Cereria Subirà

Cereria Subirà traces its founding to 1761, when candle maker Jacint Galí opened the workshop on Carrer dels Corders in Barcelona's old town. Ownership has passed through only three families across more than 260 years: Galí ran it until his death in 1763, after which his son of the same name continued the business until dying without heirs in 1825; the workshop's own manager, Martí Prat, then took over; and the Subirà family, whose name the shop now carries, has held it since 1939. The move to its present address came in 1847, when the shop relocated to what was then called Baixada de la Presó — today's Baixada de la Llibreteria — a short distance from its original site on Carrer dels Corders, where it still stands. Barcelona's city government has designated Cereria Subirà an Emblematic Establishment in recognition of its preserved nineteenth-century interior, centered on an imperial-style double staircase watched over by two wrought-iron female figures — original fittings the shop has kept intact through nearly two centuries at the same address. That continuity, alongside its standing as the principal candle supplier to the Sagrada Família, has made the shop as much a fixture of civic memory in the Gothic Quarter as a working business.