The Moll de la Fusta is rising these days, at least temporarily, from its ashes due to the celebration of the Setmana del Llibre en Català. The event occupies this port area for the second year, forced by covid restrictions to abandon its usual location on Avenida de la Catedral.
And it is that, despite the loss of centrality, the organizers are more than satisfied. In the previous edition, about 25,000 visitors attended the Moll de la Fusta venue. This year, so far in the fair, this figure has been largely surpassed and the Setmana is expected to close with a good result given the circumstances. This is a new confirmation that the book is withstanding the pandemic crisis.
Joan Carles Girbés, president of the Setmana, highlights the fair's capacity for adaptation. The will is undoubtedly to return to Avenida de la Catedral, as it is "special" for the Catalan book to occupy the city center. However, Girbés acknowledges that both locations have their pros and cons. In the Cathedral area, for example, there is no room to grow, while in the Moll there is. But this will be a decision that the board will have to analyze and decide in due course.
In any case, the Setmana and covid have shown that it is possible to revitalize the Moll de la Fusta. This has been a space with very little luck. It was opened to the public in 1981, in a prequel to the recovery of the Port Vell and the Barcelona seafront that blossomed within the framework of the great urban transformations brought about by the Olympic Games.
However, the Moll de la Fusta never consolidated as a space for citizen leisure. The Paseo de Colom was always a difficult barrier to overcome. An attempt was made with the installation of a set of beach bars that also did not enjoy popular favor and caused significant losses for the restaurateurs who joined the adventure. Of that, today only a few pergolas and Mariscal's shrimp remain.
After the Moll de la Fusta, other port areas were recovered, such as the Moll de Barcelona and its World Trade Center and the Moll de Espanya, with the Maremàgnum, the Aquàrium, the Multicines and the Imax building, where three-dimensional films were projected until 2014.
The Imax was controversial from the beginning and even became one of the battle horses in the 1995 municipal elections, when Miquel Roca challenged Pasqual Maragall for the mayor's office. Roca argued that the building obstructed the clear perspective that the transformation of the Port Vell sought after demolishing the sheds in front of Barceloneta. The former Convergència leader was right, but he chose a bad moment to settle that dispute, as Barcelona residents, unlike the Moll de la Fusta, did occupy the new leisure facilities of the Moll d'Espanya, which is accessed by the Rambla de Mar, the wooden bridge that connects with the Portal de la Pau, becoming an attraction in itself. People loved to go and watch when the walkway opened to allow a boat to pass. And they also went to see the sharks at the Aquàrium and the 3D projections at the Imax, until it eventually became an obsolete spectacle.
Time has only proven Roca more right, and the demolition of the building has already been decided, though not the date. His mistake was to raise that flag precisely when citizens were discovering the new recreational space. The late Santiago Roldán, who was president of the holding company that carried out the Olympic transformations, used to comment on how he admired Barcelona's ability to immediately occupy everything that was inaugurated. Those were times of Olympic euphoria. Later would come others when these types of large works began to be judged with skepticism and even rejection by a good part of the citizens.
Making good on the idea that opportunities arise from crises, it must be admitted that the COVID crisis has given a new chance to the Moll de la Fusta, which has managed to emerge thanks to the Setmana del Llibre en Català. The truth is that, for what it meant from a symbolic point of view for that Barcelona that was just beginning its democratic path, it did not deserve to be a misunderstood pioneer of the transformation the city experienced in the following decade.