An investment of 40 million euros and the beginning of the works marked for the year 2024. Objective: to convert the old Palau Municipal d’Esports, in Montjuïc, into the Barcelona Sports Hub, a center of innovation and technologies applied to sport and dedicated in part to e-sports, although maintaining a space dedicated to traditional sports uses. From this announcement made by the then first lieutenant and now mayor of the city, Jaume Collboni, in April 2022, during the celebration of the first ReAct days (economic reactivation of Barcelona after the pandemic), the firm commitment remains of the municipal government to go ahead with the initiative, but both the estimated budget and especially the calendar have gone awry.
“The project of the Palau Municipal d’Esports converted into a center for the practice of e-sports and for the incubation of digital sports companies is still standing”, say City Council sources consulted by La Vanguardia, who add that the The municipal government is working with the idea of ??having a functional plan ready throughout 2024, a step prior to the drafting of the executive project and the start of works that, as of now, do not appear on the calendar before of the final stretch of the 2023-2027 municipal mandate.
The Collboni government wants the Barcelona Sports Hub, a project that has another leg in the Lluís Companys Olympic Stadium (an incubator for emerging companies in the sport tech sector), to be an example of maximum public-private collaboration, that the old pavilion on Carrer Lleida, properly remodeled, generate its own activity that is economically viable.
An added problem that is delaying the launch of this project has to do with the characteristics of the space chosen for its location. The Palau Municipal d’Esports is a pavilion with almost 70 years of history and has been inactive for 15 years, since the Barcelona Musical Theater (BTM) installed there closed in 2000. Some posters hanging from the walls outside the compound still remember today that last use before it closed. The singularity of this building makes it the victim of a painful paradox that afflicts many properties with a long life history that are intended to breathe new life into after a long period of disuse, if not abandonment. The multi-sport trip in Montjuïc is cataloged with a level of protection C (good with elements of interest) which, although it saves it from being a victim of the woodpecker, it also makes functional adaptation very difficult.
The file in the catalog of Barcelona’s architectural heritage corresponding to the Palau Municipal d’Esports indicates that any intervention in this building is subject to the obligation to maintain the volume, the facades and the interior elements of interest, especially the structure to cover a 65-meter span formed by eight tri-articulated reinforced concrete arches that once made this pavilion the only high-capacity indoor facility (8,000 spectators initially, which were reduced in successive remodelings) that it was in the city until the Palau Blaugrana was built in the early seventies.
Precisely, the difficulties in re-adapting the structure of the Palau Municipal d’Esports to other uses was one of the reasons – not the only one – why the attempt of the first government of Ada Colau to locate the hall there joint police force of the city (Urban Guard, Mossos d’Esquadra, firefighters and technical services) fell into the sack and was definitely discarded.
Meanwhile, inactivity and the passage of time have left their mark on this old sports venue where these days a large crane was carrying out maintenance work on the tower located on the corner of the streets of the Urban Guard and Segons Jocs Mediterranis, a tower where five endearing Olympic hoops are visible, reminding us that the volleyball and rhythmic gymnastics competitions of Barcelona’92 were held here.
While waiting for better times, the Palau Municipal d’Sports has long since become a shelter for the homeless. Specifically, the main facade facing Lleida Street is a small settlement made of tents, cardboard and fabric where people who have settled in this place, in absolute precarious conditions, gather every day very few meters from the headquarters of the Territorial Unit of the Urban Guard of the Sants-Montjuïc district, taking advantage of the fact that it is a discreet and little-trafficked space.