I'm used to all the visitors. It's my home.
In a corner of Antoni Gaudí's Casa Milà — a building that receives a million visitors each year and has been everything from a bingo hall to a Trotskyist headquarters — Ana Viladomiu, seventy, quietly goes about her life as the last tenant in any structure the architect ever designed. Protected by a renta antigua contract, a legal relic from before 1985, she has lived there for nearly four decades, paying almost nothing, touching almost nothing, and embodying something the crowds outside can only photograph: the original purpose of the building. As the centenary of Gaudí's death approaches, her presence asks a question the tourism industry rarely pauses to consider — what does it mean to truly inhabit a masterpiece?
- A woman lives rent-free inside one of the world's most visited buildings, and a million tourists a year cannot quite believe she is real.
- Her legal contract — a vanishing instrument of mid-century Spanish housing law — has outlasted a bank collapse, a city's transformation, and every buyout offer that never came.
- The building around her has shed identity after identity, from civic mockery to cultural monument, while her apartment has not lost a single brass light switch.
- She has written a book, received roses from Jean Paul Gaultier, and made peace with being a character in other people's travel albums — all without surrendering her private life.
- With Gaudí's centenary arriving and the Sagrada Família receiving a papal blessing, Viladomiu stands as the sole living proof that his architecture was built not for spectacle, but for habitation.
Ana Viladomiu is seventy years old, pays almost nothing in rent, and lives inside one of the most photographed buildings on earth. Her apartment occupies a corner of Casa Milà — the undulating stone structure Antoni Gaudí completed in 1910 on Barcelona's Passeig de Gràcia — and she has been there for nearly four decades. She is, as far as anyone knows, the last person still living as a tenant in any building Gaudí designed.
She moved in with her husband, Fernando Amat, in 1988, protected by a renta antigua contract: a fixed-rent agreement issued before 1985 that grants lifetime occupancy rights. When she arrived, the building still had neighbors. Caixa Catalunya, which had acquired Casa Milà, was buying out tenants one by one and refurbishing the structure for commercial use. Viladomiu and Amat never received an offer. "We joke that they wanted us to stay as some sort of attraction," she says, "like Snowflake, the albino gorilla at Barcelona zoo." The bank itself collapsed in 2010, and a not-for-profit foundation has managed the property ever since. When Viladomiu eventually dies, the apartment will finally pass to them.
The building has lived many lives before hers. Originally mocked as La Pedrera — the quarry — it was commissioned by a wealthy couple and finished to public ridicule. After Gaudí's death in 1926, his original interior details were torn out by the very woman who had commissioned him. The Civil War brought political occupiers; later decades brought a bingo hall, consulates, and an Egyptian prince. The rooftop warriors and rippling stone facade that now draw a million visitors a year were once considered an embarrassment.
Viladomiu's apartment is vast and luminous, its walls curved, its ironwork balconies suggesting sea creatures. She has not altered a thing. The brass light switches still work. The space became the subject of her book, The Last Tenant, a work of historical auto-fiction that began as interviews with former residents and grew into something more personal. Zaha Hadid visited. Jean Paul Gaultier, encountered by the lift with her arms full of oranges, later sent roses.
This year marks a century since Gaudí's death. As Barcelona prepares to commemorate the architect who never intended his buildings to be museums, Viladomiu remains the quiet proof of what he actually built for — not spectacle, but a place to live.
Ana Viladomiu, seventy years old, lives in one of the most coveted addresses in Spain and pays almost nothing for the privilege. Her apartment occupies a corner of Casa Milà, the undulating masterpiece that Antoni Gaudí completed in 1910 on Barcelona's Passeig de Gràcia, and she has occupied it for nearly four decades. She is, as far as anyone can determine, the last person still living as a tenant in any building Gaudí designed—unless you count the peregrine falcons nesting in the Sagrada Família.
The building receives roughly a million visitors annually. They come to photograph the rippling stone facade, to walk the rooftop with its chimney sculptures that look like sentries from another world, to stand in the undulating rooms and feel the peculiar geometry of Gaudí's vision. Viladomiu has learned to live among them. She cannot take out the rubbish in her nightclothes without becoming part of someone's travel album. Strangers ask if she is the woman who lives upstairs, as though she were a character in the building's story rather than its inhabitant. She has made peace with this. "It's a privilege," she says, and she means it.
