"Gaudí Avenue is the only avenue in Barcelona." This was the emphatic statement of architect and Harvard professor Joan Busquets, in the conference Gaudí Avenue, a mystery to clarify held at the Hospital de Sant Pau this past January 19. As soon as you hear this phrase, your brain protests: "What about Diagonal? What about Meridiana? What about Josep Tarradellas?" But what you come to understand throughout the explanation is that it is not just the "mystery" of Gaudí Avenue, quite interesting on its own, but the dichotomy between Cerdà's philosophy and more radial urban planning conceptions, which Domènech i Montaner considered compatible, but which in truth were considerably (and loudly) at odds. Now that there is so much talk about defending the Cerdà model, in the face of the whims of the superblocks, learning about the true spirit of the Plan can also give us an opinion on whether it is being respected or not. Gaudí Avenue respected it, and did not respect it, at the same time. How is that possible?
The conference takes place, of course, within the framework of the Domènech i Montaner year, of which Lluís Domènech "senior" is commissioner, and it is normal that it is held in the hospital which is both the work of the architect ("the second of Modernism," according to Francesc Pujols) and the headquarters of the Fundació Domènech i Montaner. The speakers are Joan Busquets and Lluís Domènech "junior," who is an architect, a student of Busquets, and at the same time the director of architecture for the Sagrera station. Junior, then, begins by quoting Johan Cruyff when he said that a good player has a good position on the field and at the same time knows how to overcome the opponent in short distances. Like Messi, who plays without looking where others are but having them in his head, as well as the goal, and in fact shoots without looking at the net. Well, Domènech i Montaner was an urban planner architect and not just an architect: "only" an architect was Gaudí, who creates a Sagrada Família with hardly any limits, almost artisanal, the work of a genius. Domènech i Montaner takes into account the smallest of mosaics, but also has the city in his head. Surely this made him participate more in urban planning than Gaudí, who had enough work being the Architect of the Universe.
However, if you type the word "Barcelona" into Google, a map appears with the temple drawn in the middle. And that's because the Sagrada Família is in the middle of everything. Not Plaza Catalunya, nor Cinc d'Oros, nor Glòries (as Cerdà imagined). No: the Sagrada Família, looking at the entire map of the city, is equidistant from the sea and the mountain, and from the Besòs and the Llobregat. Gaudí was a visionary and knew that the temple would be eternally linked to the image (the "brand") of the city. And if we observe Gaudí Avenue from above, we will see how it stands with the temple at its feet and crowned by the Hospital de Sant Pau, in the shape of a heraldic rhombus. And it turns out that the three elements are built after the approval of the Cerdà Plan, in 1869: when the hospital began, the Sagrada Família was already under construction but the plan for Barcelona was still a great void. A dizzying void, where everything could be done, where everything could go wrong, an enormous horror vacui. Domènech i Montaner sees the progressive evolution of the Sagrada Família and realizes that something spectacular is happening. And he acts accordingly.
Gaudí would also have liked to place the temple in a north-south direction, like the hospital, but he couldn't because the crypt was already half-built. Furthermore, he would have wanted not to be limited to that marked plot, boxed in by Cerdà's grids. What does Lluís Domènech i Montaner do? Understand Cerdà, but improve him. Before the same thing happens to him as to Gaudí, he decides to take advantage of Cerdà, and adds a new layer: instead of orienting the hospital at 45 degrees, as the entire Plan was (which does not go from north to south, just as the Sagrada Família does not), he orients it from north to south as if it were a snail-like turn of Cerdà's brain (or testicles, with due respect). And this turn is what also came with Léon Jaussely's Plan de Enlaces, which similarly tried to improve, not to say correct, let's say nuance so as not to be too abrupt, the Cerdà plan.
