I was sadly surprised to find myself facing a large plot of land converted into a modest square, with some benches to sit and soak up the sun. A mural painted on the wall with a simple inscription reminds citizens that in that place there was the "Casita Blanca", the meublé (hotel for hours for couples) oldest in our city. An inscription on the mural reminds us that, not so many years ago, the "Casita Blanca" existed here.
While resting on one of their benches, I recommend you to continue with your eyes absorbing in the mural, thinking that for almost a hundred years and until recently this building, externally ugly but discreet and anonymous, was the refuge and nest of secret lovers. Here paraded from ministers and vedettes to actors and construction workers.
No doubt the walls, dressed in velvet and anecdotes of its 43 rooms, have been discreet silent witnesses of clandestine encounters and furtive love affairs.
The history of the "Casita Blanca" goes back to the year 1912, when the Sendra family, from Vilafranca del Penedés in Barcelona, bought the property to install a meublé.
Previously it had been a seafood restaurant where mussels were served on the first floor and on the second floor there were rooms for couples, after lunch, to take a nap or enjoy other pleasures.
The name "Casita Blanca" was born as a result of the amount of sheets and white clothes that were exhibited on the roof of the building drying and sharing their secrets of bedroom with the Barcelona sun.
Alongside the bed sets, a Catalan flag always waved , silent witness of the unspeakable love of those years.
Over time it evolved to earn the respect of the city. The "Casita Blanca" was distinguished by its complete discretion and no one was asked for the Family Book which is mandatory to register at the hotels during Franco's repression. Everything was studied so that couples went completely unnoticed. From the arrival by car or taxi with a particular traffic light at the entrance of the garage (with orange curtains to protect the cars in the parking lot), until labyrinthine circuits of corridors, doors and indirect lights to preserve the visitors could be seen or recognized.
No client crossed with another. There was no missing element in the rooms, from mirrors to a blackboard that was scoring the results of football matches, so that adulterers on their return home could explain to their wives, the incidents of Sunday's game. Even the bedside tables had three buttons: the T to request a taxi; the S to go out on foot and the C to call the waiter.
Some rules were mandatory: you could not take pictures or pay with credit cards and entry was forbidden to those under 23 as well as non-heterosexual couples.
All these details made the "Casita Blanca" one of the most prestigious meublés in its sector. In its hundred years of existence, various legends of doubtful credibility were commented, circulated and written, including the armed robbery of the Quico Sabaté maqui, something that was never confirmed.
In the course of a major operation against prostitution in Barcelona, the Franco regime (confusing the term brothel with dating house) ordered in 1969, along with seventy brothels, the closure of the "Casita Blanca".
However, the mistake was recognized in 1975 and almost coinciding with the disappearance of the dictator Franco, the historic Meublé returned to its functions with complete normality until its definitive disappearance in 2011.
Carles Balagué in 2002 took the film "La Casita Blanca" (The Hidden City) to the cinema.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0343520/
Later, in 2011, Silvia Munt also did it with the title "Meublé" (La Casita Blanca).
