mother and his brother Josep Maria to the Can Xammar de Dalt manor house in Almetlla del Vallès. The property, which had been the third most important one in the municipality, had fallen into ruin due to Phylloxera, when his mother, the widow of Ramon Xammar, inherited it. His mother tried to save the mostly rural property, renting rooms to Barcelonians who spent summers outside of the city, and the custom became widespread and turned Almetlla into a summer resort during the first third of the 20th century. But it was not enough, and two years after arriving, the still adolescent Eugeni Xammar had to decide whether to accept the challenge suggested by his mother of becoming a farmer and continuing the family business. His restless temperament kept him from any kind of farm-related vocation, and he answered that "whether farming or managing a farm, living in Ametlla for my whole life doesn't appeal to me in the slightest". When he was 14, his mother told him they would finish the winter in Ametlla and then work in Barcelona, in the cotton business Sucesores de B. Brutau. Four years later, his mother was forced to sell the farm at a loss to another cotton industrialist, Joan Millet i Pagès, brother of the director of the Orfeó Català, Lluís Millet. From that moment on, the property was rebaptized with the name Can Millet. This was not the only change, since the new owner hired the modernist architect in fashion in the area, Manuel Joaquim Raspall, to remodel the place. Xammar was flabbergasted when he saw the new look, and he wrote, "A touch of Raspall—to call it that—was all that was needed to transform a magnificent, gigantic farmhouse, with two sides, into a sort of inedible Easter Egg that to this day still frightens any sensible person." In August 1909, he took advantage of the 1500 pesetas that his aunt had given him to pay to get out of his military service in order to take a trip to Paris to polish his French while he took on all manner of jobs in order to survive. It's not clear whether he went to make a break with the environment of Barcelona during the Tragic Week of 1909, that he was already reflecting upon in his columns in El Poble Català, or if it was to get out of doing military service.