We are fully entering the final stretch of the municipal legislature and also, what a coincidence, of the works on the Eixample super-block, one of the great transformation projects of the city promoted by the government of Ada Colau and, precisely for that reason, also one of the most controversial. For some, its supporters, it is a dream come true, a great step in the right direction with which Barcelona will once again be a reference. For others, its detractors, a pijipi whim, the destruction of Cerdà's sacred legacy, an attack practically comparable to the mutilation of the Buddhas of Bamiyan perpetrated, twenty years ago, by the Taliban. Iconoclasts!
Great urban transformations are always controversial and strongly contested. It is enough to review the press of the late 80s to see that the creation of Olympic Barcelona was by no means to everyone's liking. Not to mention, of course, the opening, more than a century ago, of one of the city's arteries: Via Laietana (1908-1913). It is estimated that for the creation of this street that connects the Eixample with the port, crossing the colorful Ciutat Vella, hundreds of buildings were demolished, among them a handful of palaces of great patrimonial value, which forced the displacement of some 10,000 people.
Weeks ago, the person responsible for the @CatalunyaColor Twitter account successfully published a series of very interesting photographs of that great urban transformation process, opportunely colored. They show images of some of the eighty-five streets that disappeared in that great remodeling. Also the testimony of what were humble squares, but full of charming corners, such as those of Argenters or l'Oli. The most impressive photographs are those that show the large spaces opened by the demolitions. Not so much for what appears in them as for what you intuit was there before: houses, shops, life. A city erased in which nothing has yet begun to be drawn again.
The images of this process of destruction and subsequent construction were well known, but until now we had only seen them in black and white, and I have the impression that, for that very reason, they affected us less. I suspect that it is much harder for us to recognize ourselves in black and white photos. Empathy is linked to color. I suppose it is for that same effect that when we see colorized documentaries of Hitler, Stalin or Franco, of the extermination camps, of the horrors of war, our blood runs cold... The victims could be us. But that would be another story. Let's go back to urban planning:
Whatever happens in the next elections, no one will be able to erase the four green axes and the new squares that will form the Eixample super-block within a few weeks. Cars will never again be the owners of these streets in the heart of the city. Or will they? Surely the ideologue of the Olympic reform of Glòries, the architect Andreu Arriola, also did not think that the ambitious elevated road ring he designed then, the controversial drum of Plaça de les Glòries, would end up demolished, little more than two decades after its inauguration.
It is evident that it is periodically necessary to redraw the city to adapt it to new times, but it must be done being aware that this undeniably exciting process is also painful.