Ana Viladomiu, Last Tenant in Gaudí's Casa Milà, Pays Fixed Rent for Life

Ana Viladomiu, 70, occupies a large, light-filled apartment in Antoni Gaudí's Casa Milà on Barcelona's Passeig de Gràcia, the priciest street in Spain. She holds the distinction of being the last tenant in any of Gaudí's buildings, excluding peregrine falcons nesting in the Sagrada Família.

The apartment draws about a million visitors a year as a world heritage site. "I'm used to all the visitors. It's a world heritage site, but it's my home and has been for almost 40 years," Viladomiu says. She raised her two daughters there, both now architects.

"Obviously, I can't take the rubbish out in my pyjamas because people take photos or ask me if I'm the woman who lives upstairs, like I'm a character. That's part of my life. But I know it's a privilege to live here."

The apartment came from her husband, Fernando Amat, owner of the Vinçon design store, comparable to London's Conran shop, which shut in 2015. Viladomiu moved in with him in 1988. She holds a renta antigua, a fixed-rent contract granting her and Amat—from whom she is separated—the right to stay until death. A not-for-profit foundation, which has managed the building since 2013, will then take ownership. Such contracts ended in 1985, but about 100,000 remain in Spain.

"When I moved in there was plenty of life here, lots of neighbours," Viladomiu says. "Around that time the building was acquired by the Caixa Catalunya bank, which bought out tenants with generous offers in order to refurbish the building. I don't know why they never made us an offer. We joke that they wanted us to stay here as some sort of attraction, like Snowflake, Barcelona zoo's famous albino gorilla."

Caixa Catalunya stopped banking in 2010 and merged with two other failed savings banks to create the foundation running La Pedrera, as Casa Milà is known. The building now holds offices and hosts cultural events like concerts.

Commissioned by Pedro Milà and Rosario Segimon, whose father built a fortune in Guatemalan coffee, the structure finished in 1910. Critics mocked it for resembling a quarry's rockface.

A UNESCO site since 1984, it has seen Trotskyist and socialist parties on lower floors at the 1936 Spanish civil war's start, plus a bingo hall, estate agents, consulates and an Egyptian prince.

Viladomiu's space features sculpted, curvy walls and balconies with ironwork suggesting animals and sea life. After Gaudí's 1926 death, Segimon shocked architects by removing or covering original details in her lavish first-floor apartment and redoing it in Louis XVI style.

Viladomiu faces no rules on changes but would not alter anything, including old brass light switches. "Everything still works," she says.

She interviewed ex-tenants for her historical auto-fiction book, now out in English as The Last Tenant. "The book is auto-fiction, but everything in it about La Pedrera is real," she says. "It began as a series of interviews with former tenants, but a journalist friend said: 'You should tell the story in the first person, along with the story of your family.'"

Famous visitors have included architect Zaha Hadid, ex-Barcelona mayor and Catalan president Pasqual Maragall, and designer Jean Paul Gaultier. "I met Gaultier downstairs by the lift," she recalls. "I had my arms full of bags of oranges and he was looking at everything with great enthusiasm. He asked me if I lived here and I invited him up to take a look around. 'You've made my day,' he said. Later he sent me a bunch of roses."

The centenary of Gaudí's death arrives in 2026. In June, the pope will visit Barcelona to bless the finished Jesus Christ tower in the Sagrada Família. Viladomiu stands as proof that Gaudí designed most works for residents, not tourists.