From a reading room at the Casal de Sarrià to waiting for a new centre in Plaça de Sarrià

Their history dates back to the royal order of 1835 that officially created the Sarrià Archives. An inventory of the records was drawn up at the start of the new century and published under the title of “Municipal Archives Index”. That was in 1902, at a municipal council meeting in Sarrià (which remained independent until it was taken over by Barcelona in 1921), when the Archive regulations and a municipal library were approved.

Since its origins, the Sarrià Archives has occupied various spaces in the Casal de Sarrià, at Carrer d’Eduardo Conde, 22, which the records have had to share with books from Sarrià’s old public libraries, transferred to the Clarà Library in 2000.

Given the lack of space at the Sarrià Archives, a pre-archive repository for administrative fonds was set up on Carrer de l’Hort de la Vila.

Despite attempts to transfer the Archives to the Espai Cultural Pere Pruna, the project failed to get off the ground so the Sarrià - Sant Gervasi District Municipal Archives continued to occupy new parts of the Casal de Sarrià.

A building with a FAD award

The Casal de Sarrià was built in 1909 as the private house of Eduardo Conde i Jiménez (Madrid, 1840 - Sarrià, 1914), the owner of the El Siglo department stores. The architect was Leocadio Olabarria, the owner's son-in-law.

The house and gardens that surround it became the property of Barcelona City Council through a change of licences and in 1984 it was officially opened as the Casal de Sarrià community centre. The gardens were redesigned in 1986 by the architects José Antonio Martínez Lapeña and Elías Torres, and received the FAD design award the same year.