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Ateneu Barcelonès (originally Ateneu Català) was inaugurated officially on May 21, 1860, with Joan Agell as President and with the target to promote the Catalan culture. Since then, they have put on conferences and exhibitions, organised courses and granted cultural awards, in addition to forming a library that, for many years, was the most important of the city.
In April of 1872 the fusion between Ateneu Català and the Centro Mercantil Barcelonés was produced, fusion that gave origin to the owner called Ateneu Barcelonès.
The visit of the King Alfonso XII in 1877 provoked a strong polemic and caused the resignation of many of its members that, in a parallel way, created the Ateneo Libre de Cataluña. Nevertheless, this is the second affiliation that had to close its doors four years after its opening due to economic problems.
In 1895, the prestigious play-writer Ángel Guimerà becomes the president of the Ateneu and promotes the definitive Catalan-isation of the entity. In this sense, and although the institution was grouping both conservative and liberal tendencies, in 1897 Catalan becomes the official language.
Under the presidency of
Lluís Domènech i Montaner, in 1906 the Ateneu, which up to the moment was located in a rented venue
Las Ramblas, moves to the Savassona Palace in the Canuda street. This is the location that it has occupied up to the actuality and that has turned into a symbol of the institution.
Although the position of the entity opposite the political events of the following years (the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera (Cousin of Rivera), the Republic and the Civil War) never remained very clear and although the pro-Franco departments supported the subsidies, the epoch of the pro-Franco dictatorship was the most difficult period of the history of the Ateneu. It turned out to be very hard to support a stable cultural programming and the intellectual mediocrity reigned in the entity.
With the return of the democracy, the Ateneu also experienced a process of democratisation across the approval of a few new articles of association and of the celebration of elections.
In 1983
Generalitat de Catalunya (Autonomous Government of Catalonia) granted it the
Creu de Sant Jordi (Saint George´s Cross) and in 2007 the
Ayuntamiento de Barcelona (City Council) granted it a Gold Medal to the Mérito Cultural (Cultural Merit).