The three student residences that will soon be built on either side of Paral·lel Avenue will have up to 766 places. There are currently 68 facilities of this type operating in Barcelona, ??totaling around 10,600 places. The works on the two residences that will open on the Drassanes side are already underway. Two ten-five-story buildings will be built here in 24 months. One with 164 spaces and 5,564.2 m2, and the other with 184 and 6,533.13 m2.
And the land in front, just across the Paral·lel, next to the Plaza de las Tres Xemeneies, has already been prepared for the entry of the machines. The gas station, the tire store and the nightclub that were built here have already been completely demolished. The developers are finalizing the building permit. The City Council already approved this project in the previous mandate. This building will have 11,329.50 m2, 418 spaces and six floors. 16% of the places are reserved.
The opening of these residences brings, however, great neighborhood disagreements. Quite a few believe that the arrival of hundreds of university students willing to pay at least a thousand euros a month for a room and a lot of services will revitalize the south of Raval and Poble Sec, the most degraded sides of these neighborhoods. Sometimes it seems that these streets function as a sink for the problems that the city drags down. Furthermore, we are at the saddest and most forgotten end of the Paral·lel. Here business is limping, many people live in tents, you find abandoned syringes.
Many other residents, however, are convinced that these types of establishments, especially in summer, end up functioning as hidden hotels, that such an injection of floating population will intensify tourist overcrowding and the feared gentrification, that what the Raval and the Poble Sec are social housing that stops the expulsion of neighbors.
Furthermore, a few numbers higher, in the same Paral·lel, another facility of these characteristics is already operating, with 191 seats, laundry, gym, movie theater, rooftop pool… And the same investment fund that designed the residence of the Three Here about 200 places are reserved.
Barcelona severely restricts the opening of student residences, but it is not a total veto. Furthermore, for some time now, especially in Madrid and Barcelona, ??given the increase in the cost of rental apartments that makes it so difficult for students to share a flat as was done for so long, these businesses became a very interesting refuge asset for investors of everyone.
The greatest disagreements regarding the convenience of these businesses take place in the Drassanaes. Many neighbors still remember that in 1999 the UGT housing cooperative took over the place with the aim of building affordable apartments. So nothing else could be built here. But the modification of the PERI in 2003 expanded the permitted uses of the site, reduced the proportion of social housing that had to be built to 25% and thus multiplied the value of this site exponentially. Here, quite a few feel that the neighborhood was the victim of a hit, and that the residences will accelerate the conversion of the Raval into a theme park for people who come to the city to have a good time for a few months.
But many others think that the surroundings already host many assistance services aimed at people with many problems, so many that they greatly complicate coexistence in the neighborhood. That here we don’t need so many social apartments, that at least the residences will bring new blood that will surely regenerate the battered commerce, that will renew a human ecosystem that sometimes produces chills and also tremors. In fact, some would have even preferred that they open a high-end hotel, a business that would truly revolutionize the area.
In reality, here, in the most soulless part of the Raval, no one is happy, no one is truly satisfied. Not even the promoters of these two residences. In fact, if one regularly passes by the place, one has the impression that they are delaying the works, rushing the administrative deadlines for their licenses, to see if the new political situations open up new possibilities. The City Council granted planning permission in March 2022.
The truth is that when the Praktik group acquired these lands in 2015, it was planning the construction of an eleven-story hotel with 190 rooms. But one of Mayor Ada Colau’s priorities was to prevent it. Apparently she was offered to build all the social apartments she wanted anywhere else, but there was no way to convince her. Then the courts overturned the convergent era use plan that authorized building a hotel here. A last-minute request from the developers allowed them to process the permits for these two residences before the City Council restricted these businesses throughout the Ciutat Vella district. Colau and his people had no choice but to give the green light to the project. What happens is that after the investiture of Mayor Jaume Collboni, the City Council’s relations with the city’s investors are very different.