What was the Jaussely plan? It was about taking advantage of pre-existing roads and canals, from Roman times, to break (did I say break? I meant link) with the uniform Cerdian grid: the Romans also made grids, yes, but for the orchards that were outside the walls, and not for the roads or the canals and streams, which all flowed naturally towards the city, like an orographic asterisk, like branches that converged from the mountain and valleys towards the sea. Cerdà's Eixample did not respect these natural paths and transformed everything, to put it simply, into "agricultural" land: perfect squares oriented parallel to the sea, that is, at 45 degrees. Well, Domènech i Montaner is from the Jaussely school, who won the competition for the Links Plan called by a City Council where there were already figures like Cambó and Puig i Cadafalch (1905). They propose, in effect, to "nuance" Cerdà. To make him compatible with a more radial, more star-shaped, more circular, more Parisian view. To improve him. To give him a twist (yes, to the idea and also where it hurts most). Of all of them, Puig i Cadafalch is the one who would have most enjoyed twisting the very square eggs of our Ildefons.
Ferran Romeu, a finalist in the competition, was the first to draw Gaudí Avenue. Around the Sagrada Família, he proposed a kind of star of roads, although Gaudí preferred the idea of a large star-shaped square. Jaussely adopted Romeu's idea of the avenue, despite Gaudí's aforementioned preference, who considered that the temple was not sufficiently visible if some of Cerdà's grids were not directly emptied. The Hospital de Sant Pau did not have this problem, because a large plot was first taken and then the buildings were built (a "plan within the Plan"). The concave space of the hospital entrance already invited one to imagine, in fact, a street leading towards it. As if it were the entrance to the Magic Kingdom, and may the senior and junior Domènechs forgive me.
Well then: Gaudí Avenue is the only avenue in Barcelona because it is the only one projected to connect two monuments. All the others have a practical function (the geometric Meridiana, Diagonal, Paral·lel) or imitate roads or canals (Tarradellas or Mistral). Rovira i Trias already had the idea of using the paths that led to Gràcia, or Sarrià, to create radial avenues leading to the center. But Cerdà's great power of abstraction prevailed, tremendously rationalist (one must have little soul to want to meet at the corner of B and 12), while also tremendously brave: let's remember there was nothing. Nothing. Imposing this army of grids was a great audacity, and let's not forget that, if we look at the blocks from above, we will observe that on the outside they are geometrically perfect but on the inside they are all irregular and different: it is the memory of the past. Of the Romans. Of geography. Of nature. The interiors of the blocks should be our natural super-block, mayor, instead of transforming streets into hard plazas.
But Cerdà's great power of abstraction prevailed, tremendously rationalist (one must have little soul to want to meet at the corner of B and 12), while also tremendously brave: let's remember there was nothing.Domènech i Montaner is from this school, then: when he writes "The reform of Barcelona", he also proposes to take advantage of the Roman roads and bring them into the old city. To make the grid model and the radial model compatible, so that the Cerdà Plan, so radical and arrogant at heart, would not stifle the exits of the ancient city. However: Gaudí Avenue is something else. Gaudí Avenue is an exception to so many rules, to so many set squares and so many rulers, an avenue that connects one monument and another, as would be done if we were in Paris.A diagonal avenue, and not a Diagonal Avenue. A subplot of the Cerdà film, perhaps more authentic, more spontaneous, more neighborhood and ultra-local.
Jaussevy's project was called Romulus, for some reason. It was not fully carried out, especially for political reasons: Prat de la Riba, Cambó and Puig i Cadafalch might want a more beautiful and less grid-like Barcelona, but neither were they emperors with power nor was Jaussevy Haussmann (the great urban planner of Paris). It was only partially implemented, and after a century, with different partial plans.
Avenida Gaudí was not inaugurated until 1927, under the name Avenida Primo de Rivera. The Republic ended up naming it as God commanded. That's what avenues with a soul have, they are not a number, nor do they obey grid-like minds. And everyone ends up disputing them, starting with me, who every day can see the hospital and the temple in one go. And walk, now I can say it, along the only (the only!) avenue in my city.