Any era in the history of Barcelona and the most critical stages of growth of the city that have been engendered in it have a faithful reflection in La Rambla, the emblematic artery with past, present, and future. Of this reality, its most deeply rooted tenants with the most years of history, the stallholders of the old bird shops, the florists, and the businesses of the Mercat de la Boqueria, have been and are observers, and protagonists at the same time. For all of them, La Rambla is and will be a living stage of the past and the present, and the future, and, as such, a mirror of the city. An objective they want to foster with a closer relationship between the citizens of Barcelona and the current La Rambla through its historical memory.
The first step to achieve this has been the creation of the Associació Històrics de la Rambla to preserve the living memory of La Rambla. This association wants to disseminate, publicize, and enrich the history of this iconic thoroughfare through cultural actions and events such as exhibitions, publications, articles, etc. For this, what better than to create an archive with documents, photographs and videos, and press clippings, completed with an extensive chronology that illustrates the passage of time from 1217 ---when the first news about meat selling tables in the Pla de la Boqueria are known to have existed--- to the present day.
What aims to be the largest library in the history of La Rambla can be consulted free of charge at www.historicsdelarambla.org and is open to the public, who can collaborate to expand its content by contributing all those documents and graphic elements they consider interesting. The publication of La Rambla's historical archive has been an exhaustive work carried out by Xavier Cazeneuve (Barchinona.cat), a historian with more than 20 years dedicated to the study, research, and dissemination of the history of Barcelona.
In this sense, the Històrics de la Rambla archive is not only a reference where to find documentation about La Rambla but is also a receiver where, through citizen participation, the history of the promenade that will soon undergo a comprehensive renovation approved by the Barcelona City Council, with an initial budget of 44.5 million euros and an execution planned for the next seven years, if it does not suffer a new delay, will be drawn.
The History of La Rambla in six itineraries
Its reform will therefore be a new milestone to incorporate into the Històrics archive, a portal born from the need of its promoters to share and spread the feelings they have for La Rambla and for everyone to understand why La Rambla is as it is today. The explanation of the History of La Rambla is presented in six blocks conceived as six itineraries according to thematic areas ranging from the most rogue Rambla to the most protest-oriented, also covering social and cultural aspects: the Rambla of knowledge, the protest Rambla, the Rambla of commerce, flowers and birds, urban planning of La Rambla, the Rambla of tourism, and the religious Rambla.
In addition, there is a section dedicated to monographs with a first compilation of articles, news, and current events dedicated to La Rambla and cinema, in which, among other things, historian Xavier Cazeneuve recalls how "the Fernández brothers (the Napoleón photographers) opened a shack on the street, in Portal de la Pau, at the end of La Rambla de Santa Mónica, in 1897, changing the Napoleón hall of cinematographic views for Beliógrafo, the name by which the first stable cinema hall in Barcelona was known," and how what is now the Club Capitol theater was born in 1926 as a cinema hall, the Capitol cinema. These explanations are part of the monographic, a more complete analysis of how La Rambla has been and is the setting for many international film sequences.
The archive's blog also includes articles on disappeared trades, such as scribes; the existence of the Salón Mágico, founded by Joaquim Partagás (1848-1931), one of the pioneers of modern magic in Barcelona; or the disappeared Cabaret Mónaco, on the upper floor of the Teatro Principal, a variety hall that closed at the outbreak of the Civil War, seized by the P.O.U.M.
In short, a set of information that shows what the life of those who live on La Rambla at street level ---residents and merchants--- has been and is, and of those who stroll as visitors or as citizens of a city that has lived from the euphoria of an Olympic Games to the unfortunate incident of the August 2017 attack.