Ramon Berenguer III

Sculptor: Josep Llimona, signed
foundry and restoration of Frederic Marès
Materials: Bronze on pedestal made of stone from Montjuïc
Inauguration: March 11, 1950

In 1880, the City Council gave the young Josep Llimona the pension that was established for an art student could go abroad to perfect studies. Llimona, student at the School of Fine Arts of Llotja, went to Rome and was until 1885 thanks to the renewal of the scholarship that made him City Hall.

While he was sent some of the works executed in the Italian capital to the city of Barcelona. Among them was the outline of the Count of Barcelona, ​​Ramón Berenguer III, the Great (Rodez, 1082 - Barcelona, ​​1131) a large equestrian statue. He was charged with Lemon transform the sketch into a work in plaster and natural size and was awarded a gold medal at the Universal Exhibition of 1888. After the plaster was saved, first in the Palace of Industry and then in the gallery statues of the Palace of Fine Arts, both pavilions of the exhibition.

When in 1907 the City began opening the Via Laietana through streets and alleys of the old quarter, decided that the statue of Llimona serve to adorn the gardens they thought leave by the side facade of the chapel of Santa agate and part of wall on which it rests.

The decision to put this statue, once cast in bronze, to the future square was adopted on December 9, 1919, and three years later was officially decided that urban space bore the name of Ramón Berenguer the Great and not the Once de Noviembre had been decided in 1918 to commemorate the date of signing of the armistice that ended the First World War.

But the place still took quite some time to be urbanized, as it had to demolish all the buildings attached to the wall. The restoration of the wall, started in 1927 by the city of the first dictatorship (1923-1930), they were not completed until the fifties by the city of the second dictatorship (1939-1975), partly by taking advantage of damage by bombing of the Condor Legion during the Civil War. The works of the square Ramon Berenguer el Grande, specifically, led by the municipal architect Luis Riudor, director of Parks and Gardens of Barcelona, ​​were completed when the March 11, 1950 the statue was discovered Llimona, which incidentally It has a curious peculiarity: horsetail plaster had been damaged while being saved and when the casting Victoria would do the final figure, as Llimona had died in 1934, was necessary Frederic Marès - solver, in the postwar period , all kinds of restorations and reconstruccions- make a new one that has not been welcomed by all connoisseurs. Josep Viladomat said it appears the chimney flue of a stove. In 2014 the sculpture was restored.