An old urban legend says that a long, long time ago, in the place that was later occupied by the Can Batlló factory, there lived a beautiful woman who often displayed herself on a pile of rubble. She was so beautiful that the men of those lands only had eyes for that woman with the enigmatic smile. But evil and envious tongues said of her that she was a witch. The farmers of the neighboring farmhouses, perhaps forced by family pressure, raised their prayers for the disappearance of such a mysterious and feared woman. Her prayers were answered and she was never seen in those parts again.
A country house was built in that place and became known as the Can Bruixa farmhouse. Today, that building in the Bordeta neighborhood, in the Sants-Montjuïc district, looks so deteriorated that it threatens ruin. She had all the numbers to die executed by the woodpecker. And, despite this, the Barcelona City Council, responding to the neighborhood’s demands, is ready to save it and give it a new lease of life.
The Consistory, in a decision that dates back to the time of the previous mayoress of Barcelona, ??Ada Colau, tendered for just under 41,000 euros the drafting and direction of the comprehensive rehabilitation project of Can Bruixa. According to municipal sources, it is expected that the drafting of the project will be awarded at the end of this year so that it will be completed at the beginning of 2025.
The renovation work on the farmhouse is ongoing. The new government of Jaume Collboni must define the investment priorities in the Municipal Investment Plan (PIM) of this mandate. However, it is the will of the local authorities to go ahead with the rehabilitation of Can Bruixa so that it becomes a multipurpose space open to the neighborhood and integrated into the Can Batlló complex, currently under construction and on its way to becoming a large urban park One of the options is for the restored property to host a space of historical memory of the Bordeta neighborhood and the old municipality of Sants before its annexation to Barcelona.
Can Bruixa, sometimes also known as Cal Paretó, is a rural building with a quadrangular plan, ground floor and first floor, from the second half of the 19th century. It is located, hidden, in an interior plot of the Can Batlló site, although its existence and the agricultural activity that took place in its area of ??influence predate the large textile factory, which was inaugurated in 1880 In fact, Can Bruixa is the only survivor of the successive phases of transformation of this end of the municipality of Barcelona and, in particular, of the sixties, when Franco’s desarrollismo loaded almost all the typical low-rise houses of La Bordeta .
The property where this building is located is an asset owned by the Barcelona City Council without specific protection, but with a symbolic value that has boosted the vindictive action of some entities in the neighborhood that successfully mobilized to avoid nor the disappearance.
The past of Can (or Cal) Bruixa is shrouded in shadows as dark as the origins of the denomination that has reached our days. Other more pedestrian versions, although no less reliable than the one starring the enigmatic woman, attribute the name of the farmhouse to one of its owners known as “en Bruixa”, who acquired it from a previous owner who dedicated to the cultivation and sale of vegetables.
