18.02.2026 — Les combles du Gran Teatre del Liceu, 1989

“And a few minutes later, unexpectedly, a thunderclap made the roof shake: the announcement of a spring storm. And I was there, by accident, in the middle of it. In that space that belonged to no one. Neither to the living nor to the dead.”

These days I’m writing a fragment of the museography book I’m working on. It speaks about the importance of spaces when they are lived: spaces that shape experience, that form you, and that, over time, influence how you conceive spaces for others.

The three photographs I’m sharing here are a very concrete record. They were taken in the attic spaces of the Gran Teatre del Liceu, before the 1994 fire. Everything you see in them no longer exists. I had just turned 20. It was my first job in Barcelona.

At the time, we were working on an exhibition-homage to the scenographer Josep Mestres Cabanes. The installation took place in the former workshop of the scenic painters, a place literally suspended between the auditorium and the sky. Boxes and envelopes containing fragile pieces were unpacked there; we reassembled little model stages there and then placed them in display cases.

In the images you can see Isidre Bravo, whom I remember with great affection: my professor of History of Scenography and, at that time, director of the Museu del Teatre. His presence in that context gave the day a particular weight. Being there at twenty years old, in that part of the building, working with those materials, fixed in me a way of looking at places.

That fragment of the book is born from that site and that moment. There are spaces that teach without needing to explain themselves. And that experience stays inside you when, later on, you have to conceive spaces for others.

(1) Liceu attic spaces, with Isidre Bravo.
(2) Work table.
(3) Exhibition opening.

Photographs on paper: Pep Montoya