A third ruling has knocked down another green axis of the Consell de Cent superblock in Barcelona, ??the one that corresponds to the perpendicular street of Rocafort. The judge has concluded that it could not be processed as an ordinary work but that, to pedestrianize a street, the General Metropolitan Plan (PGM) had to be modified. The ruling agrees for the third time with the Unió d’Eixos Comercials Turístics de Barcelona (Barcelona Oberta), which had filed appeals against the pedestrianization of the Consell de Cent superblock that Ada Colau undertook when she was mayor of the city.
A first ruling in September 2023 already ruled that the pedestrianization of Consell de Cent had to be reversed; a second ruling, known last week, ruled the same for the perpendicular street of Comte Borrell; and the third, known today, Friday, affects Rocafort Street and the square at the intersection with Consell de Cent.
Specifically, the new ruling, to which Efe has had access, affects the resolution of the City Council of May 22, 2022, by which the redevelopment projects of the sections of Rocafort Street, from Avenida de Roma, were approved. to Gran Vía. And the new square located at the intersection of the green axes of Consell de Cent and Rocafort was also approved, which also includes a section of Consell de Cent between Vilamarí and Calabria.
With the same arguments as in the two previous rulings, the judge of the Administrative Litigation Court number 10 of Barcelona has ruled to reverse the pedestrianization process and return to the previous planning of Rocafort Street. However, in the previous case of Consell de Cent, whose ruling was issued after completing all the works, the street has not been dismantled, but rather a mediation process has been entered into by the will of all the parties, including them as well. Barcelona Oberta, which presented the appeal.
In any case, on paper, the new ruling calls for revoking the Rocafort pedestrianization project for not being “in accordance with the law.” “Under the appearance of what the Barcelona City Council calls an Executive Project of ordinary work, an urban planning action transforming the Eixample road network is hidden, which therefore would have eventually had to be processed and, where appropriate, approved through a Specific Modification of the Metropolitan General Plan,” the judge maintains in the ruling. For the magistrate, the superblock is “far” from being an ordinary construction project: “It means a paradigm shift with respect to how the urbanization of public space had been conceived.”
