It has been deeply satisfying to see the unanimous and tsunami-like wave of responses against the assertion, published on X by Pedro Torrijos, that Barcelona has always lived with its back to the sea. The arguments have been numerous and there is no need to repeat them: from the creation of the Consolat de Mar as a code of international maritime law founded in Barcelona, to the existence of main buildings such as the Llotja or the Drassanes (or the Faculty of Nautical Studies, or Santa Maria del Mar), the very important existence of the port, expeditions to the Mediterranean (commercial or conquest), fishing activity, the San Sebastián baths, and a long etcetera.
The fact is that the main basis of the thesis of closure was urban planning, that is, the existence of walls on the coastline. When, in fact, the existence of fortifications on this side is precisely the example of living open, exposed, surrendered to the sea. And from there we move to the root of the confusion: for many, Barcelona opened up to the sea in '92.
What Barcelona recovered during the Olympics was access to the beach. It was decided that citizens had the right to access their beaches safely, hygienically, and joyfully (except in Barceloneta, this was quite impossible), and not have to expose their bodies to sewage after crossing train tracks, sheds, and various cargo (which were there, precisely, due to maritime activity). But even before, the campaign Barcelona, posa't guapa had initiated much of this work in the city's maritime area, mainly increasing cleanliness and facilitating access.
What prevented access to the beach was no longer the walls, obviously, but industrial activity: Macosa, Catalana de Gas, Martini Rossi, Escofet, Titán paints, Ferrer i Salat laboratories… This is what was demolished or moved in '99 and what certainly allowed citizens to feel that they could access the beach. Not the sea, to which the city never turned its back: to the beach, due to a rather global phenomenon that consisted of compensating for the excesses of industrialization.
The seafronts recovered in several cities around the world due to this industrial relocation, some with more fortune than others (Naples, for example, has not managed to transform its seafront into anything more than a port ring road). Barcelona did not live with its back to the sea, much less because of any wall, but like so many other cities, it had placed a good part of industries that dumped waste into the water without much regard (or the obscene Customs building, which was not precisely a thing of the Barcelonians) next to the sea. The walls had been demolished long before and it must have been considered, simply, that placing chimneys or loading areas next to the sea was close and practical. Access to the sea was always there: citizen access to the beach, not so much.
And then, that artificial, utopian, and Icarus-like thing of the Vil·la Olímpica, which Maragall wanted to associate with the socialist (or social-egalitarian) idealism of Cerdà's Eixample, forgetting that Cerdà at least thought of making a neighborhood to live in. This obsession of the Bohigas school with spreading the mediocrity of the hard plaza and the trimming of small gardens on the sidewalk, lest someone wanted to put shops or businesses or park the car, that type of obsession with the deserted and egalitarian cement where finally no one wants to live but where some are finally forced to live (because this egalitarianism almost always has the characteristic of being quite obligatory).
Barcelona did not live with its back to the sea, but like so many other cities, it had placed a good part of industries that dumped waste next to the seaOpening up to the sea could never be that villa for athletes, much less the Port Olímpic, without connection to the pulse of the city, just as the Fòrum space was not (the other speculative Icaria that, even now in times of concerts and festivals, does not end up being any new attraction towards the sea).Opening up to the sea does not consist of building failed Maremàgnums or exaggerated World Trade Centers (WTC), although it is understood that this is much better than the industrial barrier we had before.Instead, yes to the "Vela" hotel, and instead, yes to the new bocana (or Breakwater) promenade, which means, build just what is essential. And, if possible, without hard plazas (with four palm trees to disguise them) explicitly aimed at deactivating citizens' imagination.
Neither was the sea invented in '92, nor was it discovered in '92, nor has it been urbanistically managed in the best possible way since '92. There is something more serious than being closed off to the sea (which we never have been): being closed off to life. Under Cerdà's grid pass streams and paths that could have been taken more into consideration to have a more organic and natural urbanism. But under the numbing cobblestones of '92, fortunately, there is the beach.