta.
Cal Notari is built along a valley and divided into two parts. The valley’s floor is the more established part of the neighbourhood and whilst there has obviously been little planning, the houses are generally well constructed. On the shoulder of the valley, the houses are irregular in shape, poorly finished and cling precariously to the steep ground banked up along the road, one behind the other.
Daniel Oriol, a former president of the Catalan Ramblers’ Association, was among the first to build his house on the floor of the valley in 1950. Now a sprightly 88 year old, as a young man poor health prompted a doctor to advise him to get out of the city. So, when he returned to Barcelona after the Civil War he bought a plot of land in the valley and built his house. He explained that the houses on the shoulder were built almost exclusively by immigrants in the Fifties and Sixties, many of whom were getting away from the poor conditions in Somorrostro, the shanty town built along Barceloneta beach. They would buy a plot of land by the track and build their houses at night so as not to attract too much attention. Once built, the procedure was to actively encourage the Guàrdia Urbana to come and fine them, because this represented official recognition of the existence of the house, which brought with it a de facto semi-legal status.
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