On Saturday morning, a group of unknown persons raided some of the sewerage and groundwater distribution facilities located in Passeig de Sant Joan in Barcelona in order to set up a small bottle and occasionally make a few doodles with the aerosol on hand. The bill for the damage caused in this unusual incursion is close to 3,000 euros. The materials needed to remove these graffiti are more expensive than people think. In addition, Barcelona City Council will also have to repair the damage caused to access to these facilities. Fortunately, the people who sneaked in did not touch the machinery of the equipment.
This assault took place a few hours before around 70 people celebrated a birthday party and jammed the Jaume I and Passeig de Gràcia metro stations, and in passing a few trains. Maybe basements are becoming fashionable? This kind of infrastructure has always aroused great interest in broad sections of the population, among a very diverse group of people. When the Open House is held here, there are always very, very long queues. In any case, no one has been sneaking around here for several years.
Yesterday afternoon you could still see a few tube glasses, several empty beer cans, a bottle of spirit… Barcelona City Council will present the corresponding complaint very soon. Then you can finish putting this piece together. Everything points to the fact that the bottle in question was not particularly crowded, rather a small meeting.
The truth is that the Council’s technicians are overwhelmed. They don’t understand that someone might want to force access to this infrastructure simply to have a few drinks and paint a few doodles. This space is more reminiscent of a tasteless sewage treatment plant. In no way does it present those decadent airs that so attract seekers of strange places. This place has no romance. A yellow light floods the whole dependency. Also, to get in here you don’t need to plan the perfect heist, but it’s not that simple either. Forcing access requires effort. The City Council will take the opportunity to make these incursions even more difficult.
City Council technicians do not remember a similar incursion in recent years. In reality, no one had been splashing around in these spaces for several years, since they housed the Museu del Clavegueram. That museum was a post-Olympic work derived from the construction of the Passeig de Sant Joan collector.
Since its inauguration in the mid-1990s, this facility has had an eventful and short life at the same time. A flood in 2000 forced the temporary closure of facilities documenting the history of Barcelona’s sewer system from the time of the Romans to the present and, in addition, visitors were offered the possibility of walking a section of the underground
It was at that time when the museum began to suffer all kinds of evils: looting, vandalism, occupation by homeless people… circumstances that added to an unenthusiastic reception by the public and to the complaints of the neighbors because of the insecurity it generated. Shortly after that temporary closure became definitive. Nevertheless, when it had been closed for eight years, the City Council commissioned the drafting of a project for a reopening which even set a date (in 2010), but which ultimately would never come to fruition .
