There was a time when Barcelona rejected the tram. And no, it was not in the consultation of the reform of the Diagonal of the mayor Jordi Hereu. Much earlier, at the beginning of the 20th century, the companies that dominated the sector, with the support of the City Council, torpedoed an ambitious metropolitan tramway project that was going to connect with Baix Llobregat.
The proposed layout started from Vallirana and reached the Rambla de Barcelona, ??a 34-kilometre route that crossed the population and commercial centers of the Llobregat valley next to the course of the river and its fertile agricultural lands. It was precisely designed to transport passengers but also merchandise.
Its promoter was not a mayor ahead of his time. Nor were the few businessmen in the area or some engineer wanting to test the infinite possibilities that opened up in the field of transport with the advent of electricity. The idea was brought to the table by Gumersindo de Cosso y Rosa, a businessman who made a living as a stockbroker at the time at the Casino Mercantil, also known as El Borsí, very close to where he lived and to Barcelona City Hall. , the institution responsible for stopping the works.
After almost a decade of unsuccessful bureaucratic attempts, the project was buried. There was no record of him anywhere until the journalist and writer Raúl Montilla, linked to La Vanguardia for almost 20 years and to Baix Llobregat since its inception, came across some actions with which de Cosso intended to obtain financing and pulled the thread. Searching through municipal archives and railway magazines of the time, such as the Gaceta de los Caminos de Hierro, he has managed to reconstruct the tramway Way of the Cross in the book From Vallirana to Barcelona. Historical chronicle of the frustrated first great metropolitan tramway, published by the Center d’Estudis Comarcals del Baix Llobregat.
When Gumersindo de Cosso presented the idea in 1903, he quickly received the political and technical approval from the town halls of Hospitalet de Llobregat, Cornellà, Sant Boi, Molins de Rei, Sant Vicenç dels Horts, Cervelló and Vallirana. It was an opportunity for economic and urban development for them. Several mayors linked the tram with the installation of electric street lights and the redevelopment of its streets.
The infrastructure was planned to work with three power plants built along the route and to incorporate what was then a complete technical novelty in the layout in the center of Barcelona: an underground power system that de Cosso patented in Spain in 1905 and which is the base of which will be released in the coming months in the section between Glòries and Verdaguer. With this system, the installation of catenaries and posts is avoided, but this innovation at that time did not convince the City Council.
They objected, although what bothered the Catalan capital was not the new system. The project was intended to end in the heart of the Catalan capital and the tram companies that were already operating in the big city, led by the Marquis de Foronda, came out with all their artillery against it. Allegations, technical reports and procedures bordering on illegality with reckless casualties and draconian conditions were delaying the works. So much so that they even made the Ministry of Development and the Civil Government intervene, which supported the common front of Baix Llobregat and economic sectors such as agricultural employers.
Nothing managed to move it forward and Gumersindo de Cosso, who was also from the Conservative Monarchical Center, disappeared from the map with the Tragic Week of 1909. And with him, a tram that was replaced in a certain way by the Llobregat-Anoia railway line some time later. .
