It is not the first time that residents have heard the promise that the final pending section of Roma Avenue in Eixample will be renovated, which runs between Viladomat Street to the area around Sants Station, Tarragona Street and the Plaza of the Catalan Countries. The truth is that we have to go back more than a decade, to a distant 2010, when the last piece was cleaned up, between Comte d’Urgell and Viladomat streets. The reform has been carried out in different phases and the first was carried out in 2004, between Aragó and Comte d’Urgell. Although preliminary projects for the remaining section have been drawn up in recent years for different reasons, they have not materialized.
Now, Barcelona City Council has launched a competition to define how the pending part of this road will be projected, about 800 meters, a little more than half of just over a kilometer of the entire avenue. Specifically, the area where the intervention will be carried out covers an approximate area of ??51,865 square meters and it is expected that the cost of the contract budget (VAT excluded) of the entire action will rise to approximately 22 million euros, a figure that must be taken with caution. caution as it is an estimate pending the preparation of the respective preliminary projects and executive projects.
With the call for the tender, the municipal government takes a first step and begins the procedures with the expectation that the works can begin at the end of 2025 on the section that goes from Viladomat street to Calàbria, municipal sources report.
Several large projects underway on this side of the city are pushing to activate the postponed development of the last part of this avenue. One of them is the urbanization of the environments associated with the Estel Building, the former Telefónica headquarters where the European hub of the pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca will be located. It is one of the largest properties in Eixample that, after several failed projects, is now facing the final stretch of the works with the expectation that they will be completed at the end of this year. On the other side of the avenue, in the Sants-Monjuïc district, work has begun around Sants station, actions prior to the remodeling of the railway terminal.
These major interventions, as indicated by the deputy mayor and councilor of the Eixample district, Jordi Valls, represent an “opportunity to propose and begin to have a global transformation project for the avenue, to update one of the important axes of the district.” “We are working with the idea that the first section that can begin to be executed is that of Viladomat and Calàbria, with a forecast of starting works by December 2025, but to do it coherently, we want to have this analysis of the entire axis” , adds Valls.
The competition will serve to shape this avenue, although there are a series of guidelines and conditions in the tender that already give some clues as to what this transformation would be like. The modification will affect mobility although it remains to be seen to what extent since the municipal desire is for it to be a more pedestrianized environment. According to the initial documents, the intention is that where the pedestrian could have more space at the expense of the car would be in the section located between Viladomat and Entença streets, where there are now three traffic lanes. In this sense, it is planned to gain new proximity spaces, such as a children’s play area and another for dogs, which will replace the one that was closed more than a year ago in the Paula Montal gardens.
Another no less important issue to take into account is that below the avenue the railway corridor runs to Sants and above there is a slab on which “it will not be possible to plant trees, but it will be possible on the sides”, where large species such as pines or tipuanas, pick up the tender. In the part of the slab where large trees cannot be placed, it is proposed to install pergolas or similar elements to generate shaded areas.
The technical specifications also mention that any major road intervention in Eixample is “inevitable” to have as a reference the grid-shaped urban layout designed by Ildefons Cerdà, although it so happens that Roma Avenue draws an independent line along this plot being diagonal.
Proposals for the competition can be submitted until June 3. Initially, about 40,000 euros will be put out to tender to carry out the preliminary studies and once the winning team is chosen, the estimated value of the contract will rise to about 600,000 euros, which will include the preliminary projects for reforming the avenue between Viladomat and Entença streets and the section between Entença and the Plaza del Països Catalans, as well as the executive projects between Calàbria and Entença and between Viladomat and Calàbria.
