The La Farigola School Group is located in the block in the Gràcia district bounded by Sant Camil, Sant Eudald, Baleares and Farigola streets. It is a school building separated from the street by the school playground. The entrance is on Carrer de Sant Camil through a porch that gives access to both the building and the school playground.
The building consists of a basement, ground floor, first floor and attic. It is organised as a set of united and superimposed volumes, two of them being open porches, and occupies a surface area of 870.73 m², of which 329.65 m² corresponded to the building and 514.08 m² to the playground – given that the school was designed for girls and infants, the playground was very important. On both sides of the almost cubic volume of the building, he placed porticoed galleries leading to two terraces.
The façade has an asymmetrical composition of openings on vertical axes. The openings in the south are square in proportion and of large dimensions, typical of school classrooms. The openings in the other orientations are smaller and of vertical proportions. The façades of the open porches are formed by semicircular arcades supported by pillars with Classicist capitals. Above the arcades are the solid balustrades of the roofs.
The roof of the building is flat, also forming roof terraces. The perimeter of the crowning is resolved with a masonry sill with balusters and classical moulding. The cornice has a classical profile with a dentil. The sill is crowned with vases that emphasise the corners.
Artistically, it is worth highlighting the sgraffito work that occupies all the façades with geometric motifs that are subordinated to the composition of the façade, creating a formal unity with the openings and arches. The most striking visual elements are the ceramic vases with floral elements of highly stylised proportions.
The building is considered Noucentista because of the style of the decorations and the balance achieved between ornamentation and façade composition with few materials: the large, high windows in the classrooms stand out and the entire wall is covered in two-colour stucco; there are sgraffiti with geometric motifs, designed by the artist Francesc Canyellas. The ensemble is influenced to some extent by the Italian villa and Baroque architecture, in harmony with the aesthetics of Noucentisme.
The La Farigola School Group was built on land owned by Barcelona City Council, where there had previously been a school in a precarious state that had to be closed. The construction of the renovated centre was carried out within the framework of the planning of the Technical Advisory Office of the Culture Commission to solve the city's school problem. Thus, in 1913, the old building was demolished and around 1917, the architect Josep Goday began to plan a new school for girls and a nursery school. The initial name was "Escuela Graduada de Niñas de Vallcarca" and it was later called Grupo Escolar el Tomillo de Vallcarca, as the Tomillo stream was nearby. In 1935 Goday closed one of the porches to increase the capacity of the classrooms.
