Mayor Jaume Collboni unveiled a plaque on January 20 on the facade of number 49 Bruc Street. The plaque commemorates that Ildefons Cerdà, father of the Eixample, lived there. It was an initiative by chroniclers Lluís Permanyer and Carles Cols, supported by the Col·legi d'Enginyers de Camins, Canals i Ports de Catalunya. It is good news that should be the beginning of the recognition that has been denied to this urban planner for more than a century and a half, praised worldwide for his grid design of the Eixample, but repudiated in Barcelona.
In the mid-19th century, Barcelona was preparing to demolish the walls that prevented its growth, and the way was opened to urbanize all the space between the capital and Gràcia and between Sants and Sant Andreu, a vast expanse of land where building had previously been prohibited for military reasons. In 1855, the Ministry of Public Works commissioned engineer Ildefons Cerdà to draw up the topographical map of this area.
It is then that Cerdà begins to shape what would become his Eixample project. The engineer conceived an urban grid that allowed him to apply his hygienist, rational, and egalitarian principles for the new city. The Barcelona that had been subjected to the corset of the walls was not suitable for applying the advances of progress. The steam engine applied to industry and mobility needed spaces that the dense layout of historical Barcelona could not provide.
Concurrently, the City Council launched a public competition for the Eixample in April 1859. The Barcelona bourgeoisie did not like what they were learning about Cerdà's plan. The engineer's vision clashed with the preferences of a dominant class that viewed his anti-hierarchical and egalitarian conception with suspicion. They preferred proposals more in line with the extensions of Paris and Washington.
The winning project of the municipal competition was that of architect Antoni Rovira i Trias, who designed an extension in the form of a circular mesh that grew radially from the walled city. But the Ministry imposed Cerdà's solution by decree. The Barcelona bourgeoisie tried to boycott the plan, against which architects also rebelled, considering it an affront that urban development was entrusted to an engineer.
This is the reason that has prevented, until today, the recognition of Cerdà by Barcelona, when he is a reference in world urbanism. One of the reasons for the international prestige of the Catalan capital comes precisely from the Eixample and its layout. The imposition from Madrid was very displeasing. Although today, seen with historical perspective, the virtues of Cerdà's Eixample would endorse the Ministry's decision, it is also true that the imposition from the central government would undoubtedly have reasons for controlling a city prone to uprisings.
The grid design appeals to the military, who, once they lost control through the wall, believed that the design of wide streets that intersect regularly perpendicularly would be easier for troops to occupy if necessary. It was the time when Espartero's words still resonated, that Barcelona should be bombed every 50 years for the good of Spain.
Cerdà has no monument in Barcelona. Not even one of the Eixample streets was named after him; it was given to the winner of the municipal competition. Rovira i Trias gives its name to a square in Gràcia presided over by a statue of the architect sitting on a bench, and at his feet, his failed Eixample project. Cerdà did not have a square until 1960, far from the Eixample's layout, already in the Zona Franca, and which is actually a road junction without civic life.
We cannot continue to ignore this engineer who, with his Eixample, gave us one of our urban identity marks.At the end of the 19th century, after his death in 1876, the idea of erecting for the first timea monument to the engineer,but the authorities prevented it. More recently there was a monument project in Cerdà square itself designed by Javier Mariscal. It also failed, and in 2023, former mayor Ada Colau announced a competition to erect one in Glòries square, but for the moment it remained just an announcement.
It would be time to overcome the past, pardon and recognize Cerdà's genius. We cannot continue to ignore this engineer who gave us with his Eixample one of our urban identity marks while the world admires him.