La Florida

Hotel La Florida is part of the collective memory of many people in Barcelona who witnessed its birth at the hand of architect Ramón Raventós. The restoration project of La Florida set out to create an emblematic hotel for the city of Barcelona while at the same time respecting the original façade of the building that has been declared a historic landmark. The Hotel Florida was first inaugurated in 1925 and was the realization of one man's dream, Dr. Andreu, who wanted to build Barcelona's best hotel in Barcelona's best location. The splendor, however, was not to last long. Like so many other things in Spanish life, the civil war took its toll on the hotel when it was used as a military hospital. Again mirroring Spanish society, from that point on the history of the building is a long and arduous one. Over the years the hotel passed from hand to hand, with differing levels of success. During the 1950's Hotel La Florida was the place of choice for Barcelona's high society serving mainly as a summer residence for wealthy Catalan families and was the unofficial hotel of Barcelona's football club. Over the years Ernest Hemingway, James Stewart, George Sanders, Rock Hudson, Princess Fabiola and the Prince of Belgium all stayed in the prestigious hotel, as did other more sinister characters such as Himmler and his enormous entourage. Finally in 1979, La Florida succumbed to the passage of time and was closed. In the year 2001 the Hotel La Florida was rescued from abandonment. The project to refurbish the building had three main objectives: recuperate to the greatest degree possible the antique decorative and structural elements of the old hotel, respect the natural environment in which the hotel is found and improve the visual impact of the Hotel on mountain on which it sits. The spirit of the old hotel and its “Noucentista” style was respected to a maximum degree. The new project also used the natural vegetation of the Collserola Park in the hotel's gardens.

Harrison Ford, Lenny Kravitz, John Malkovitch