Ramon Sugranyes de Franch believes that the Miralles Gate is a work by his father Domčnec Sugranyes. The work has differences with the one presented in Sarriá in 1902.
A "Gaudí" under suspicion

BARCELONA - Professor Ramon Sugranyes de Franch has shed doubt on the paternity of the Miralles Gate, a work attributed to Antoni Gaudí, which is found on Paseo de Manuel Girona. Sugranyes judges the work as being very different from what Gaudí presented in 1902 with his client, editor and printer Hermenegild Miralles, in the then independent City Hall of Sarriá.

Sugranyes affirms, on the other hand, that the gate is identical to another project, from 1915, which existed in the archives of his father, another architect named Doménec Sugranyes. The plans for this project is now located in the Architects' College. The only inconvenience of these plans is that they are not signed.

Sugranyes de Franch, who was a personality in the Vatican Conciliatory, resides in Friburgo (Switzerland), the city in which he served as a professor of Spanish Language and Literature.

The revelation of 'Sarriá'

In an article which appeared in a Sarriá magazine, which has three points debating the topic, Sugranyes affirms that from the documentation, one can deduce "two undeniable facts: one, that on the 18th of April, 1902, the project of the enclosure gate - it is said, the long wall with 36 undulations, of which only a fraction actually exist, along with the gate - and two, that the architect Doménec Sugranyes Gras (his father) began building Mr. Miralles' house in 1915.

The catalogue from the last Gaudí exposition (1984), in describing the Miralles Gate, had already introduced an element of doubt in commenting on the differences between the 1902 project and the actual gate. Miralles died in 1903, and it wasn't until 1915 that his descendants commissioned a house in the form of a Valencian Shanty style - a house which does not now exist.

Sugranyes claims that his father built the gate along with the house, and adds that "he would never have dared to modify the work if it had existed." Amélia Poves, who works in the archives of Sarriá, believes that it is "too categorical the opinion that the gate was a work of Sugranyes alone."

With this, it is quite ironic that a statue paying homage to Gaudí has been placed precisely below the Miralles Gate.

Josep Maria Huertas
El Periódico
May 2001