For those who literally want to know the ground they walk on, let them know that in the new green areas of the Eixample they will walk on nine different types of pavement, from the simple compacted cement tiles that Barcelona has managed to turn into an icon of the city (the famous flower, of course, which in the 70s was condemned to disappear and, nevertheless, survived), even granite slabs from quarries in Extremadura and Galicia. The disposition of all these types of pavement may seem capricious, as if the chief architect of Barcelona, Xavi Matilla, had wanted to give them Piet Mondrian of urban planning, but there is less chance there than meets the eye. This is the ground we walk on.
Quintana Gray Granite
Quintana de la Serena and its 4,500 inhabitants are the envy of their region of Cáceres due to the granite quarry with which they have fitted half of Spain. They say they have stone for more than 200 years. Most of the cobblestones used to replace the asphalt in Consell de Cent, Girona, Rocafort and Borrell come from Extremadura. Hundreds of tons of granite have crossed the peninsula when right here, it is true, there is an old quarry, that of Montjuïc, but of this only remains the skeleton of what it once was. The old Barcelona, which today is Ciutat Vella, was built with that local stone, it is true, but one must not be deceived. Those gothic-looking roads that tourists and also some natives upload to Instagram are actually modern. Perhaps the oldest of all is the one on Calle del Bisbe and it dates from 1952. Seen in this way, the option of using granite from Quintana de la Serena becomes more glamorous. Millimetrically cut and its surface treated accordingly, it provides non-slip paving stones that are perfect for walking.
White Granite Cáceres
They are few, but embedded between the slabs from Quintana de la Serena, pieces four times larger from other quarries in Extremadura appear from time to time. They are clearer. They are a perfect opportunity to explain why the pavement of the green axes looks like a catalog of soils. This corrects what is considered an error made in the ‘superilla’ of Sant Antoni. In that first pacification, sidewalks and road remained at the same level, but maintained a similar original appearance for each old part of the street. The result (psychological, that’s how it could be said) is that pedestrians tend to walk along what was the sidewalk before it was converted into a ‘superilla’, and many of them give up walking along the central part of the street. In the new green axes, the pavement clearly indicates to cars, motorcycles, bicycles and scooters that they do not circulate through a space that belongs to them. The experience in the stretches already completed seems to indicate that the objective set has been achieved.
Porrino Pink Granite
Although you have to look for them patiently to find them, for example in the square that is in the middle of construction work in Consell de Cent with Enric Granados, there is a third variety of newly made cobblestones. Their uniqueness, in addition to the slightly pink hue, is that they come from Porriño, another town, this Galician, graced with a colossal quarry.
centenary paving stones
The conversion of Carrer de Girona into a green axis produced three surprises as soon as the asphalt began to be raised. Between the streets of Mallorca and Diagonal, the walls of a 16th or perhaps 17th century farmhouse saw the light again. It was documented and buried again, because who knows if future archaeologists who are in primary school today will one day want to study it more calmly.
The tracks of the tram that covered part of its route through the city along Girona street also appeared. They were neither removed nor buried. The urbanization project was modified on the fly and it was considered that it would be appropriate for them to be visible, as if the green axis were an urban palimpsest. They are not exactly pavement, but they have been treated as such, not even to avoid tripping over them.
The third surprise was no less interesting. There was no beach under the asphalt, a matter already clarified in May 1968 in Paris, there were cobblestones, perfectly preserved, authentic antiquities from the history of the Eixample, pieces of which, however, their origin is still unknown to this day , and even though doctoral theses have been written on the floors of Barcelona, the most famous being that of design professor Danae Esparza.
Ildefons Cerdà, who as an engineer planned the Eixample down to the smallest detail, weighed up various alternatives to urbanize the streets of the new Barcelona. Asphalt? Macadam? Wood? In the end, the chosen solution was the paving stones, so thick that it has now been possible to cut them in half and obtain two units from each one. Its presence gives Girona a nineteenth-century air that the rest of the green axes do not have so clearly.
tactile flooring
They are probably the least whimsical tiles of the green axes. Its design and color are essential, because they mark the way for the totally blind and also for those who suffer a partial loss of vision. They follow straight lines, free of obstacles, always between the first row of trees and the facade of the buildings. Under no circumstances should the chairs of a bar terrace cut that path. Sometimes, however, it happens. Just a curiosity about the tactile tiles: they seem to be two colors, two different shades of grey. It’s just an optical effect.
The flower and the chocolate
There are no granite paving stones on what used to be the sidewalks before the renovation. It has its reason for being. When it’s not the gas company that digs a ditch, it’s a power company that does. Or one after the other. Granite is expensive. Cement, no, and the most recognizable tiles in the city are made of this material, those with the flower (which not a few residents have taken home as a decorative object during the months of the works) and those that look like a chocolate bar , the ones preferred by urban planners, because they can be split in half to complete the puzzle of the pavement and even then they do not lose their essence.
There have been neighborhood complaints, letters from readers who regret that in their street, Consell de Cent, for example, the option of the flower tile has been disdained. They deserve an answer. La da Matilla, the municipal chief architect. “The tile with the flower drains because the one with four tablets, which is why it is advisable for streets with slopes, such as Girona. The final agreed solution was to place the flower in two streets and the one with four pills in the other two.”
And Matilla takes advantage of it to insist precisely on that issue, that of water. It is an imperceptible detail, but Consell de Cent street, the only cross street of the four reformed, has been designed to the taste of Isidro Labrador, the saint of the rains. In Barcelona they are rare and, when they do happen, they are sometimes torrential. The water that falls near the façade on the mountain side of the street is poured down the slope into the tree wells. The one on the central road, perhaps dirty with oil from motor vehicles, ends in the scuppers.
Gaudí’s tile
It is not usually noticed, but the tiles of Paseo de Gràcia (the most modest work by Antoni Gaudí on that street, but also the one that occupies the most space) contain the silhouette of three marine species, a conch, a starfish and a sargassum It is the eighth type of pavement of the new ‘superilles’. The ninth are the simply smooth ones, which are used, for example, to join the podotactile ones with the granitic ones.
Those Gaudinian girls look out a few meters inside the Consell de Cent when this street crosses the Passage of Gràcia. They have been a hallmark of that avenue since 1906, when they were placed for the first time in the city. In the 70s the cardinal sin of pride was committed and they were redesigned, bigger, bluer and, oh, more fragile. In 1997 that error was corrected.
Benches, tables and trees
It is not pavement, but this walk with Xavier Matilla through the green axes would not be complete without a reference to a couple more details that do not go unnoticed. The first is that, in a bet that is still risky, they have opted for multi-seater benches and have thus renounced the Montseny chair, common in some of the latest major reforms in Barcelona, individual, chosen because with she avoided groups. Depending on how you look at it, that chair was a symptom.
There are, therefore, benches, but also tables, which have been proven successful in the ‘superilla’ of Sant Antoni. But what will really be striking is part of the vegetation chosen so that the green axes are deserving (although with some chromatic license) of that name, green. The four reformed streets will add a total of 1,400 trees, in addition to the shrub species planted in the 7,500 square meters of flower beds.
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Pink lapachos, love trees, ginkgos, flowering pear trees… When they begin to take root and begin to flower, the list of trees chosen for the new tree wells will deserve a new walk, this time by the hand of a botanist, but as a preview, it should be noted that among the chosen species there will be some of the usual units surprising tree of fire, striking as few when all its leaves acquire an intense crimson color.