The Public Library of Barcelona is a little closer to becoming, almost 30 years later, a settled debt that the State had with its other capital. The plot next to the França station that the City Council has ceded for its construction – expected to be ready in 2028 – can already be seen in its entirety, after the post office wing that ran perpendicular to the terminal was demolished.
Now, from the station car park to the end of the field of bushes that grow facing the tracks, the site awaits the three modules designed by Josep Maria Miró: 16,100 m2 of usable surface, of which 1,900 correspond to the lobby and multipurpose areas and exhibition, and 7,100, to general library spaces.
However, as the underground floor that will house the multipurpose rooms and warehouses with a capacity for 600,000 volumes is about to be built, the three administrations involved have not decided what function will be given to the multipurpose spaces. The library model is pending consensus, and the appointment of a director who acts as interlocutor during the process does not seem urgent either.
The Ministry of Culture (which assumes the work and the cost of 55 million euros), the Generalitat (which will manage it) and the City Council (which provides the space) are in the monitoring commission that has decided on architectural sustainability and the comfort, but not whether they are necessary, for example, 10,000 m2 of books or it is better to gain space for the auditorium.
The common denominator is the full awareness that, as stated by the president of the Catalan Publishers’ Association, Patrici Tixis, “it is an opportunity to do justice to the great weight that literary creation and the publishing industry have in Barcelona, ??which It is also the publishing capital of the Spanish-American world”. The project began more than two decades late, when the city already had an excellent network of public libraries: it was time to create its own concept. These are the ideas being considered.
For Tixis, it is important that the desired equipment goes beyond the urban impact and the conservation of the bibliographic heritage (which corresponds by law to a provincial library). “It is an opportunity to become a nerve center, a hub for everything that surrounds the world of books and publishing,” he says. The Public Library of Barcelona –as he would call it– can be anything from a space for literary creation to a space for technological and future research. A place that is involved in the city and that radiates culture, from all disciplines related to books, theater, cinema, music… Or a space to house a museum or a permanent exhibition of 500 years of history publishing, printing and graphic arts in Barcelona”. Furthermore, Tixis sees there ongoing training for professionals in the publishing industry.
The idea of ??a museum is also defended by the writer and journalist for this newspaper, Sergio Vila-Sanjuán, for whom this library must become a “powerful” symbol of the Barcelona of the book through its architecture, its activities and its content. “The possibility of incorporating a book history museum designed for a general public like other European cities: Madrid, Paris, London, Geneva, Mainz, Parma is interesting.”
The general director of the Book, María José Gálvez, agrees that it is not possible to build a library without knowing what its uses will be, although it is true that there are many areas that will be multipurpose, “and we will think about them as users go through them.” using,” he says. “Because now we don’t know what they need the most. The functions of the State Public Library of Barcelona – as she mentions it – will be seen according to its roots in the environment, in the neighborhood, but for now it complies with those indicated by the law ”. Namely: it must be the depository of part of the bibliographic patrimony of the province; it has to gather and organize a collection and a fund of bibliographic, graphic and audiovisual material, while stimulating its use by citizens, and it has to improve the exercise of reading and the right to information. “From there, yes we can dream. And perhaps in these years that the construction lasts we can think about what we offer in a city where the publishing sector is very important. But a library is a library, it is not a museum or a cultural center. And it will contain books”, warns the Valencian director. The equipment, she recalls, will be part of the State library network “and must cooperate both with it and with the network of the autonomous community in which it is located.”
Apart from the Generalitat Library, the Government manages the other three provincial ones in Catalonia: those of Tarragona, Lleida and Girona, created 175 years ago to house the provincial patrimonial fund as a result of the confiscation of Mendizábal. But the one in Barcelona was not born with all this patrimonial fund, because in its case it has been guarded by the Library of the Generalitat.
The general director of Promoció Cultural i Biblioteques, Josep Vives, reminds him: “This great library will have the main function of heritage conservation (the so-called legal deposit), but it will not contain the heritage collections of incunabula and manuscripts that other provincial libraries do have” . Another argument in favor of providing the equipment with other uses outside of those of the classic general library. “Obviously the main business is to get culture and information to the public. But this one in particular could focus on collections, such as the one that reflects that it is in the publishing capital of the world”, says Vives. Like the Gremi d’Editors, he believes that “any technological event in the city can translate into activities aimed at citizens and not so much at professionals.” And due to its location, 500 meters from Parliament, he thinks about creating citizen participation ”. Regarding the name, he shares a predilection for the Barcelona Public Library: “You have two unbeatable brands: biblioteca and Barcelona”.
The sixth deputy mayor of Barcelona City Council, Jordi Martí, recalls how the context has changed since the Library Plan was approved in the late 1990s: neighborhood and district libraries, with an urban center acting as a locomotive. The unusual delay –the initial location in the Born market was blown up when remains of the Catalan defeat of 1714 appeared– has meant that the panorama and the needs are different.
“We have reached 40 neighborhood and district libraries: it is no longer your turn to act as the locomotive of a consolidated network. If everyone has a library in their neighborhood with its socializing component, the visit to the head office will not be so that they offer the same thing in a larger space: books, activities, reading clubs… That it contains more books will not be a reason to that people move, if the library loan brings you in 48 hours what your library does not have. Of course it would have space for books, but his would be a more typical use of a cultural center, because it is not that the one of the zoo and the station of França is a very inhabited area.
Martí sees great exhibitions on books and reading there, “like the one that was made of Joyce’s Dublin at the CCCB or a great exhibition of comics. And it should be in a room of 1,000 m2”. Also the most important literary events in the city. “Let the publishers feel at home. That it can host festivals of poetry, fantastic literature or the BCNegra. And if there are reading clubs, let them be more intense, and maybe you could integrate a writing school, ”he points out. And regarding the name, the Consistory would call it the Central Urban Library.
Carme Fenoll, former head of the Servei de Biblioteques de la Generalitat, misses the creation of a story. And look for agents that get involved. “I am concerned that little is said about this library. A forum of people from the world of culture, books, innovation… could be promoted to begin to reflect. I know that the works go on for a long time, but I miss the story of what we want to happen. If we go to Helsinki or Oslo, with their new libraries, there is usually two years of prior work as a social breeding ground: a desideratum is created, a popular illusion. We are making the largest library in Catalonia and it seems as if it did not exist. In elections it should be in the electoral debates “, she concludes.
