When Antoni Caudf was born in 1852, in Reus, near Barcelona, Catalonia was going through a phase of social change. The industrial revolution was modifying not only traditional social structures but also the whole concept of urban planning. In fact, the changes in industrial production methods engineered by the middle classes led to a rapid growth of the cities, the need for new types of buildings, especially residential and commercial ones, the invention of the train and steam-powered ship, and a general abandonment oftheiraditional world of agriculture. This process started later in Catalonia than in other areas of Western Europe and the US, but much earlier than the rest of the Iberian peninsula. The framework of the region's rural culture, especially the cohesion of the family structure, remained intact for a long time, but there was a rapid development of a set of dynamic relations in marked contrast to the bureaucratic slowness of the nation's capital, Madrid, still a city of modest dimensions. In 1851, the year before Gaudf was born, London hosted the first Great Exhibition of the best industrial products in the world. It was held in a purpose-built, prefabricated, transparent structure that resembled a greenhouse, hence its name, Crystal Palace. On display inside this glass and cast-iron structure, brilliantly designed by Joseph Paxton, were the most modern technologies and the finest craft products from round the world, including the colonies. However, it was evident that the technological and the craft worlds existed in an unstable balance that tended to be at the expense of the latter, because there, was enormous and increasing enthusiasm for mass production and machines of everyday use. Not everyone, however, was in favour of this progress and the results it brought, and there was a good deal of bitter resistance, in the name of art and of the wealth of humanity and technical skills which traditional craft production had protected and nurtured for centuries.
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