Workers repairing the stage's fire curtain accidentally ignited the flammable material, and flames consumed the auditorium within hours. It was the second time in the theatre's history that fire had destroyed it — the first was in 1861 — and it reopened, rebuilt, in 1999 with modern technical facilities behind a restored historic facade.
The Liceu had already burned once before, in 1861, and had survived an anarchist bombing in 1893 during a performance of Rossini's William Tell, an attack that killed twenty people in the stalls. Its history was, in a sense, one of catastrophe and resurrection even before 1994.
When fire broke out on the morning of December 7, workers were repairing the safety curtain, a device meant to prevent exactly this kind of disaster from spreading beyond the stage. Ironically, the curtain's own flammable coating caught fire during the repair, and within a short time the auditorium's ornate 19th-century interior, with its gilded boxes and grand chandelier, was ash.
Barcelona rebuilt the Liceu with remarkable resolve, reopening it in October 1999 with expanded backstage machinery and modern acoustics behind a facade that preserved the memory of the original. Locals speak of the theatre now with a certain pride in its survival — a building that has burned twice and been bombed once, and still stages opera every season.