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When we walk along Pau Casals Avenue (barely two blocks that go from Francesc Macià Square to the Turó Park gardens), few will think about all the relevant changes. not only in its urbanization but in nomenclature, which it has experienced throughout its history.
It was inaugurated on January 3, 1933 as Victor Hugo Avenue, French poet, playwright and romantic novelist.
Later, on May 23, 1934, the City Council converted her into Pablo Casals, a musician born in Vendrell on December 29, 1876 and considered one of the best cellists of all time.
With the end of the civil war, the Francisco Franco regime converted it, on May 25, 1939, into General Goded Avenue, as a reward to the soldier Manuel Goded for his intervention in the failed coup d’état in Barcelona that cost him his execution.
Goded left Mallorca on July 19, 1936 with the task of consolidating the coup d’état in the Catalan city and although he initially arrested General Francisco Llano de la Encomienda, commander of the IV Organic Division, who was against the coup d’état state, on the afternoon of July 19, after major shootings in the vicinity of the Atarazanas barracks, he was forced to surrender. He was arrested the same afternoon of July 19 by the republican authorities. He was taken to the prison ship Uruguay, where he was tried for sedition by court-martial and sentenced to death. He was shot in the moats of Montjuïc Castle on August 12, 1936.
After the civil war, the Franco regime began to rename the streets and squares, eliminating names that were not pleasant for the dictatorship: the Alcalá Zamora square, which, during the war, was renamed Hermanos Badía square, was first named Army Square. Moroccan, to later keep the name of Calvo Sotelo, which remained until the beginning of democracy, when it changed again to Francesc Macià Square.
Although the city council in its gazetteer says that it restored the name of Pau Casals on General Goded Avenue on February 1, 1977, the front page of La Vanguardia on Wednesday, December 29, 1976, offered a photograph of an operator already placing the plaque with the new name of the avenue.
The current Diagonal, which initially Ildefonso Cerdà and Víctor Balaguer baptized as “Gran Vía Diagonal”, over the years received the names Avenida General Argüelles (from 1874 to 1922), the final section became Avenida de la Nacionalidad Catalan (from 1924 to 1931). The avenue was also named after Alfonso XIII, but the Republic produced a new change, converting it between 1931 and 1939 into Avenida del Catorce de Abril.
Avenida Josep Tarradellas, which connects the Plaza de Francesc Macià and the Plaza de los Països Catalans, born in 1917, the date on which its layout was approved, border between the Eixample and Hostafrancs, as a promenade. The avenue was not inaugurated until a few years later.
According to Jesús Portavella’s book Els carrers de Barcelona, ??given the number of properties that had to be expropriated in 1928, 11 years after the urbanization began, a part of it was inaugurated, since only a first section of 50 meters had been built. .
In 1929, it was baptized Avenida de la Infanta Carlota Joaquina, a name that disappeared in 1931 with the establishment of the Republic. During the period of the civil war, a new name appeared on the street, Bernat Metge, but, once the war ended until the arrival of democracy, it was called Infanta Carlota again.
In 1966, during the mandate of José María de Porcioles, work began on the construction of an underground parking lot on Avenida del General Coded. The work lasted until the end of 1967. A year later the new gardens that occupy the central promenade were completed.
The pavement that covers the central part and surrounds the flower beds is reminiscent of the 60s and the streetlights and access to the parking lots were designed by the sculptor Josep Maria Subirachs, one of the last sculptors of the Sagrada Familia temple.
With the arrival of democracy, the old avenue recovered its name of Pau Casals, the name by which Barcelona residents know it today.
Pau Casals Avenue is a recognition of one of the most important Catalan musicians, as well as a defender of human rights. Pau Casals played the Peace Anthem on October 24, 1971 at the UN. Later, at his house in Puerto Rico, he recorded El Cant del Ocells for the story.
