Lleida, culture and avant-garde

Lived memories and landscapes by Joana Bonet

Every morning, arriving early at Lleida station, the fourteen-year-old girl was overwhelmed by a scent that seemed exotic to her—a mixture of sulphur and coffee that filled her lungs. She believed it to be the distinctive scent that distinguished the big cities from villages, a fragrance of a cherished land, steeped in the history woven by Carthaginians and Romans. Perhaps she didn’t recall the statue of defeated heroes Indibilis and Mandonius because she also learnt that one must honour the defeated more than the victorious. Today, history tells us that Lleida’s archers valiantly defended the fortification against the barbarians.

One cannot understand Lleida without Josep Vallverdú, without Pepa Domingo, who contributed to the rise of Spanish fashion in the 1980s; or without Jaume Magre, who, together with his wife, Rosa Ferran, opened the Petit Galerie, a corridor with traditional handcrafted Mediterranean hydraulic tile flooring lit by a bare light bulb. Petit Galerie hosted the art of greats such as Leandre Cristófol, Frederic Amat, Broto, Antoni Llena, Silvia Gubern, Rosa Siré, and many more. Magre was immortalised by Imma Monsó as the man in the white raincoat.

Lleida has a powerful horizon of cultural heritage, although due to its sober and modest character, it does not show it off. Its popular culture includes everything from Lo Maraco (Lleida’s iconic festival dragon) to l’Aplec del Caragol (an annual escargot-eating festival), the rumba lleidatana (Catalan rumba style), the Garrotín (a style of flamenco), and enjoying a vermouth on Carrer Cavallers, which was once home to the old university, now converted into a parador (a state-run historic hotel).

That’s where I started living—or so I thought—as an adult, absorbed by its twinkling lights and high street filled with shops of sugar-lipped saleswomen. We had a castle on the hill, our beacon and defining monument: La Seu Vella, the majestic cathedral-fortress now proposed as a World Heritage Site for its architectural beauty and rich history. It stands as a faithful reflection of the city’s evolving reality.

Lleida, in the words of Màrius Torres, is ‘the city of ideals we wanted to build.’ I translated this verse by Torres, my first local poet, who believed that the earth does not deceive, even as he longed for it from the sanatorium where he relearned to breathe while composing songs to Mahalta.

You can’t always feel that you are returning to your origins. You come and go from the landscapes you’ve lived in, like the traveling salesmen of old who had to seek out new emotions when returning time and again to the same places with their sample case spread out in the car’s trunk, ready for display. However, La Roca Village’s tribute to Lleida allows me to bring a sense of closure, as though closing a circle, a foundational journey. Sleeping in the classrooms of what was once my ‘Sorbonne’, now converted into a superb parador. Paying tribute to my mentor, my first fashion teacher, Pepa Domingo: her shop was a pioneer in selling the designs of Sybilla, Manuel Piña, Agatha Ruiz de la Prada, Toni Miró, Alvarado, Pedro Morago and Kima Guitart. Domingo’s was my own personal ‘Saint Martin’s’ school. It also moves me to reconnect the avant-garde artists with our contemporary artists, who continue to give their work depth and personality It’s essentially about celebrating this discreet, industrious city with a river running through it—like Paris—not the dazzling Seine, but the Segre, whose bridges draw the sobriety of stone nearer to the exuberance of fruit trees. It’s an amalgamation that’s as profound as it is dazzling.

Album of a visionary: Pepa Domingo by Toni Prim

'Pepa Domingo was a woman ahead of her time. Here in Lleida, we truly cherished her company,’ recalls Toni Prim. In the 1980s, from her boutique, Domingo’s, she brought an unexpected modernity to the city, backing designers who defied traditional fashion norms and turning her showcases into genuine citywide happenings. Her fashion shows leapt out from her boutique onto the streets, becoming shared celebrations where even passers-by joined in, blurring the line between fashion and everyday life.

In the 1980s, the Lleida Photographic Association put on Fotomostra, filling the city with photographs by Agustí Centelles, Joan Fontcuberta, Toni Catany, Humberto Rivas and many others,’ recalls Prim.

For the exhibition, Prim dug into his archive alongside journalist Joana Bonet, uncovering images that now serve as a vivid testament to that period’s effervescence. Most were captured with his square-format Hasselblad—only twelve exposures per roll, demanding that every frame be composed with near-ritual precision. In one of them, actress Carme Llaràs crosses Carrer Major wrapped in a design by Ágatha Ruiz de la Prada, beneath the bewildered gaze of women and elders unaccustomed to such daring aesthetic transgression. ‘I can’t but help feel nostalgic now,’ admits Prim, ‘first because of how young we were, and then because I think that, humbly and without intending it, we defined an era that can never be repeated.’