the grandmother of Mireia Pons was installed next to the square of Glories from Barcelona shortly after the Civil war. Even then, that space had been postponing for decades a promised revitalization since Ildefons Cerda I thought of it as the most logical center of the map of the Catalan capital, in 1859. “But my grandmother died without Glòries being anything other than a space conquered by cars and a border that, for my mother, turned the neighborhoods on the other side, like Poble Nouin distant places that I never set foot in”, explains Pons, historian and city guide in ‘Passejant per Barcelona’ who recounts the past of Glòries on routes organized by La Farinera del Clot.
As a mother of three children, she also recently frequents the new green space that the reconquest of this place has begun for the neighbors with 170 years of delay and that it will continue winning it when the two phases of construction not yet finished are completed. Xavi Vallscoordinator of activities of the place, details that there are currently more than 20,000 square meters destined for citizens, including the children’s area, the sports area and the hectare of the so-called Great Clarian.
Irma Ventanyoldirector of the Canvi Climatic Office of Barcelona, explains that the vegetation that surrounds this mass of grass has not been chosen at random. They are plants and trees chosen because they are “sustainable & rdquor; and they are also grouped to form environments conducive to bees, butterflies and birds. This Sunday, under an intermittent sun that seemed like summer when it pressed down, her nephew claims to have seen a red-breasted sparrow and several butterflies. In times of climatic emergency, seeing them in Glòries, a historic orgy of cement, exhaust pipes and construction sites, is not trivial.
The ancient Via Augusta
Glòries grows on the old layout of the Roman Via Augusta. And in the 10th century, Pons reports, an irrigation channel for the fields also passed through here. Formerly, this square was almost a shore of the sea – right up to where the foundations of the iconic water tower are now planted – but the coast moved away turning the district of Sant Martí into an area of lagoons – from there it also gets its name the neighborhood of La Llacuna–, fertile for agriculture. That’s why it was built channel, whose remains continue to appear every time the builders dig.
Making the space sustainable will not only be possible with the chosen vegetation. valleys and Monts Rodesof the Xarxa d’Equipaments Ambientals, have the thorny task of convincing the citizens of Barcelona why they should respect it: inviting them to fall in love with other places to have a bottle at night, for example, or not to do anything that alienates families. The activities they promote go in this direction: storytelling with an environmental theme, a planting workshop or a course to learn how to recycle fabrics. jana Y Joan they are only 15 months old and this morning they are crawling through the grass of the Gran Clariana under the distracted gaze of their parents, as if they were in a private garden, where there is still no risk of stepping on cans, glass or syringes with their hands. The space is packed with families.
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In the mid-19th century, three different train tracks made Glòries a key railway communication hub for industrialization. Before the Civil war, when the houses had proliferated around them, attempts were made to bury them. The war stopped it, and those initial works even served as a refuge, explains the historian. Then came the car boom, whose climax was reached in 1992, with the drum that connected the Meridiana in a giant roundabout with Gran Via and La Diagonal, and the divider known to Mireia’s grandmother and mother became larger than ever. Reform plans that accumulated failures were superimposed while activities such as prostitution or delinquency proliferated. Or also like the sale of Els Encants.
Pons proposed to title his guided tour as “the cursed square & rdquor ;, alluding to the amount of frustrations that it has accumulated for more than a century and a half, until this 2022 has once again become a space that can be walked on foot, and the border between neighborhoods is dissolved, and there is also a grassy field where babies can crawl. But he didn’t like that title. Use this report as relief.