Investment of 8 million in a new Fish Market open to the public

"The Port of Barcelona settles a historical debt with the city's fishermen." This is how forceful Damià Calvet, president of the Port Authority of Barcelona (APB), was when announcing the project for the construction of a new Fishermen's Market that will involve an investment of 8 million euros and the redevelopment of a port area of 24,103 square meters that will be opened to the public.

The project for the new market has been carried out by the OAB architecture studio, led by Carlos and Lucía Ferrater, and is currently in the bidding process. Once awarded, works are expected to begin at the end of the year and last for 17 months, so the new building could open in 2024. The main novelty compared to the current market ---which will be demolished--- is that it can be visited thanks to the construction of an external walkway that will allow combining the activity of fishermen and auctions with the presence of the public, preserving all hygienic and food safety guarantees, as both worlds will be seen, but will be separated.

The project also includes a space intended for the opening of a seafood restaurant, which will be subject to a tender later. Another novelty is that Barcelona citizens will be able to buy fish at the market itself, either to take home or to have it cooked immediately at the future restaurant. In addition to the market, the great attraction of this urban development is that, finally, the emblematic Clock Tower ---located in front of Maremagnum--- will be open to visitors and will be located in a publicly accessible space, as it is now within a closed and guarded enclosure by the Port Police where only fishermen and professionals in the sector have access.

The Clock Tower is an old lighthouse built in 1772 where a clock was installed in 1904. In the 18th century, this icon of Barcelona's port area served the French geodetic Pierre Méchain to calculate the length of the meridian between Dunkirk and Barcelona and determine the basic measure of the decimal system, the meter. In addition, the tower is the confluence point of the imaginary prolongation of two emblematic avenues of the city: Paral·lel and Meridiana, designed by Ildefons Cerdà.

"With the new Fish Market, the Port of Barcelona wants to reclaim the seafaring and fishing culture and bring it closer to the city. This is a very important project that fills us with enthusiasm and allows us to advance in the process of opening the port even more to the city," explained Calvet. According to the president of the port, the so-called Port Ciutat, that is, the part of the port's maritime facade open to citizens, currently totals 70 hectares and the idea is to gain 18 more hectares in the coming years with projects such as the Fish Market.

"I am aware that this project is late, but now we are settling a historical debt with the city's fishermen, whom we had forgotten," admits Calvet, who is, precisely, the son of fishermen from Vilanova i la Geltrú. The head of the Confraría de Pescadores de Barcelona, José Manuel Juárez, denounces "the repeated non-compliance of all Administrations" and thanks "the endurance" of the sea professionals, who have been waiting for this new fish market "since the Olympics."

According to Juárez, the much-desired project fills them with satisfaction, although it comes "at a low point" for the guild, despite his optimism "to be able to live from fishing in the future." "We are the only primary sector left in Barcelona," claims the fishermen's patron, who also calls for a boost and greater awareness of the brand Peix de la Barceloneta. "It is necessary for consumers to know when they are buying a sardine from Barcelona. We are a city and I cannot imagine a Barcelona without fishermen," he states emphatically and eager to open the fish market to visitors and promote fishing tourism in the capital.

Two fish auctions a day

Currently, eleven purse seiners, nine trawlers, and two small-scale fishing boats are based in the Port of Barcelona, managed by a total of 206 fishermen members of the guild. Every day at the fish market, two auctions are held, one at seven in the morning ---to commercialize the catches of the purse seiners that work at night two miles off the coast--- and another at half past four in the afternoon. Fishmongers from the city, wholesale companies from Mercabarna, and the Mercadona supermarket chain come to buy the fish directly unloaded from the boats.

The activity of the fish market, according to the Fishermen's Guild of Barcelona, generates an annual business volume of seven million euros, a figure that has remained stable in recent years despite a decrease in the quantity of catches. The fishermen of the Catalan capital work between Mataró and Garraf, sharing the ends of their strip with the guilds of Arenys de Mar and Vilanova i la Geltrú, respectively. By volume, sardines occupy the number one spot in the ranking, followed by anchovies, Mediterranean bonito, mairas, and horse mackerel, as explained by Juárez to The New Barcelona Post.

This is how the new Fishermen's Market will be

The new Fishermen's Market will be built on an esplanade where there is currently a car park located on the Balearic pier and will integrate, within the new building, the current ice factory, built in 2016. The space where the current market is located ---on the fishermen's pier--- will be freed up to become a public access area in connection with Escar street. This promenade will provide access to the Clock Tower and an exterior walkway to access the new market without interfering with fishing activity.

The new building designed by the Ferrater architects will have a surface area of 3,233 square meters distributed in three modules and a ground floor plus a first floor. The elevated walkway will run like a balcony along the entire building and will provide access to viewpoints from which both the blue fish auction room and the white fish auction room can be observed. In addition to the two auction circuits and integrating the ice factory, the new construction will house service dependencies, the guild's headquarters, offices, an auditorium for events and training, and space for the future restaurant, which can also be accessed from the walkway.

The roof of the future Fishermen's Market will host 359 photovoltaic panels with a nominal power of 100 KW that will be used for the self-consumption of the building and the ice factory. According to the president of the Port of Barcelona, the market will become the first energy community in the port area and will avoid emitting 54 tons of CO₂ per year. The project to also produce solar energy in the current net warehouse and a plan to install solar pergolas on the net drying esplanade will be left for later.

Calvet announced that the Port of Barcelona has made a warehouse available to the Generalitat in the ZAL to collect humanitarian aid destined for Ukraine. "We are going to be an active agent in the solidarity response and we will offer the logistical and storage spaces that are needed," he stated. According to the president of the APB, traffic with Russia is not significant, so the conflict should not be noticed in the port's volumes.

A port berth, in the hands of a Russian oligarch

Likewise, after firmly condemning the invasion of Ukraine, Calvet assured that in Barcelona "there is currently no ship with a Russian flag." They have communicated to the European Union that there is a berth whose ultimate beneficiary ---its real owner--- is a magnate included in the list of Russian oligarchs sanctioned by the EU. This would be Alisher Usmanov, owner of the Dilbar, the largest superyacht in the world, frequently docked in Barcelona and which this week was confiscated by German authorities in Hamburg.