Barcelona, 4th of July, 2003.- The confectioner group Chupa Chups, the owner of the Casa Batlló, has offered the Gaudí's building as the guarantee for a credit of 35 millions of euros. With this sum, the company of sweets and lollipops pretends to reduce its debt, which presently rises to 100 millions.

Despite that this sort of mortgage isn't a habitual value in the real-estate market operations, the Institut Català de Finances (ICF) has authorised the credit, "to guarantee that the titularity, use and exploitation may never get out, and under any circumstance, from the Catalan ambit". In this case, then, the artistic component of the building has acted as an added value.

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Chupa Chups pretends to devote part of the money of the credit to reduce its debt. The rest of it will be set aside to publicity investments in television. With the aim of closing the year 2003 with a reduction of the debt from 100 to 30 millions, the company has also previewed to sell its affiliated industrial confectionery in Russia and the factory in China, apart from making capital expansions.

3 millions of euros yearly

The valuation of the Casa Batlló is estimated in some 75 millions of euros, if we bear in mind its real-estate value sum and its potentiality to generate incomes: during 2002 -the 150th anniversary of Gaudí-, it got 2,5 millions of euros from the entrance fees which the 30.000 visitors per month paid. Besides, the hiring of spaces for celebrations brought them 600.000 euros.

The family Batlló had sold the property in 1954 to the Sociedad Iberia de Seguros. In 1994 the Bernat family, the owner of Chupa Chups, purchased the building. Coinciding with the celebration acts of the 150th anniversary of Gaudí, the proprietors decided to open the first floor of Casa Batlló to the public.

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