The idea is to breathe air into the Raval. Mayor Jaume Collboni’s government intends to revitalize the old corridor of squares in the northern part of the neighborhood with a current that refreshes the narrow streets between Avinguda del Paral·lel and Plaça Universitat. For this reason, Barcelona City Council will try to promote the most fragile and delicate citizen uses, children’s, which tend to lose out. The first to be expelled from public spaces that degrade are always the smallest.
The last governing committee of the Consistory approved an investment of 1.16 million euros in order to open in the Sant Pau del Camp gardens a new children’s play area, a platform with a stage and a new walking route diaphanous, without so many corners that only disturb the walker, especially after dusk. This is the final phase of works that mayoress Ada Colau started. In addition, in a few days the remodeling work on Plaça Castella will be finished to provide the children of their school with a place to play happily.
Albert Batlle, deputy mayor for Security and responsible for the Ciutat Vella district, explains that, to these initiatives, we must add a handful of more or less immediate interventions in the squares of Àngels, la Gardunya and Terenci Moix in in order to finish drawing this axis from side to side of the Raval. “We want to encourage children’s use of public space throughout Ciutat Vella because this will lead to more familiar uses of public space. We cannot allow incivility to expel families from the squares. We are talking about very drastic interventions that improve what we already have, as well as adopting the determination and energy needed to stop the degradation that the neighborhood has been suffering for a few years now”. And then, he adds, do the same on the other side of the Rambla, in the Gothic Quarter, starting with George Orwell and Vila de Madrid squares, also during this mandate.
The truth is that the Sant Pau del Camp gardens have gone through more dismal times. Some municipal cleaning employees remember that railway workers from the four corners of the planet lived here, a lot of Italian drug addicts, groups of helpless boys… “The tents one after the other were no longer visible after the pandemic The graffiti artists don’t sell that much either; all these paintings are old. Since they put in ramps for skaters and basketball hoops, more people come to play sports, and also many students from the Liceu conservatory, who sometimes play a little before class. In the morning you find some empty beer cans and the remains of bottles, because people still sneak in at night, but not as much as before”.
The last and most expensive phase of these surgical works will begin in September and will be finished before the summer of next year. The remodeling plans to act on about 814 m2 located closer to the Raval than to the Parallel. You can read the word peace. The P will be the ladder to access a large slide, the A a grid of ropes to climb and the U a seesaw. In addition, around the old chimney of the Nicolau Tous i Soler factory, some of the flowerbeds that generate so much anxiety among walkers will be removed and new itineraries will be opened. A circuit with a slight undulation designed for the creatures to play with the bicycles and tricycles will also be drawn.
The creatures are also becoming the new protagonists of Plaça Castella. Very modern street characters come here, a lot of university students looking for cheap canes, peddlers who supply cans of beer to the grocery stores, people who notice nowhere else to sleep , very insistent graffiti artists… And the creatures have always been cornered there. In a few days the students of the school located at the back will open a kind of playground in front, in one of the large circular flower beds in the square. The site already has a new pavement, a few benches and bleachers. During recreation, the entire area will be cordoned off. The workers explain that in order to carry out these works they closed the parterre in question after Christmas, and as since then no dog climbs up to urinate and no one sits there with the cans, the vegetation has increased again The other parterres in Castilla are completely bare.
All these initiatives aimed at airing the Raval are a very old idea and a historical challenge. Already in 1980, the first democratic Barcelona City Council led by Mayor Narcís Serra commissioned the architect Lluís Clotet to study which new uses of public space and some cultural institutions should be encouraged in order to fill these narrow streets Then, for the first time, this axis was outlined and named: From the Liceu to the Seminary. That was also a commitment to micro-urbanism, to urban surgery, to take advantage of unbuilt areas. The problem is that fitting the pieces that make up this neighborhood has always been a frustrating exercise for the administration. This living puzzle is harder than it looks. That is why it is a historic challenge for Barcelona. We are talking about skateboarders, residents, visitors, traders, people with many problems… Few parts of the city play such a complex role as the Raval. The reform of Plaça dels Àngels is already triggering strong neighborhood tensions. Not everything has been said yet, and many of the exclusionary uses that the City Council wants to combat with such determination and energy are not, at least not only, the result of incivility.
