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When the Ministry of Public Works commissioned Ildefonso Cerdà, in 1855, to carry out a project to give Barcelona the power to grow after the oppression to which it had been subjected within the walls, neither the Government nor Cerdà himself could have imagined the subsequent growth of the city.
Not even the most optimistic person of the time would have thought that the city, which had been oppressed for centuries, would become a colossal city after 1897, when the municipalities of Las Corts, Horta, Gracia, San Andrés del Palomar (current Sant Andreu neighborhood), San Gervasio de Cassolas, San Martin de Provensals, Santa María de Sants and, later, in 1921 the Villa de Sarriá.
This unexpected change, in the mid-nineteenth century, caused the streets of different towns to coincide for a time, now assembled with the annexation, until they later disappeared forever.
And this is, precisely, the history of the disappeared Aurora street, later Nuria street and that today is only an inconsequential piece of the current Mallorca street.
The former Calle Nuria de San Martin de Provençals (now Sant Martí de Provençals) hindered the development of public transport in the northern part of the city. It started at the intersection of calle Mallorca with Rogent and ended at pasaje Puigmadrona. It had a fairway for driving a car and two sidewalks on which a person could barely walk.
But, it was a very important street for the population of the Clot – Campo del Arpa neighborhood. There was no metro and, in order to get to the city center, we had to go look for the trams that left the beginning of the Rogent – ??Mallorca route.
One of the lines with the most movement was the 60 which, after several routes, ended up starting in Rogent and ending in Parallel. This was the first tram line that I took alone at the age of 14 to go to my first apprentice job in 1956, to get to San Pablo street. This line was suppressed on December 20, 1965.
The conditioning of public transport in the city saw the need to transport passengers to the northern neighborhoods, such as La Sagrera and San Andrés. The difficulty represented by the opening of new lines was detected because the rails had to be installed. And the transversal metro (current Red line) only circulated to Marina.
The Glorias and Clot metro stations on the current line 1 were not inaugurated until 1951. Navas, in 1953, Sagrera and Fabra i Puig, in 1954. The City Council first put trolleybuses into service and, later, buses .
Seeing the infeasibility of traffic on the future Avenida Meridiana, the circulation of Valencia and Mallorca streets was changed, in order to be able to definitively open Mallorca street and make the primitive Nuria street disappear, which, in principle, did not have important buildings.
The only house that was saved from demolition was the building of the La Forniga Martinenca cooperative, whose architect built the building in line with Calle Mallorca, making an enclosure at the height of the lower part of the building and a fence at the top. that left the entrance to the cooperative in sight.
La Formiga Martinenca was a workers’ cooperative founded in 1903, useful for the residents of that part of the neighborhood who lived up to Trinxant street. It had two components: economic and the convenience of proximity.
And it is that, in the lower part, a commissary was installed, which, by receiving visits from more buyers and being able to buy more quantity, could offer the cheapest products and prevented customers from having to go to the Clot market square, which had It had been inaugurated in 1889, but at that time it had the problem of distance and the inconvenience of having to cross the train tracks, even through the level crossing.
In addition, a large room was fitted out on the upper floor, which housed a bar counter and some marble tables, where the men spent their afternoons playing cards or dominoes. They had also built a small stage, where theater and variety shows were held on weekends, where young people with dreams of becoming artists went to perform some performances.
In fact, many artists started in these places: The Juvens duo, Ramón and Manolo, before becoming the Dynamic Duo; The Calatrava Brothers and myself, who, at the age of 18, spent that time visiting a series of venues reciting poetry (the performance of rhapsodes was more normal then).
During the Second Republic, the company was absorbed by the Lealtad de Gracia cooperative and, after the end of the war, it recovered again in 1945.
In 1970 it was about to disappear, because of real estate speculation. In 1983, the Permanent Municipal Commission approved the purchase of the current location.
La Formiga Martinenca, in 2010, carried out a series of works improving its facilities and incorporating the Barcelona School of Actors, founded in 1977 by Josep Anton Codina and Cesc Queral.
During the coronavirus period, its facilities remained closed until 2022, when it reopened its doors, changing its original name and becoming a Cultural Cooperative and Center for Artistic Creation.
