The definitive transformation of the Model, which is still in the offices, takes a new step to see the light. 2027 is the milestone set to have the first phase finished. To achieve this, in April there will be a tender, worth 1.3 million euros, for the drafting of the executive projects of this package, which covers 15,800 square meters of roof distributed between the Xirinacs school institute, a sports center and the space dedicated to memory of the old prison, as well as a power station that will feed the entire complex. The forecast of the Barcelona City Council is that the works start in 2025.
In a second phase, the endowment housing will be built –121 have been planned–, the nursery and two centers for young people and the social and solidarity economy. The Eixample councilor, Pau González, has avoided this Monday putting a date on this part of the recovery of the Model and has limited himself to saying that the works “will be concatenated” with the previous ones. Last September, the municipal government pointed out that it could be ready in 2028. The third and last piece will be a residence for the elderly, which depends on the Generalitat and does not have –and did not have– execution forecasts. Each zone that is transformed will include the urbanization, with a predominance of green, of the adjoining public spaces.
As for the first phase that is now being activated, the main novelty is that the entirety –and not just a part– of the fourth gallery of the old prison, the one most closely linked to political prisoners, will be preserved to be used as a memorial space. Thus, it will extend over the three floors and a part of the panopticon, the central and most characteristic body of the prison, which dates from 1904. In total, this area will have 5,800 square meters. The writing of your project will cost 300,000 euros.
The Department of Democratic Memory, headed by Jordi Rabassa, has worked on the definition of the project with experts and neighborhood and specialized entities and has analyzed experiences of old museumized prisons in Europe and America. “It is an emblematic building and a monument full of experiences, life stories and very diverse memories”, highlighted the mayor. His intention is to form a “triad” with El Born and the Via Laietana police prefecture, which he hopes to incorporate in the coming years as a citizen space. Thus, he has predicted, “Barcelona will take the lead in public memory policies, in terms of the treatment of heritage and the discipline of democratic and collective memory itself.”
On the ground floor there will be ten themed cells that will allow a tour from the beginning of the penitentiary system (the prisons of the old regime, represented in Barcelona by that of the Queen of Amàlia) to the achievement of the new penal paradigm (the Model prison, which was replicated in several cities), going through the Second World War and the Civil War and Franco’s repression. They will also remember the centers for women, the labor and social conflict, the prisoner strikes, the repression of the LGTBI collective and the gypsies… and, in addition, what this prison represented for the growth of the Catalan capital.
Another novelty is that the gypsy chapel, the work of the artist Helios Gómez, will be restored on the first floor. The memory space project will also include a multipurpose space on the -1 floor to exhibit pictorial, sculptural and audiovisual works. Likewise, other areas of the enclosure, outside the fourth gallery and the panopticon, will reflect the tangible and intangible heritage vestiges of the Model’s past.
Being the same area, the southwest, where the workshops were, between Nicaragua, Provença and Rosselló, the Xirinacs school, the sports center and the power plant will share a project. Its writing will cost a million euros. González stressed that the City Council and the Generalitat have agreed to advance the deadlines of the former through the Consorci d’Educació, with municipal financing. The idea is that the 2027-2028 academic year begins with the new facilities ready. Of the 10,000 square meters of the piece, some 5,500 will be for the educational center, which will have two lines, 2,800 for sports equipment and 1,600 for the power station, which will generate cold and heat through geothermal and aerothermal energy throughout the premises.
