The idea is to breathe air into the Raval. The government of Mayor Jaume Collboni intends to revitalize the old corridor of squares in the northern part of the neighborhood with a current that refreshes these narrow streets between Avenida del Paral·lel and Plaza Universitat. To this end, Barcelona City Council will try to promote the most fragile and delicate citizen uses, those for children, those that tend to lose out. The first to be expelled from public spaces that are degraded are always the smallest in the house.
The last government commission of the Consistory approved an investment of 1.16 million euros in order to open a new children’s play area in the Sant Pau del Camp gardens, a platform with a stage and a new itinerary of open paths, without so many nooks and crannies that do nothing but worry the walker, especially after dusk. This is the final phase of works started by Mayor Ada Colau. Furthermore, in a few days the remodeling work on Plaza Castella will be completed, aimed at providing the children of their school with a place to play happily.
Albert Batlle, Deputy Mayor for Security and head of the Ciutat Vella district, says that to these initiatives we must add a good handful of more or less immediate interventions in the squares Àngels, Gardunya and Terenci Moix in order to finish drawing this axis. from side to side of the Raval. “We want to encourage children’s uses 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 capillary interventions that improve what we already have, and also about adopting the determination and energy necessary to stop the degradation suffered by the neighborhood that has been going on for some years.” And then, he adds, do the same on the other side of the Rambla, in the Barri Gòtic, starting with George Orwell and Villa de Madrid squares, also during this mandate.
The truth is that the Sant Pau del Camp gardens went through darker times. Municipal cleaning employees remember that scrap metal dealers from the four corners of the planet lived here, a lot of Italian drug addicts, groups of homeless kids… “The tents one after another stopped being seen after the pandemic. Graffiti artists don’t come as much anymore 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 something before class. And in the morning you find some empty beer cans and bottle remains, because people still sneak in at night, but not as much as before.”
The last and most expensive phase of these surgical works will start in September to conclude before the summer of next year. The remodeling contemplates acting on some 814 m2 located closer to the Raval than the Paral·lel. There you can read the word pau. The P will be the ladder to access a large slide, the A a grid of ropes to climb and the U a seesaw. Furthermore, around the old chimney of the Nicolau Tous i Soler factory, some of those flower beds that really generate so much concern among walkers will be eliminated and new itineraries will be opened. A circuit with a slight undulation will also be drawn, designed for children to play with their bicycles and tricycles.
The children are also called to be the new protagonists of Plaza Castella. Very modern characters typical of Tallers Street come here, a lot of university students in search of cheap beers, globetrotters who stock up on cans of beer at grocery stores, people who have no other place to sleep, very insistent graffiti artists… And The kids were always cornered. In a few days the students of the school located at the back will open a kind of patio in front, in one of the large, circular flower beds in the square. The place already has a new pavement, a few benches and some bleachers. At recess time the entire area will be cordoned off. The workers say that to carry out this work, the flower bed in question was fenced after Christmas, and since then no dog has climbed up to urinate and no one has sat down with their cans, the vegetation has grown again. The other flower beds in Castella are completely bare.
All these initiatives aimed at ventilating the Raval are a very old idea and a historic challenge. Already in 1980, the first democratic Barcelona City Council of Mayor Narcís Serra commissioned the architect Lluís Clotet to study what new uses of public space and some cultural institutions should be encouraged in order to smooth out these narrow streets. So, for the first time, this axis was already outlined and named: From the Liceu to the Seminari. That was also a commitment to microurbanism, to urban surgery, to take advantage of unbuilt areas. The problem is that fitting together the pieces that make up this neighborhood has always been a frustrating exercise for the administration. This living puzzle is more difficult than it seems. Hence it is a historic challenge for Barcelona. We talk about skaters, neighbors, visitors, merchants, people with many problems… Few parts of the city play a role as complex as the Raval. The reform of Plaza dels Àngels is already unleashing strong neighborhood tensions. It’s not all said yet. And many of the exclusionary uses that the City Council wants to combat with so much determination and energy are not, at least not solely, the result of incivility.
