Eight weeks before the municipal ones, the government of Barcelona Mayoress Ada Colau and her members of the PSC are using the last available days before the electoral law prohibits it (because it would be considered electoral campaigning). , factory visits, city festivals, during which he avoids the word inauguration or announces commissions for writing future projects. The pace is frenetic. A good thermometer is the number of renders shown (virtual images of what a work will look like). Last week there were seven: the future kennel, the Mar Bella promenade and park, Hortes de Sant Bertran, pedestrian areas in Camp de l’Arpa, the Font Trobada in Montjuïc, the park in the Marina district and the Gran Via between Glories and Poblenou .
This Monday he presented the tender for the development of projects for future facilities in the old Modelo prison: a school and the memorial. But the consistory also informed about a new calendar: the works add further delays. From the commissioning of the first facilities in 2026, the Xirinacs school institute, the sports center and the memorial room, it will go to 2027. This is when the next mayor is convinced of the winning projects (of this or any other plan) and thinks investing in them is positive.
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That of La Modelo, which it is worth remembering that it was closed in 2018, is not the only case of projects included and delayed in the “left agreement” signed by citizens and socialists in the summer of 2019. The list of promises in this document also includes plans such as the transformation of the Rambla del Carmel (in 2019 the winner of a project competition was chosen), the completion of the Paral.lel reform, the continuation of coverage of the Ronda de Dalt (budgeted, but without schedule), the redesign of the surroundings of the Sagrada Familia, a project for the ring roads around Ciutat Vella (Sant Pere, Universitat, Sant Antoni and Sant Pau) or the completion of “the entire” Glòries park and the cleaning up of the Gran Via in between the square and boulevard of Poblenou.
In other cases, in the municipal government agreement document, there have been projects that have passed through the hands of successive mayors and are not progressing: the Parque de los Tres Turons (whose construction has been announced to start in 2020) or the Morrot (the plan of Mayor Xavier Trias has been parked , but the current executive promised to “intervene”) are two examples. There are also projects that are being delayed that do not depend solely on the city council, such as the expansion and modernization of the Sants train station. And one final chapter: long-awaited city reforms that have begun but are behind schedule compared to what was announced. This is the case with the reforms of La Rambla, Via Laietana or Meridiana (the commitment to transform them into Fabra i Puig and Felip II was achieved, although the execution projects were designed in such a way that only the works had to be tendered).
Image of what the future promenade and park of Mar Bella will look like on the Barcelona seafront. / THE CITY HALL OF BARCELONA
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In some cases, like the Parque de los Tres Turons, which the city council has not reported on since 2019 (when a competition to redesign the complex was decided), urban planning sources now indicate that it is “in the final stages of analysis of the designs and study of the landscape prepared in order to incorporate new arguments and complete the documentation from a landscape point of view with a view to managing the Park”. It will still be necessary “to agree on the following steps with the neighbors”. It is also unknown what will happen to the platform beyond the Paseo de la Mar Bella on which a failed marine zoo was planned. A huge cement slab that remains without a defined use. The consistory is not very specific: “The future of the sea platform is part of the debate that we must define the coastal plan, in a global reflection, to reclaim spaces linked to citizenship, to relate them to neighborhoods and for people to enjoy the coastal strip, take a walk that the city doesn’t live behind your back. We want to define projects of public interest with the participation of all stakeholders involved in each area.”
The La Model memorial room will “musealise” ten cells and will include the panopticon, the parcel room and the stands
The Councilor for Democratic Memory of the Barcelona City Council, Jordi Rabassa, declared this Monday that the future memorial room of the old model prison will keep the fourth gallery with all floors. Both this gallery, emblematic because it housed political prisoners during the Franco regime, and the panopticon (the central point where the six galleries converged) remain. Ten of the cells are “museumized” to count the different profiles the prison has received. The so-called Gypsy Chapel, which houses murals by Helios Gómez, is also being restored. Rabassa explained that two other iconic rooms on the site will be preserved in some way: the parcel room where Salvador Puig Antich was executed and the booths where families, friends or lawyers visited the prisoners.
The future memorial “is a milestone in the fabric of the city’s democratic values,” said Rabassa, who has estimated that the area will be expanded by nearly 6,000 square meters. To decide what the memorial should look like, references to other prisons in museums in other parts of Europe were sought. “We talk about the labor and social conflict, about the Francoists and former prisoners, about the women’s prison, about prison reforms, about the penitentiary system, about villain and bully law…”, he celebrated, about what is included in the future room. “Everything to do with the prison system since the beginning of the 20th century,” he added. Meanwhile, he welcomed the fact that the La Modelo venue is already a “cultural reference place in Barcelona that 210,000 people have passed”.
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