You are standing at number forty-three, Passeig de Gracia, on one of the most prestigious boulevards in Europe. In nineteen hundred and three, a textile industrialist named Josep Batllo purchased this building, which had been originally designed by one of Antoni Gaudi’s own professors in eighteen hundred and seventy-seven. While the owner initially wanted to demolish it, Gaudi convinced him that a total renovation would be far more daring. Between nineteen hundred and four and nineteen hundred and six, Gaudi radically transformed the structure into the living organism you see today. This site is now part of a unique row of buildings known as the Block of Discord, where the era’s greatest architects competed to create the most spectacular facade.