The star project of Ada Colau’s second term as head of Barcelona City Council, the redevelopment of Consell de Cent, Girona, Comte Borrell and Rocafort streets, had an immediate complement in the upper part of l’Esquerra de l’Eixample, the transformation of a section of Rosselló Street, between Urgell and Nicaragua, into another green axis. The project even had the endorsement of having been the most voted for by the residents of Eixample in the participatory budgeting process. However, a series of technical problems alleged by the Mobility area prevented this initiative from becoming a reality in the previous mandate. In the current mandate, and not only because Mayor Jaume Collboni has expressed from minute one his willingness to put the brakes on the Superilla Barcelona program, the total pacification of this end of Rosselló Street has all the numbers for, at best, cases, remain on standby.
In recent days, the publication on the contracting platform of the Barcelona City Council of the tender for the “works related to the redevelopment of Rosselló Street between Nicaragua Street and Comte d’Urgell Street” surprised some residents of l’ Esquerra de l’Eixample who have not lost hope that this road will follow in the footsteps of Consell de Cent and others. The offer submission period, open on November 10, ended on December 5.
Celebrity and surprise. Was Collboni, confessedly reticent about the convenience of continuing to draw green axes in Barcelona, ??willing to carry out a project that crossed the commons? Negative response: “the tender for this work was made by an error by the legal services of BIMSA (municipal company), which proceeded to withdraw it from the contracting portal,” municipal sources clarify. The same sources recall that this project underwent various modifications and was put on hold at the end of the previous term for the study of the new government, in order to carry out “a more ambitious action than planned.” And although until a few hours ago the tender for the work was still published, the promised redevelopment of this stretch of seven streets in Rosselló still has no calendar.
The documentation to which La Vanguardia had access before its withdrawal established a completion period for the works of 17 weeks and an estimated value of the contract of just over 530,000 euros.
The project to convert this segment of Rosselló Street into a pacified road obtained 2,816 votes in the participatory budget process of the previous mandate in the Eixample district, ahead of the second classified, that of the eco-chamfers on Aragó Street, a sequel to the tactical urbanism in vogue since the pandemic that sought to eliminate car spaces and relocate waste containers to gain living and resting spaces with new urban furniture and vegetation. It so happens that the eco-chamfer project was the first project affected by the change in the mayor’s office. Of the five actions planned at intersections on Aragó Street, the socialist government intends to save only one, that of Bruc Street, erasing that provisional aspect that characterizes the tactical urban planning of the previous period.
The creation of the winning project for the Eixample participatory budgets, a proposal by the Associació de Veïns de l’Esquerra de l’Eixample and the Camí Amic entity, was the subject of an unresolved debate between at least three areas of the City Council: Urban Planning, Mobility and the district. The grassroots initiative proposed to complement the network of green axes in Eixample by intervening on Rosselló Street so that a citizen corridor would be created that would connect the Modelo to the Clinic, in an area with several schools and social and sports facilities. The affected section is characterized, especially in the part closest to the old Modelo prison, by a rather low intensity of traffic, a fact that, according to the project promoters, should facilitate the action,?for which the participatory budgets reserved a game of 850,000 euros.
