In the final period of the town council in 1981, the town purchased the two Garriga houses which together occupied an entire block between the Camprodón and Arrieta and Verdaguer passageways, Joan Durall street and Venice street.
Just as the City Hall, built in 1872, closed off Verdaguer street to the west, the façade of one of the Garriga houses closed it off to the east, giving this area a very pronounced character. This will entail considerable effort on Lloret's part but one within its reach to preserve a building which, like so few others, bears witness to the splendorous past of the 1800s naval period.
We believe that the importance of the acquisition, of having avoided the construction of a new skyscraper on one of the most typical sites in the town and of having conserved an environmental factor and an historic testimony, will be seen dispassionately within a few years. But for the moment we should emphasise this last feature, the historical component, since the Garriga houses are directly related to Lloret's colonial past. Fishermen became mariners, families with the most economic power became shipbuilders and many of those immersed in poverty did not rule out the possibility of emigrating to America to rebuild their lives through hard work, sacrifice and saving. Thus, the first fortunes which would allow the triumphant return to the native land to spend the rest of one's days in peace and tranquillity were made. Those who returned with money were nicknamed "Americans".
The homes of the "Americans" or "Indians" filled Lloret's maritime esplanade, or more precisely, the esplanade grew up from the new alignment and urbanisation of the era and thanks to the wise foresight of certain architects. Martí Sureda devised the plan for the esplanade, which would later bear the name of Jacinto Verdaguer, with just the right dimensions, without exaggeration, on land reclaimed from the sea. At one end, the Town Hall, the work of the architect Félix de Azúa, was built in 1872, while at the other the Garriga House, constructed in 1878, belonged to a well known Lloret family that had emigrated to Cuba.
The construction of the Garriga House, previously mentioned, bears this out. Thus, a promenade where palm trees would later be planted occupies the space between this house and the town hall. This, along with the fact that the majority of the buildings along the front maintain a truly colonial air, was to give this urbanistic sector of Lloret a very evocative West Indian look. Behind the town hall at one end and the Garriga house at the other, alongside the land adjacent to the beach - land regained from the sea as mentioned previously - there was a reparcelling into plots at the end of the last century. The resultant plots were sold to buyers who happened to be repatriated "Indians" and who built new homes on them. At the same time, the town collected money to pay for the construction of the new town hall, built in neo-classical style. In the municipal archives there is a list of buyers.
The tourist "boom" in Lloret, which took place in the 1950s and 60s, brought about unprecedented urbanistic change whereby almost all of the "American" stately homes disappeared, victims of a sometimes logical and other times not so logical speculation. The Garriga house, or houses to be exact, on Paseo Verdaguer, together with a couple of others, are today the few exceptions. That is why it was extremely important to save it from the pickaxe, since it is a clear and magnificent example of an era which, after all, is still deeply rooted in the autochthonous population of Lloret. As reported by the municipal architects and creators of the new General Plan, the architectural typology of the building and the existence of the typical garden facing the sea which was formerly considered the back of these houses, is a construction type which lends itself to reconversion into buildings for exhibitions, receptions, cultural events and the like.
The emblematic Garriga Houses will become the Tourism Office and the Museu of the Sea, this exhibition center will have 5 essential parts of interpretation of the history of Lloret; Fills de Lloret, Mare Nostrum, Navegant el món, Lloret després dels velers i Més enllà de la platja: Lloret mira al futur.
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