Poblenou
I wrote these notes in 2015, during my residency at Hangar —in the heart of Poblenou itself—, for Paulina, a Chilean artist who had just arrived and needed to find her bearings in the territory before starting to work.
The transformation of Poblenou goes back a long way and follows the renewal process that had already transformed the city’s coastal neighbourhoods in the previous decades.1
I began moving around Poblenou in late 2004 and soon learned to appreciate the decadent beauty of this neighbourhood; decadent but authentic, something increasingly hard to find these days. Even so, Poblenou needed intervention from the administration. The neighbourhood had been forgotten and abandoned for decades: unemployment, lack of services, closed factories, empty lots, burnt-out cars… scenes hard to imagine today. The renewal was necessary, but it has been marked by speculation and by a lack of love for the city’s industrial past. The speculative process has hit the poorest classes of the neighbourhood, leaving many people without a home, with or without family. Many small artisans and family businesses also disappeared, as did dozens of studios for artists, large and small.
In gentrification processes, artists are the first to have to leave, just as they were the first to arrive and open the way. Today it is very difficult for an artist to find a studio, not only because of high prices but also because of the owners’ lack of willingness: many prefer not to make them profitable and to leave the premises empty, probably waiting for the speculative process, blocked by the crisis, to start up again. It was not only a human drama but also an urban-planning disaster: in the process almost all of the neighbourhood’s industrial architectural heritage has been lost2 (Poblenou used to be called «the Catalan Manchester»3, and that defines its industrial value well) and the chance to turn decay into beauty has been squandered. While for us newcomers the result was a disaster, for very many of the old inhabitants who lived through the neighbourhood’s decay and abandonment it was a resurrection. Beaches, decontamination, services, life, cleanliness: in spite of everything, it was a rebirth.
With the rebirth came tourism, and with tourism, rising rents and foreign private investment. Buying up buildings, tourist flats, hotels and more hotels. The process has been fast and keeps growing. Tourism in Barcelona has been a problem for some time: the city is bursting and needed to expand in order to keep up the supply. Today, in Poblenou the alarm bells are already ringing, because the tourist tsunami has arrived and residents are up in arms. I still don’t know whether we are in time to prevent the plunder and the destruction of the neighbourhood’s singularity. What is certain is that the only way to stop it is to solve the problem at its root and to rethink tourism in Barcelona.
-
The renewal of the coastal neighbourhoods that precedes Poblenou’s begins with the 1992 Olympic Games: the plan reorganised the entire seafront between Barceloneta and Poblenou, decontaminated the soil, buried the coastal railway tracks and created beaches —with sand brought in from elsewhere— and the Vila Olímpica on former industrial land. See International Olympic Committee, «Barcelona 1992: a city turning towards the sea» (olympics.com). ⤶
-
Historical caveat: the loss was great, but not total. The 22@ plan was approved as a Modification of the Metropolitan General Plan on 27 July 2000; in 2006 the City Council added 114 industrial elements and complexes to Barcelona’s Heritage Catalogue. Even so, residents and specialists denounced the demolition of numerous uncatalogued sheds and chimneys. See Ajuntament de Barcelona (MPGM 22@) and M. Checa-Artasu et al., «Poblenou i la reconversió de les fàbriques», Icària. Papers de l’Arxiu Històric del Poblenou, no. 4 (2000) — related note. ⤶
-
The documented nickname is «el Manchester català» / «the Catalan Manchester»: it alluded to the huge concentration of textile industry —cotton above all— and to the neighbourhood’s strong labour movement from the mid-19th century onwards, by analogy with the English city. See «Poblenou, la Manchester catalana» (barcelonamemory.com) and «El patrimoni industrial del Poblenou» (El Globus Vermell). ⤶