On a typical day, upwards of 3,000 tourists would stream through her home. But as Spain’snear-total lockdown stretches beyond Easter, Ana Viladomiu has found herself weeks into living a near-solitary life in one of Barcelona’s top tourist attractions.
For more than 30 years, Viladomiu has lived in La Pedrera, a modernist jewel built more than a century ago by famed architect Antoni Gaudí. The passing decades saw almost all the other tenants move out, supplanted by ever growing throngs of visitors lured by the building’s rippling stone facade and knotted balconies.
Tours of the Unesco world heritage site came to a grinding halt last month as Spain began battling one of the world’s deadliest coronavirus epidemics. “La Pedrera closed its doors and I stayed inside, like a guardian,” said Viladomiu. “All I hear is my footsteps and silence.”
Two other tenants remain in another part of the building – separated from Viladomiu with their own elevator and staircase – while a few security guards rotate through their shifts unseen. “So I’m really by myself,” she said.
Her unusual status as a tenant in a tourist attraction came to light last year after she published a book, The Last Neighbour, weaving together the history of the building with her experience of living on the fourth floor of an attraction that received some 1.3 million visitors last year.
The book hinted at the trade-offs of a life within the curved surfaces that echo Gaudi’s unfinished Sagrada Familia basilica; from elbowing her way through crowds to get to her front door to the many who peer into her apartment as they tour the site.
Like much of Spain, however, the building has been transformed in recent weeks by the pandemic. “What surprised me the most is the silence,” she said. “I’ve never felt alone living here, this building is always bustling. Now there is nobody.”
The quiet has its advantages, she noted, such as the freedom to take out the rubbish in pyjamas. “There’s usually so many people. I would never dare take the elevator in a nightgown,” she said with a laugh. “Now I’ve been wandering around here freely. I’m liking that a lot.”
She has taken comfort in the building’s cast iron pillars, bright airy courtyards and sculptural nods to nature. “I’m really privileged to be surrounded by art and beauty,” she said. “In these tough moments, they help lift the spirit.”
Amid signs that the outbreak in Spain is slowing, the government has said it is studying how it might gradually ease the near-total lockdown. But Viladomiu said she was doubtful her solitary status would end anytime soon.
“I’m getting more and more used to it,” she said. “What’s going to be shocking is that first day when they open the doors and people start pouring in. I’ll be like, ‘Madre mia, what is happening?’”
