by Blanquerna Seminar 42
According to Itziar González Virós, Architect and councilor of Ciutat Vella between 2007 and 2010, one of the main problems in the recovery process of the center of Barcelona has been the fact that this proposal was excessively physical and static. The physical project that was posed thirty years ago is almost finished, however, reality shows that the changes made are not enough. If a dynamic and motor center for the country is what we aspire to create a static project cannot achieve so.
Already in 1993, Xavier Cases, councilor of Ciutat Vella, expressed that the will of not wanting to break the charm of the neighborhood could only be preserved without transgressing the dignity of some neighbours who, without the economic possibilities to change homes or without the desire to leave their usual neighborhood, lived in a degraded and marginalized suburb of the city. Which, at present, we can’t say it has been fulfilled yet.
Bruno Baldaia exposed in his thesis that Raval is a neighbourhood of Barcelona that has been able to preserve its peculiarity until this day despite the changes it has undergone over the centuries. This student proposes as a case study a set formed for Plaza de la Garduña, the Royal Academy of Medicine, Plaza de los Angeles, the Faculty of Geography and History, Macba, CCCB and the Antituberculosis Dispensary. It is a group formed by relevant buildings of very diverse functions and times that have in common their capacity to originate flows of constant and significant people, they are generators of centralities. According to the author of this project, walking through the Raval with the aim of discovering it beyond its obvious focal points means finding a place with a double nature, despite its openness to the outside, this fact has not compromised his inner life.
