Can Mateu Frontera
As shown in the technical record, this property was rebuilt according to Modernist principles between 1903 and 1904. Its promoter, A. P. M., returned to Sóller after a successful stay in Mexico, where he made a fortune as a merchant and owner of a tile and ceramics factory. The building was formerly owned by Maria Marquès Mayol “Colomina”, and the current owner acquired it shortly after returning from his American venture.
Notable is the balcony on the main floor, with its curved wrought-iron railing decorated with sinuous finials, which are also repeated in the windows on the ground floor. Inside, there are Modernist stained-glass windows featuring acid-etched decorated glass, with a bronze handrail that crosses them in a purely Modernist serpentine form reminiscent of the so-called coup de fouet.
Hydraulic flooring, so typical of Modernism, takes its name from the way tiles are produced, using the force of a hydraulic press that compacts all the materials. However, popular belief
holds that beneath the tiles there is a whole network of hydraulic forces supporting them, something that could not be further from the truth.
