Whatever happens to La Rambla happens to Barcelona. The city’s greatness and misery are concentrated in its 1,200 metres of length. What was originally a narrow stream is today, to the attentive and unprejudiced eye, a beautiful boulevard dotted with representative buildings. However, Barcelona residents tend to cross it only as an obligatory boundary between the Raval and Gothic quarters. Only tourists make use of its original function as a promenade that links the central Plaza Catalunya with the old port. “Locals walk across it transversely, and tourists lengthwise,” sums up architect Lola Domènec, a member of the km-ZERO interdisciplinary team which won the competition for the transformation of La Rambla in 2017. A task that is now finally being resumed and is expected to be completed in 2027.
The reform of the avenue has been going on for a long time, starting two decades ago. Another architect, Itziar González, was a councillor for the Ciutat Vella district in 2007, when, at a press conference for the Roser festivities, she declared that the City Council should intervene in a street that was already taken over by tourism. “Because it was the most universal street in Barcelona, and nobody was doing anything there,” González now recalls. She set to work to create an internal commission to study the matter, but her work was interrupted when, after three years, she resigned from her post due to pressure from what she defines as “corrupt practices in the legal and technical services of the district” that clashed with her political action.
The project was taken up again under the Barcelona en Comú government, with Ada Colau as mayor, who in 2017 published an international competition for the reform. González, by then fully dedicated to her practice as an architect, received a call from the SOS Ramblas neighbourhood association, suggesting that she apply. “I live next door, so as a neighbour I said to myself: why not?” she explains. “I set up an interdisciplinary team that we called km-ZERO because we all lived or worked in the area, with Lola Domènec and Olga Tarrassó as authors of the technical part and me in charge of the strategies, as well as other specialists.” Names such as the philosopher Paul B. Preciado or the mobility expert Ole Thorson were among them.
The group was awarded the project and designed 53 actions, all of them agreed upon with different stakeholders. “We involved around 500 people from various groups, including residents and business owners, in that consultative process,” the architects say. In 2018, the preliminary project was presented, and a year later the executive project was ready. But in 2020, with everything ready to be built, the reform was halted, and it was not until the end of Colau’s second term that it was decided to resume it. “It was just that it was planned as a five-phase project that would take ten years, something that seemed out of place to us,” says Lola Domènec. “Fortunately, the Collboni government (PSC) has made the decision to do everything in three years, so we will be able to resolve the issue in the short term and without budget increases.”
The first phase, which involves the area of the Columbus monument, next to the port, is already finished. The work is expected to be completed in February 2027. By then, the pavements will have been widened (up to 5 metres, from the current 3.5 metres) and the central promenade, at the cost of reducing the number of lanes for vehicle traffic from four to two. The initial idea was to remove it completely, but the city council decided to allow it with restrictions. “I think that La Rambla has to be a space where priority is given to pedestrians, but vehicles must have access because it is a complex area, with facilities, and many bars, restaurants, hotels and shops, as well as housing,” says Domènec. “What we have proposed is that it should be basically pedestrian, but with restricted access for buses and internal users.”
Three new squares will be created, coinciding with the entrance gates of the medieval wall, Portaferrisa, La Boquería and Trencaclaus, with two-coloured paving. The lighting and street furniture will be improved and made more uniform, more space will be given to trees – 375, most of them listed plane trees – and there are also plans to add cultural facilities (La Fonería, an old forge, will be an immersive art centre, and a second opera centre closer to the sea is being considered to complement the classic Liceu), which would be added to the Teatro Principal, the CCCB, La Virreina, Ars Santa Mònica, the Poliorama, the Academy of Sciences, the Wax Museum or the nearby MACBA. But not everything can be solved with bricks and paving.
One of the main objectives is to rescue the promenade from excess tourism and return it to the citizens. Fernando Casal, a member of the SOS Las Ramblas association, formed by local residents, says: “Tourism is a serious problem that has killed one of the most emblematic streets in the world. It was always full of people, but it used to be very diverse, not the current tourist monoculture.” For his part, Jordi Valls, councillor and director of the area of Economy, Finance and Tourism of the city council, assures that everything is a question of balance: “We want to attract the right type of tourists, and not the other one. It is not about tourists with or without money, but about people with good or bad behaviour. And, as demand is unstoppable, we only have tools to control supply.”
Which seems to be much easier said than done. At present, and with a few exceptions, the shops on La Rambla range from offering food of dubious quality to selling souvenirs. “These shops are destroying the image of this street and of the whole city,” says Lola Domènec. “It would be good to reverse this with more local commerce. This would even interest tourists, because it is not about driving them out. In fact, tourists also want an authentic city, not a thematic one. In the same way that there is social housing, there should be protected premises, with neighbourhood commerce or local products.” Itziar González adds: “There are options. But some of our measures against gentrification and touristification have not been implemented, because they affect the lobbies. There are many closed flats or tourist apartments. They say that there are more than 1,000 people registered on this street, but it is not true: in 2017 there were about 100. We know this because we went in flat by flat.”
Barcelona’s other big problem, gentrification and the expulsion of the original residents, also finds a privileged setting here. Months ago, the city council announced its plan to eliminate tourist housing by 2029, but the architects of the La Rambla project are more ambitious. “We would have to rescue this street as a space to live in.” Itziar González is more specific: “If you improve a street, the owners will generate capital gains that would have to be returned to the city. This return could consist of, for a number of years, the apartments that are rented in these buildings having affordable prices. We included this measure in our plan, but it seems that it is not going to be applied.” Fernando Casal insists: “Until now we have not seen a single gesture to fix the housing problem, which cannot be achieved by changing the pavement. Fortunately, there are cultural facilities, such as the Liceu, but in general they are institutions that only look out for themselves, without participating much in the life of La Rambla.”
Xavier Masip, manager of the other association on the street, Amics de la Rambla, which brings together some 300 members, including owners, businesses and institutions, does believe in cultural centres as a transformative element: “Culture will make it more enjoyable for locals and visitors, which is not the case with current stag and hen parties, or football fan celebrations,” he says. “We want the renovation to also serve to make it known, and for people to make better use of their visit, increasing cultural use. Many people now say that La Rambla is for tourists, that it is not the same as before. Well, we want the new Rambla to be the old Rambla. The one that always existed.”
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