Barcelona, Modern Architecture Guide 1929-1979 is an approach to a very complex period of the recent history of Barcelona.The first decade analyses the most heroic time of Modern Movement, including the World Exhibition in 1929, eith the well-known German Pavillion conceived by Mies van der Rohe and the experience of the GATPAC, a group of young architects leaded by Josep Lluís Sert.

Modernisme and Noucentisme were not antithetical. One came after the other. In fact, Modernisme differs from Jugendstil and Art Deco essentially by virtue of the place where it developed: Barcelona. The city would not have been possible without the noucentistes unifying idea, a notion that was unknown to the modernistes before them. The Noucentista ideology was capable of embracing in its overall cultural and political project the multifaceted and fragmentary whole of Modernisme.