She moved in with her husband, Fernando Amat, in 1988. Amat owned Vinçon, a design store that operated for decades as Barcelona's answer to London's Conran Shop before closing in 2015. The apartment came with what Spanish law calls a renta antigua—a fixed-rent contract issued before 1985, granting lifetime occupancy rights. When Amat dies, and when Viladomiu dies, the building's current steward, a not-for-profit foundation that has managed Casa Milà since 2013, will assume ownership of the space. An estimated hundred thousand such contracts still exist across Spain, relics of a different era of housing law. Viladomiu will not disclose what she pays, but the figure is negligible by any measure.
When she arrived, the building still housed neighbors. The Caixa Catalunya bank had acquired Casa Milà and was systematically buying out tenants with generous settlements, refurbishing the structure for commercial use. Viladomiu and Amat never received an offer. "We joke that they wanted us to stay as some sort of attraction," she says, "like Snowflake, the albino gorilla at Barcelona zoo." The bank itself failed in 2010, merging with two other failed savings institutions to form the foundation that now manages the property. The rest of Casa Milà transformed into offices and event spaces. Viladomiu's apartment remained.
The building itself has lived many lives. Pedro Milà and his wife Rosario Segimon, who had inherited a fortune from her father's Guatemalan coffee operations, commissioned it. When it was finished, Barcelona mocked it. The nickname La Pedrera—the quarry—was meant as an insult, a reference to the rough stone face that seemed to mock conventional architecture. Gaudí had died in 1926, and Segimon, living in the building's most magnificent first-floor apartment, scandalized the architectural world by tearing out his original details and redecorating in Louis XVI style. During the Spanish Civil War, Trotskyist and socialist parties occupied the lower floors. Over the decades, the building housed a bingo hall, estate agents, consulates, and an Egyptian prince.
Viladomiu's own apartment is vast and luminous, its walls curved and sculpted, its balconies wrought with ironwork suggesting sea creatures and animals. She could legally alter it however she wishes, but she has not touched a thing—not even the ancient brass light switches. Everything still functions. The apartment became the subject of a book she wrote, a work of historical auto-fiction called The Last Tenant, recently published in English. It began as a series of interviews with former residents but evolved into something more personal, weaving her family's story with the building's. The architect Zaha Hadid visited. So did Jean Paul Gaultier, whom she encountered by the lift with her arms full of oranges. "You've made my day," he told her, and later sent roses.
This year marks a century since Gaudí's death. In June, the pope will visit Barcelona to bless the newly completed Jesus Christ tower of the Sagrada Família. Viladomiu, meanwhile, remains something rarer than any tourist attraction: a living embodiment of what Gaudí actually built for. His structures were not designed as museums or pilgrimage sites. They were designed as homes. She is the last person in Barcelona living that original vision.
Citações Notáveis
It's a world heritage site, but it's my home and has been for almost 40 years.— Ana Viladomiu
We joke that they wanted us to stay here as some sort of attraction, like Snowflake, Barcelona zoo's famous albino gorilla.— Ana Viladomiu, on why the bank never offered to buy out her apartment
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
What does it feel like, waking up in a building that millions of people come to see each year?
You become accustomed to it. The first few years were stranger. Now it's simply the texture of daily life. You learn which hours are quieter. You learn not to be self-conscious about ordinary things.
Do you ever feel like you're living in a museum?
No, because I'm not performing. I'm living. The building is a museum around me, but my apartment is a home. There's a difference the visitors don't see.
Your husband's store, Vinçon—it was a place where people came to see beautiful things. Does that parallel your situation?
Perhaps. He understood that objects and spaces have meaning beyond their function. He would have appreciated the irony that I'm now part of what people come to see, though I'm not trying to be seen.
The book you wrote—why did you feel compelled to document the other tenants who've left?
Because their stories were disappearing. Once they moved out, no one would remember how the building actually lived. I wanted to preserve that before it was gone entirely.
Do you think about what happens to your apartment after you're gone?
The foundation will take it. They'll probably turn it into something for visitors. That's the natural end of things. I've had my time here. That's more than most people get.