Barcelona begins the work on the country's largest public library

In 1989, the Minister of Culture, Jorge de Semprún, expressed the desire for Barcelona to have a large public library. More than thirty years later, the Catalan capital has an extensive library network with more than 40 municipal buildings ---which rises to 430 centers throughout Catalonia---, but none large enough to be on par with the rest of the major European capitals. Until now.

The central government, the Generalitat, and the City Council have finally agreed to resume the construction of a state library, after the project was first conceived in 1997. The facility will be located on the left side of the Estación de Francia, in a disused building ceded to the council in 2004.

On September 14, the demolition process of this construction will begin, with an estimated period of five months, and at the beginning of 2023, the procedures for the building license will proceed. It will be necessary to wait until the end of next year for the start of the construction, which is expected to be ready for its inauguration in 2027.

State-owned and with management transferred to the Generalitat de Catalunya, the library will cost the treasury about 55 million euros, thus becoming the largest investment the State has made in a library in the last 125 years, when the National Library in Madrid was built. The building will have nearly 600,000 collections, will occupy more than 16,000 m² of usable space, and will consist of three elevated levels, making it accessible from different points of Ciutat Vella.

The district has been chosen to house the project because it concentrates some of the most important social and cultural points of the city, such as the Ciutadella Park and the future Ciutadella del Coneixement or the Born Cultural and Memory Center, in addition to being located in an easily accessible area for a large part of Barcelona's citizens.

As in 2010, before the project was postponed, the Nitidus Arquitectes firm with Josep Maria Miró at the helm will be in charge of the architectural design of the library. The concept of the building will not differ much from what was proposed then, but some improvements adapted to current times and existing regulations will be included, with a focus on sustainability.

"Since no one knows what the libraries of the future will be like, a fundamental characteristic of the building is flexibility. The spaces that make up the library must allow for a Scalextric track, a conference, or an event to be set up," assures Miró. It is for this reason that the facilities will mainly consist of empty spaces, making them very versatile and "providing many facilities for the people who manage the center."

Thus, the Provincial Library of Barcelona -- provisional name, although it is also known as 'state' or 'central' -- will have a public area with reading rooms, information rooms, a general and specialized collection access room, children's and youth collection, daily press room, auditorium, multifunctional rooms, Internet access points, self-checkout machines, rest area, exhibition area, cafeteria-bookstore, auditorium, and parking area.

In the restricted access areas, there will be work zones and specialized deposits for the conservation of works entered by legal deposit corresponding to works published in the Barcelona demarcation.

The Mixed Monitoring Commission for the project resumed activity in September 2021, after seven years without meeting, thus reactivating the project. The project for the construction of the Provincial Library of Barcelona on the plot of Estación de Francia was drafted in 2010, after discarding its construction in the Mercat del Born.

The project managers assure that the library is constituted by a model of good practices in project contracting, which has agreed with the managers of the involved administrations on the needs to be covered or actions to be carried out by each of the parties, within the framework of the Monitoring Commission. In addition, a participatory and massive ideas competition selection system has been chosen in which the quality of the proposal has been prioritized over other parameters, such as the previous prestige of the contestants, among others.