Located in the Ciutat Vella district, the Urquinaona skyscraper is a mixed residential and office building. It was projected before 1936, within the functionalist field. Carried out by Luís Gutiérrez Soto, the Madrid architect perfectly reflected the moral crisis caused by the Spanish Civil War.

Located between Trafalgar and Jonqueres Streets, on the corner of Plaça Urquinaona, it consists of a double-height ground floor that integrates a mezzanine and thirteen floors. Located on a triangular plot, the building between partitions is formed by a large volume around a central courtyard. This arrangement allows to ventilate all the service rooms and places the vertical communication cores at each of the vertices.

Its main façade overlooks the two public avenues and resolves the corner by rounding the chamfer. This façade is divided into smaller volumes that protrude from the plane of the façade and integrate some curved balconies.

The main floor appears blown away from the façade line and extends like a tribune running along the entire perimeter. This tribune marks a horizontal component that contrasts with the verticality of the three balcony bodies. It also provides it with a marked character of modernity by having all continuous glass openings without any opaque closures, revealing the entire floor free of load-bearing walls. On the other hand, the height of the mezzanine makes this floor, together with the large stained-glass windows, the same height as the main floor.

The façade plan is a strict grid of square windows distributed at a constant rate, without decoration. The gable and roof of the building are resolved by creating a game of volumes where the last three floors participate. It is a solution influenced by the designs that Le Corbusier had already done in blocks of flats. The influence of the aesthetics of the ships of the time is also indicated.

Decoratively, it should be mentioned that in the portals and halls on the ground floor there is a very austere decoration of a noucentista/academicist taste. Where this current stands out most clearly is in the decoration of the glazed metal doors in the entrance halls.

It is an interesting example of contemporary architecture from the 1930s that reflects the coexistence of a period dominated by academicism with the new rationalist tendencies.

The formal coherence of this building, which knows how to resolve the magnitude of its volume and urban integration, should be highlighted. He also found very effective solutions to give the first floors a commercial capacity that was pioneering in its time.

It was the first skyscraper built in Barcelona's Eixample. It was popularly called Gratacels de la Plaça Urquinaona because it was the first construction that stood out from the Eixample's own heights.