Café Moderno (Pontevedra)
The Café Moderno (Modern Coffee) is an art nouveau and eclectic building located in St. Joseph's Square in Pontevedra, Spain. It is the building with the most important Art Nouveau interior in the city. It is currently the headquarters of one of the socio-cultural centres of Pontevedra Afundación, owned by the Abanca bank. History On the site where the building was erected was the former Pazo de los Gago de Mendoza. It was promoted by the rich native of Pontevedra who returned from Cuba, Bernardo Martínez-Bautista Herrera, and was completed in 1902. His initials can be seen on the front door and the date of completion (BMB 1902). It was designed to house a two-storey building with four flats (two per floor), including that of the bourgeois Martínez-Bautista himself on the first floor and a ground floor to house the Café Moderno. In the flat on the second floor on the left, the great Pontevedrian architect and master of the modern movement in Spain, Alejandro de la Sota, was born in 1913. In 1903, Valentín García Termes fitted out the rooms on the ground floor and on 30 May 1903, the Café Moderno, an artistic reference in commercial interior architecture,