Barcelona Present: Restoring and Maintaining

Protecting Barcelona's precious urban plan is one of the main issues the city faces today. So to assess Barcelona’s present, we must look to how it is maintaining it’s past.

Birthed by the Romans, developed during the medieval period and expanded in the 19th century, Barcelona’s tumultuous history is woven into its streets. The worn, millennium-old buildings of the Barri Gotic, with scars of civil war etched into their storied façades, are a visceral evocation of the city’s past and a big part of what attracts so many people here. But beyond the old town, it is the breathtaking pieces of modernism dotted around the city, the jewels in Barcelona’s architectural crown, that really get the tourists in.

The city’s urban plan is truly unique (this much we learned in the opening article of this series), and while planning for the future is a big part of what Barcelona's ajuntament (city hall) has to do to maintain it, looking after the city’s past is equally important, perhaps more so for those of us who prize tradition as much as innovation. So, to assess Barcelona’s present, we must look at how it is protecting its past. We’ll focus specifically on Antoni Gaudí’s modernist masterpieces to do this, as the preservation and restoration of these buildings shines a light on  many of the problems Barcelona faces as a city today.

So much has been written about Gaudí’s iconic buildings—how they seem to melt and curdle, dripping onto you as you stare up at them—that we’ll leave a thorough analysis of their structure, form and history to the scholars. It is these buildings’ present, how they are being restored and managed, that we’ll be examining here. 

Barcelona’s modernist trend began as a process of beautification to attract tourists to the city and foster Catalan civic pride. However, its buildings are now under threat from the very people they were built to impress. The city’s urban planners and local government are trying to tackle a tourism problem which is plaguing locals, preventing them from going to the most iconic places in their own town. But it’s not the tourists themselves who are the issue, it’s their sheer number, and the inadequacy of systems in place to deal with them. 

There are more insidious threats to Barcelona’s prized possessions too. The world watched Notre Dame burn this year, a catastrophic event that no one believed possible until it actually happened. It’s vital, then, to understand whether Barcelona has the right systems and planning in place to mitigate against similar potential tragedies. 

Who exactly looks after Barcelona’s modernist jewels, then? What are they doing to restore and protect them? And how are they ensuring that neither footfall nor fire will degrade these uniquely Catalan treasures? Here’s a look at how three of the city’s most iconic works are being maintained and the problems that safeguarding them highlights.

Park Güell

One of Barcelona’s few publicly owned Gaudí designs, Park Güell functions as a microcosm of the problems that huge popularity can cause. The park was built in the first 14 years of the 20th century, commissioned, as with so many of Gaudí’s works, by the wealthy industrialist Eusebi Güell, from whom it gets its name. It’s a fascinating system of lush gardens and dizzying architecture, with spectacular views over the city and the sea from its position on Carmel hill. 

There’s no questioning the park’s staggering beauty nor the incredible ambition and imagination of its creator when you visit (picture a Mediterranean evocation of Lewis Carrol’s Wonderland), however, there is one big issue that you can’t miss on a trip there today: overcrowding. Try and walk up the steps that lead to the park’s main terrace and you’ll be greeted by flashing lights and selfie sticks, guided tours and sunburnt Brits. It’s impossible not to feel like herded sheep, and there’s no doubt it’s putting locals off visiting the public space. 

While the vast majority are there to admire the spectacle of twisting, writhing edifices, vandalism has also affected the park. In 2007, the many-colored salamander who sits on those famous steps was attacked by vandals, breaking off its nose with an iron bar. It’s obviously difficult to prevent this sort of despicable behavior without 24 hour supervision, but the fact that it happens feels indicative of the way in which Park Güell had been hitherto treated like an amusement park rather than a precious gallery; a children’s play area rather than an open-air museum.

In 2013, the ajuntament took some radical (and not uncontroversial) steps to mitigate the overcrowding problem. By introducing a fee of €8 for entering the “monumental zone”—local residents in the park’s surrounding barris are exempt—and limiting the number of tourists allowed in the main area to 800 per hour, the city council hoped to win back the park for local residents, which would in turn boost development for the surrounding area.

This has worked in a number of ways. Visitor numbers dropped from 9 million in 2013 to a much more manageable 2.3 million the following year, and the fee has also contributed to new investments of over €24.9 million. These investments are made up of 180 separate actions—including the renovation of the park’s Plaça de la Natura—which are planned for completion before the park’s centenary in 2022. Fostering community and revitalizing the park’s heritage are key in the battle to reclaim it as a place for locals to frequent once more.

But to call it an unbridled success would be slightly disingenuous. By only demanding a fee for the “monumental zone”—the park’s fragile inner sanctum—locals now complain that other parts of the 19 hectare park, areas which were once tranquil spots free from the hordes, now suffer from overcrowding. Furthermore, the local-residents who get to visit the park for free are only those who live in the close surrounding areas, so Barna locals who live elsewhere (i.e. most of them) still have to pay to enter what is a public park in their own city.

So, how do you solve a problem like Park Güell? It’s a tricky conundrum, and managing visitor numbers is certainly a step in the right direction. However, policing the behavior of tourists is another matter altogether.

Casa Vicens

Gaudí’s first ever building project, the town house Casa Vicens, suffers less of the overcrowding issues faced by Park Güell, tucked away as it is on the lesser traveled north end of Vila de Gràcia. From the outside, Casa Vicens lacks the curves and idiosyncratic ornamentation of Gaudí’s later projects, but that doesn’t mean it’s not startling to behold. It’s an imposing, pastel colored, Moorish summer house; a resplendent, lego-looking building complete with minarets that appear detachable. The inside is even more impressive, made up of airy, shaded alcoves complete with the sort of frills Gaudí is so famous for.

