The first roof under which the Catalan Antonio Rabat Comella slept when he landed in Chile was a stable. It was 1902 and the young man from Manlleu, aged 16, had arrived in South America to work at the El Banco Pobre bakery. It was a well-made establishment, owned by Joan Pujol, a friend of his parents, without heirs, and who needed a hand. Rabat’s initial task was to take charge of the horses that distributed bread in the center of Santiago. Then, the responsibilities increased, as did his business skills. He became the owner of a handful of bakeries, then wine cellars and, when he had already amassed a small fortune, he bought a 506-hectare farm on the slopes of Manquehue Hill, which bordered to the south with the Mapocho River, in the eastern sector of the capital, to make his own vineyard. It was there, where in the mid-1940s, he built a Spanish-style mansion, currently a Historical Conservation Property and converted into the most expensive house in Santiago, valued at about 23 million dollars. The Viña Manquehue House, owned by the Rabat family, has been for sale for a couple of years. Last year, the Directorate of Municipal Works (DOM) of the municipality of Vitacura, the most exclusive in Chile, approved a preliminary project by Nueva Costanera Real Estate Management to build a condominium of 39 houses and two buildings on the 6.4 hectares, without intervening on the heritage mansion. The requirement for a series of environmental permits prior to construction led the real estate company to take the case to the Comptroller’s Office, which resolved in January that the declaration of Historical Conservation Property not only protects the mansion, but the entire property. This allows building on the land following the guidelines of the communal regulatory plan, but the buildings must respect the architectural design, materials, colors and finishes of the house and cannot be higher than this one, which has two floors. Antonio Rabat bought the Santa Adela de Manquehue estate, which is known today as Santa María de Manquehue, on June 30, 1932. At that time, Santiago was growing towards the south, but the Catalan assumed that the time would come in which it would extend towards the north. Carlos J. Larraín relates in his book Las Condes (1952) – about the municipality where the property was located before Vitacura existed – that the businessman «with a permanent and apparently inexhaustible outlay» converted the arid and stony land into an orchard, where he planted a 90-hectare vineyard, with high-quality French vines that adapted well to the climate, which was the origin of the Viña Santa Adela de Manquehue. He built excellent warehouses and decent houses for his workers, whom he “educates his children in a school and Christianizes them in the chapel that he built at his own expense,” notes Larraín. He also built a polyclinic to care for them and a police checkpoint to protect the property. Casa Viña Manquehue, located in the upper sector of the capital, in Santiago. SOFIA YANJARI The estate had an old master’s house, made of damaged wood, where the mountain cold crept in in the winter. Antonio moved there with his wife, Carolina Gorchs Rabat – also Catalan and the businessman’s cousin – and their son José Rabat Gorchs, who was six years old at the time. They lived there for more than a decade, until in 1946 the couple decided to tear it down to build a mansion in keeping with the good fortune that the vineyard was giving them and the status they had achieved in Chilean society. He entrusted the plans to the architects Fernando Echaverría, from Madrid, and Germán Rodríguez Arias, from Catalonia. The latter, one of the favorites of the poet Pablo Neruda, who commissioned him to extend his houses such as Isla Negra and La Chascona, in Santiago. The Chilean historian Sergio Martínez tells in the book Los Rabat: a family from Catalonia and Chile (2007) that Rabat commissioned the architects to make the house “a sumptuous character, at the same time cozy and palatial (…) All of it with fine woods and ironwork, to accentuate its Spanish style with Herrerian reminiscences.” To the architect Echaverría, the writing indicates, Rabat repeated one and a thousand times: “Make the house big, so that the flock (of birds) does not fly away.” Martínez says that it is Carolina who insists on expanding the dimensions and takes care of the details, such as the quality of the wood and railings, the bronze ornaments, fireplaces, the chapel, the great hall and acquiring beautiful decorative objects, such as tapestries, carpets, furniture and paintings, ivories and porcelain. The result was a mansion with lingue shutters, ebony applications and wrought iron and bronze railings on two floors, where on the first floor is the chapel, a couple of desks and a bedroom for visitors, while in the second there is the large living room with terrace and dining room, as well as lounges, a guest bathroom and more bedrooms. In total, the residence with views of the Andes Mountains has seven living rooms, seven bedrooms and five bathrooms. While the devout Rabat Gorchs couple lived in the mansion, they celebrated mass every Sunday and holy days in the chapel and after the vintage and harvest each year, they organized missions with the help of two priests and two catechist nuns that they house on their farm. When the mansion was already built, Rabat’s health weakened and in 1950 his son José, 25 years old, assumed control of his businesses. Antonio saw his only heir marry María Estrella Vilaplana, who will live with them in the Viña Manquehue house. Before he died, he met three of the eight children that the couple would have. According to Martínez’s text, in addition to wanting to have many descendants, his businessman’s heart wanted the property to be sold by square meters and not by hectares to get more out of it. At the end of the seventies, Rabat Gorchs – who died in 2010 – decided to change the use of the agricultural land and subdivide the 500-hectare property, founding the Manquehue real estate company and creating a residential neighborhood called Santa María de Manquehue, the first in the country with total planning and underground wiring.
