When in 2008 the residents of Sant Adrià de Besòs decided in a referendum to preserve the gigantic skeleton of the Besòs thermal power plant, the debate about its eventual demolition was buried, but another was opened: what to do with such an impressive post-industrial legacy? A decade and a half later, the matter seems resolved with the Catalunya Media City project, already in the process of receiving a first economic boost.
But there will be no need to wait for this audiovisual hub to materialize to see how the venue, which has been disused for more than ten years, comes to life. The announcement by the Manifesta biennial that it has chosen the old thermal power station as one of its venues for the 2024 Barcelona edition anticipates the incorporation of this unique space into the metropolitan cultural imagination.
Manifesta has not yet revealed what it will do in the thermal during the festival, between September 8 and November 24. It is known that, thanks to him, art will occupy part of the turbine room and the site where the chimneys stand.
The biennial knows how to take advantage of these inhospitable post-industrial spaces, as could be seen by those who in 2022 enjoyed the artistic installations and performances programmed in former factories such as the Brick Factory or the Rilindja Press Palace in Prishtina (Kosovo). Bold lighting is a key element in this type of transformative process.
It is likely that the Generalitat and the Sant Adrià City Council will consider the squatting of the premises by Manifesta as a cultural outpost that will serve as a test for future uses of a very complex space due to its location in no man’s land (it is the authentic blind spot of the metropolis), although well connected by train and tram.
The Three Xemeneies are not the Battersea Power Station in south London, a former power station famous for appearing on the cover of Pink Floyd’s Animals and rehabilitated as a residential and leisure space. They will never enjoy this global projection. But its recovery as a visitable space could be an event for the residents of Sant Adrià, Badalona, ??Barcelona and the entire Barcelona conurbation.
Manifesta 15 (the Catalan one will be the fifteenth edition) wanted its most relevant headquarters to be in metropolitan municipalities but very close to Barcelona. The chimneys, the Ricarda and the monastery of Sant Cugat meet these requirements.
In the history of chimneys, in fact, one can find aspects that are very much in tune with the principles of a biennial that proclaims itself to be a researcher and instigator of positive social changes. Because there is a suggestive – and feminist – story behind the construction of the chimneys.
The journalist of this newspaper, Jaume V. Aroca, presented it a few days ago in a conference, when he recalled that if they are as tall as they are, it is because the women of Besòs dared to go out into the streets in the middle of Franco’s regime to protest because of the thermal There it previously poisoned all the air in Sant Adrià, Badalona and Barcelona.
That was why, when the new plant was built, it was agreed to raise it up to almost 200 meters, with the aim of spreading the pollution high up.
The Sant Adrià writer Javier Pérez Andújar wrote about them that “they are the three chimneys to which I belong, just as an Indian tribe can belong to a sacred mountain.” On the other hand, for many Barcelonans who have not grown up in its shadow, the old power plant is a very visible protuberance but with hardly any emotional ties. Still.
Next year, for two months, this trident, which is the tallest civil building in Catalonia, will compete, in some way, with a Sagrada Família that day by day, to the greater glory of God, consolidates its hegemony over the Barcelona landscape. Gaudí is unbeatable, but finding out what a tribe of art nomads can do by delving into the bowels of a hitherto unexplored beast will surely justify the walk to Sant Adrià.
