Actually the image seems somewhat disturbing. Nearly 2,000 New Jersey model yellow concrete barriers follow one another on a plot of land in the Horta-Guinardó district, at the foot of the Collserola mountain, known as Campa de la Clota. Barcelona City Council is storing here the large blocks that served to flank the terraces arranged on the road to mitigate the restrictions that restoration suffered so much during the pandemic. Many citizens think they are made of cement, but in truth they are made of concrete.
The retirement of the New Jersey will allow the city to finally shake off one of the last remnants of the pandemic that so marked the public space. In the end, that much-applauded emergency measure became a debate on the degradation of Barcelona’s public space. The problem was the exasperating delays. In principle, the government of Mayor Ada Colau was confident that these barriers were no more than a memory a year ago, more or less, but the regularization of so many emergency terraces involved administrative work of an unusual depth.
According to the latest calculations by the City Council, there are around 2,000 New Jerseys on this lot, barrier up, barrier down. The City Council has always been reluctant to detail the exact number of barriers deployed in the city during these years. Municipal sources limit themselves to pointing out that the majority have already been withdrawn, some 2,450. The 450 that remain in the air in these paragraphs were destroyed because they were in poor condition or used for other purposes. Of the 1,550 terraces provisionally installed on the roads during the pandemic, 1,387 have already been removed – not a few were not protected by these barriers, but by plastic pylons known as sevillanas. The Consistory trusts that this long-awaited operation concludes during this month of April.
This does not mean that the New Jersey will disappear from the streets and squares of Barcelona. Despite the mania that many people took, they will continue to be essential to flank works, enable provisional lanes and even take action against possible attacks.
