Carrer de la Santema street, which was built around the year 1900, is the first street of rental homes aimed at summer holidaymakers.
House number 1 of this street and the land behind it (now Parc Muntanyà) were acquired by Adolfo Montañá, who was born in Granollers and was one of the 20th century’s last Spaniards to return from America having made their fortune there, when he returned from Cuba in 1934. He had a luxurious house built there (now the Palau Foundation) which, together with the land, became a great mansion with a garden and pine forest bordering the Puig Castellar and Torre dels Encantats Iberian settlement sites.
Following a number of swaps with Caldes Town Council in the 1980s, the building became a cultural facility, and the garden became a public park.
Right beside it was a building used for over a hundred years by the Dominican nuns as a school for girls and infants. For this reason, it is known as "Casa de les monges" (“House of Nuns”).
The Palau Foundation
The Foundation, which was opened in May 2003, is a cultural facility that aims to gather and display to the public Josep Palau i Fabre’s paintings and sculptures together with his private library, which includes his literary and biographical works as well as personal documents .
The Foundation houses, on the one hand, all the Catalan paintings from the Palau i Fabre collection, around fifty works by artists of different generations throughout the 20th century. These include paintings, drawings, sculptures and prints by contemporary masters of Josep Palau i Oller, Palau i Fabre’s father, of which Mompou and Torres-Garcia Gargallo are particularly worth highlighting, as well as later ones such as as Rebull, Grau Sala, Clavé and Malloll Suazo. The Palau collection also includes works by Miró and Tàpies, which share their space with the Latin American artists he met in Paris, such as Sergio de Castro and Manuel Felguérez. On the second floor of the building are works by Picasso, the artist who most fascinated Josep Palau i Fabre, whom he met and of whom he is a biographer.
In the “House of the Nuns,” the Foundation expands with a new exhibition room dedicated to current artists such as Miquel Barceló, Perejaume and Pepe Yagües, to name but a few.
1. Santema and the Palau Foundation Street
4. Parròquia de Santa Maria (Parish of St. Mary)
6. The Old Town Centre and the Lime Kiln
7. Capella del Carme and Carrer d´El Callao Street
11. Hotel Colón and the Sea Baths
13. Can Comillas and Can Nadal