The Abaceria market moved provisionally to Paseo de Sant Joan five years ago while the old building on Travessera de Gràcia was being remodeled. During all these years, the iron structure stripped of everything that was inside has been visible. Last week, Barcelona City Council began construction work on the new market, which will last two years and will involve the dismantling of its characteristic iron structure.
A group of individuals has requested to immediately stop the demolition to preserve its heritage value and ask for the conservation of the structure in the design of the new market. One of the signatories of the document, which was presented last Friday before the Department of Urban Planning, is Assumpció Feliu Torras, doctor in Art History and great-granddaughter of Joan Torras Guardiola, the architect who designed the iron structure that has supported the market. the Abaceria since its construction. “I think that the demolition of the structure is very serious and is an aberration. All the architects of that generation say that Torras Guardiola is the Catalan Eiffel. And here they don’t care. They only look at the profitability and now they will make a replica that they say will also be catalogued. “It doesn’t make any sense,” she laments.
Another of the promoters of the letter to paralyze the dismantling of the structure is Jordi Rogent, an architect who was head of Heritage at Barcelona City Council for nearly 20 years, until 2013. He considers that the new market project “was born with a problem of entry: not wanting to maintain the original structure.” “We have been thinking about the matter for a long time. We have tried and spoken to the people of Mercats to warn them of the animalism that the proposals that were made represented for us. The building is protected by the city with a level C, which is the third level of heritage protection, and to propose changes a process must be carried out that in this case has not been followed,” he indicates.
Rogent assures that after holding several meetings with those responsible for the City Council, a commitment was reached to dismantle the structure, save it and erect it in the future Sant Andreu-Sagrera park as a tribute to Torras Guardiola, who was born in the neighborhood. “Now, with the change of government, they told us that they would dismantle only a part and that they did not know where they would store it and where they would assemble it.”
The City Council, for its part, maintains that during the processing of the project no allegations were presented and points out that Mercats executes all approvals with the approval of the Heritage and Urban Planning departments. Sources from the City Council assure that an exact replica of the structure will be made because the old one cannot withstand the weight of the new market. “After specialized technical analyzes it was concluded that the building does not have the technical resistance characteristics that guarantee the requirements that the roofs of these facilities have today,” city council sources underline. “The design of the new market and the new structure of the building present a configuration that reproduces the original but adapted to the current load capacity and the appropriate materials,” they specify.
The metal structure of the Abaceria market was built in 1892 and is one of the most outstanding elements of the iron architecture of Barcelona. It is included in the special protection plan for the historical-artistic heritage of Vila de Gràcia.
