Pau Gil i Serra was born in Barcelona in 1816 and settled in Paris since he was 17 years old , was a businessman of great prestige among the Parisian bourgeoisie who had inherited a fleet of ships from his father and "Banca Gil" of his brother Peter. Paul Gil had grown his fortune in mining and commercial railways activities, many of them in Spain. Unmarried and childless, when he was 76 he decided to make a will leaving half his fortune to the children of his brother Leopold and the other half for the construction of a hospital in Barcelona.