The Ciutadella is called to occupy a new centrality in the city, after years of seeing some of its tenants forgotten, even mistreated, and Barcelona residents not quite encouraged to stroll through one of the few parks that the Catalan capital has. The Barcelona City Council, the Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and the Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology (BIST) have allied to promote a scientific, cultural and urban initiative that aims to create a new knowledge hub in the city center, covering a total of 300,000 square meters and hosting 2,000 researchers. "The Ciutadella symbolizes Barcelona's ambition as a scientific and cultural capital. We want it to be a park again and also be a scientific park, bringing science closer to everyone," defends the mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni.
The known as Ciutadella del Coneixement is a large city project that will have a global budget of 290 million euros. Most of the pieces that will make it up are expected to be finished in the current mandate, which will end in 2027. The element that is expected to take a little longer, until 2029, will be the future state public library, next to the Estación de França, another pending issue for the city that has recently been reactivated after years of paralysis and decades of delays.
Given the magnitude of the project, the different pieces are slowly being unblocked. The first has been the Hivernacle, visitable since this Monday after a renovation that had been getting stuck ---the company that was supposed to undertake it in 2015 went bankrupt and they had to start over---. In disuse for years, its metal structure had long been in poor condition, with much of its glass enclosures broken and missing. To the precariousness of the building was added that of the homeless people who lived in it.
After an investment of 2.5 million euros, the construction has solved the pathologies affecting a metal structure with more than a century of history and has recovered the splendor with which it was conceived for the 1888 Universal Exhibition, especially its original green color and the floral motifs by Alexandre de Riquer. In this new stage, the Hivernacle hosts a hundred plants and trees, with species such as Ficus, Monstera, and Alocasia, and even small pineapples (Ananas comosus) can be seen. Exhibitions and events on science will also be programmed inside, ruling out other uses it has had, such as a shop and a restaurant. Its opening hours will be from 10 in the morning to 10 at night.
The Hivernacle will very soon be accompanied by the opening of the Martorell Museum, which will be renamed the Martorell Exhibition Center. The change is due to its new use, as it will begin to host exhibitions on natural history and zoology, and will transfer its collection to the Castell dels Tres Dragons, which has to undergo a rehabilitation that is expected to finish in 2026. The Umbracle will also need an update, smaller than those of the Hivernacle and the Castell dels Tres Dragons, and its use as a space to shelter from the sun and rest will be maintained. This Christmas, the Martorell Exhibition Center can already be visited, which has programmed exhibitions on the history of natural science museums and museum animals.
The City Council, which will contribute about 75 million to the initiative, is also working to open the park to the city, both by creating new accesses that cross the walls that separate it from the UPF university campus and by leaving behind the obstacles on the way to the sea. The latter is more difficult, having to overcome a railway yard and the ring road, but a window of opportunity has opened on a plot of land owned by Adif, on the Paseo de la Circumval·lació, which is being studied to incorporate into the Ciutadella del Coneixement with the aim of bringing it a little closer to the beach.
New research centers
The main piece of the Ciutadella del Coneixement will be a scientific research and innovation complex that will rise on the space that had been occupied by the city's Old Central Fish Market until the eighties. There, the UPF, the CSIC, and the BIST will build three buildings, with an area of 7,500 square meters and 46,000 square meters of buildable roof. The works of the new Mercat del Peix will involve an investment of 104 million euros.
The UPF, the CSIC, and the BIST will build three buildings in the Old Central Fish Market, with an investment of 104 millionAfter some delays, the works began last Januarywith the excavation of the land to build a parking lot that will be located below the future buildings andwill be managed by B:SM. According to City Council sources, construction of the first research center, that of BIST, is expected to begin between February and March.Signed by the Barcelona studio Barozzi Veiga, it will be the largest, with an area of 24,700 square meters distributed over eight floors. It will host around 800 researchers and about sixty research groups from four centers, specifically, the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC), the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2), and the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB). Later will come the CSIC and UPF centers; the first will be dedicated to the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE) and the second to planetary well-being.
As the procedures and works for each of the pieces advance, the Ciutadella del Coneixement is gaining momentum, as demonstrated a year ago with the announcement of a new commitment by the CSIC, which will locate two more institutes very close to the future Mercat del Peix research complex, on Doctor Trueta street, where there is a branch of the State's Mobile Fleet. The new building will house the Barcelona Biomedical Research Institute and the Barcelona Institute of Molecular Biology, thus concentrating the different research units in Biomedicine that the CSIC has in Catalonia, currently installed in the Hospital Clínic and the Barcelona Science Park (PCB). It is expected to host 300 researchers and 40 research groups. The city council is working on modifying the Metropolitan General Plan, while the CSIC is defining the project's tender. Works are expected to begin in 2025 and finish in 2027.