Unlike Park Güell, Casa Vicens feels like a case in point for how to run one of these landmarks, and while much of this is surely down to its location and lesser known status, the fact that it lacks the gratuitous sort of commercialism that abounds elsewhere is important too. The property, which has been a family residence for the majority of its 135 year history, was bought by an Andorra based bank in 2014. It is actually the last of Gaudí’s eight UNESCO world heritage sites in Barcelona to be opened to the public, so until relatively recently you could only gawp at it from the outside. Perhaps this is why it is remains in such good shape.

The team that runs Casa Vicens wants it to stand as a monument for understanding the origins of its creator’s architectural language. Thus, much of the building is now a museum, which looks at everything from the history of Gràcia, examples of other architects’ “statement buildings” (architecture which focuses on aesthetics rather than function), alongside exhibits on the building’s restoration process. The most you’ll pay is €16: a fair fee for visiting a museum in the city.

The building’s restoration began in 2015, before it was open to the public. Much of the actual work took place from March 2017 onwards, and the house opened its doors in the autumn of that year. The process of restoration, which you can read about in detail here (or even better on a visit to the property, which I cannot recommend highly enough), included the removal of weathered layers of paint and debris on many of the walls and ornaments to reveal the original polychrome underneath, and now the frescos, ceilings, elaborate smoking room and gazebo have been refurbished to their original pomp. It’s a marvel to wander around—even more so when you realize this has been someone’s home for most of the past century.

More recently, work has been done to return a theme of water to the house, something that was key to Gaudí’s original design. While the impressive waterfall feature is no longer there (it was sadly demolished in the mid-20th century as it fell into disrepair) water is running again at the Casa through the stunning fountain. This reintroduction feels symbolic: a tired creaking building has been brought back to its former glory, now gushing with people, water and life.

Casa Vicens, then, should stand as a testament to how these jewels can be managed properly, and how important it is to maintain the original elements of the city. While they are in a much better position to do so than somewhere like Park Güell (or indeed the building we’ll be getting on to next), the project is a great example of how tourism doesn’t have to come without integrity.

La Sagrada Família

Let’s end with Gaudí’s most famous work: La Sagrada Família. It feels overly critical to complain about overcrowding here—the church is to Barcelona what Big Ben is to London and the Eiffel Tower is France. It’s an iconic, globally renowned landmark which upon completion, currently set for 2026—the centenary of Gaudí’s death—will hold the tallest spire of any church in the world (sorry, Ulm Minster!).

The “upon completion” part of that last sentence is the bit we’ll focus on. It’s well known that the Sagrada Família is still under construction, the cranes which sit in among its spires—the bane of every photographer looking for a picture perfect shot—being the main giveaway. You may well ask why it is still being built some 137 years after its original construction, and in truth it’s down to a multitude of things. The architect’s death in 1926, civil war during the following decade, the loss of Gaudí’s plans during the conflict and subsequent economic austerity have made it a painfully slow building process. Furthermore, and somewhat absurdly, the Sagrada Família has not, until very recently, had a building permit from the city council. Thus, it has been stuck at around 70% completion for some time, with 10 of its 18 spires still to be built.

However, on June 7, 2019 the council finally granted a building permit—remarkably, the building’s first in its history—which will allow it to be completed by the centenary in 2026. The permit, however, comes at a price. La Junta Constructora del Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família, the non-profit, donation-run foundation that looks after the construction, conservation and restoration of the building, will have to pay €4.6 million to the city for the permit, on top of a staggering €36 million for expenses accrued over its many years of construction. A 137 year bill was always going to be a big one.

The delays to finishing of Gaudí’s masterpiece sound antiquated, a reminder of how mundane bureaucracy can dominate public construction. However, the ways in which they are going about the construction of the Sagrada Família today are anything but old fashioned. On the face of it, the basilica is not too dissimilar to ones built a thousand years ago, but the methods now being used to finish it utilize some of the most cutting-edge equipment available today, helping to ramp up the rate of construction tenfold. Tristram Carfrae, deputy chair of the Arup Group—an architectural firm aiding in the building’s structural design—describes the use of “computer controlled diamond tip bandsaws” and “post-tension stainless steel bars” alongside virtual modelling to complete the remaining six towers. This provides a wonderful juxtaposition to Gaudí’s own methods, which involved a curious process of hanging bags of birdshot upside down from stone masonry to confirm their precise tension.

This idea of the high tech functioning freely alongside the antique is one of Barcelona’s most distinctive properties. In Barcelona Past, we learned how the city’s commercial prowess, which began in the medieval era, has survived to this day, making it the only Mediterranean city to have maintained a place on the European commercial stage since the 1500s. In Barcelona Present, we’ve seen how preserving this past, this unique identity, is vital to the city in the here and now, and how the tensions and delicate balancing act of sustainable tourism is affecting it. In the third and final part of this series on Barcelona’s fascinating urban plan, we’ll look to the future, showing how the city itself is becoming one with technology, standing at the forefront of the global “smart city” movement.

Harry Stott is a regular contributor to the Barcelona Metropolitan covering Brexit, local political and social issues as well as the music scene. He recently received a B.A. in music from the University of Leeds, and now writes and produces radio content for a number of organizations in Barcelona and beyond. You can read more of Harry's articles here.