Barcelona’s urban characteristics and its tourist appeal are not merely outcomes of the Modernist period or a recent dramatic urban transformation but rather the result of a long and tumultuous historic evolution. The present article presents an account of relevant historical, political, economic, and social forces shaping Barcelona’s urban evolution from the medieval times until the 1970s. The urban history of Barcelona illustrates how the landscape of a fashionable city is the result of urban planning in conjunction with many social, economic, and political events that often produce unexpected results.
See statistical information at http://www.bcn.es/estadistica/catala/dades/anuari/cap13/C1302010.htm.
2.
During the thirteenth century, the Catalan government annexed the islands of Majorca (1229), Sicily (1282), Naples (1284), and Corsica and Sardinia (1295). Conquering expeditions traveled as far as Greece. See Josep Maria Puigjaner, Catalonia. A Millennial Country ( Barcelona: Generalitat de Catalunya, 1989).
3.
To govern Catalonia, Les Corts and La Diputació del General, or La Generalitat, were created. Les Corts had the representation of the three estates-nobility, church, and popular estate. La Generalitat was established as a subsidiary body to Les Corts to carry out executive activity in the political, judicial, and financial areas. The Concell de Cent (Council of One Hundred) was in charge of governing the city. Under this system, five counselors, the mayor, and the chief magistrate formed a Board of Counselors. Among the five counselors within the board there was usually one representative of the tradesmen and one of the skilled workers. Ibid.; Oriol Vergés and Josep Gruanas, The Generalitat in the History of Catalonia (Barcelona: Generalitat de Catalunya, 1986).
4.
The new walls enclosed an area twenty times the size of the Roman section, creating the medieval city (the Gothic Quarter). In the second half of the fourteenth century, King Pere III added another wall starting at the port and enclosing the area of the Raval Quarter.
5.
Robert Hughes, Barcelona (London: Collins Harvill, 1992); Paco Villar, Historia y Leyenda del Barrio Chino (1900-1992). Crónica y Documentos de los Bajos Fondos de Barcelona (Barcelona: La Campana, 1996).
6.
Jan Read, The Catalans (London: Faber and Faber, 1978).
7.
Francesc Xavier Hernández-Cardena, Barcelona. Historia de una Ciutat (Barcelona: Llibres de l’Index Descoberta, 1993). The cause of this decay can be linked to the policy of the Hapsburg Dynasty on the Spanish throne, which was constantly engaged in numerous fights on European lands. Although Barcelona was not directly involved in the fight, it had to contribute through war taxes. The historian Hernández-Cardena stresses, however, that Barcelona’s inability to generate a modern mercantile bourgeoisie similar to the one evolved in Geneva and Venice was the cause of the crisis. Barcelona became immersed in a deep economic crisis with social conflicts, struggles among nobility, and widespread poverty.
8.
Barcelona’s council, the Concell de Cent, was dissolved. The decree was also intended to weaken the Catalan culture-the Catalan language was forbidden, and Barcelona’s university was closed and substituted by a new center in Cervera, a municipality in the Catalan hinterland.
9.
Puigjaner, Catalonia; Josep Carner-Ribalta, The Catalan Nation and Its People (Houston, TX: American Institute for Catalan Studies, 1995).
10.
Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Barcelona: A Thousand Years of the City’s Past (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1991); Amador Ferrer, "Barcelona: The Transformation of an Industrial City," in The Future of the Industrial City: The Challenges of Economic Change in America and Europe, ed. L. Salomon (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, Institute for Policy Studies, 1990), 69-98. By 1773 there were at least fifty-five cotton factories employing an average of one hundred thirty workers each; smaller factories employing about fifty-five workers accounted for another thousand jobs. In 1778 all restrictions on Catalan export to the Spanish colonies were dropped. Industrial output tripled between 1768 and 1784 and doubled again by 1792. By 1833 Barcelona was producing about 50 percent of the Spanish consumption of textile goods.
11.
Han Meyer, City and Port (Utrecht, Netherlands: International Books, 1999).
12.
E. Lowder, "The Evolution of Identity of Urban Social Areas: The Case of Barcelona" (occasional paper, Glasgow University, Geography Department, 1980).
13.
These squares were linked to a transverse street cutting through the northeast of the Gothic Quarter. To make the urban reforms, several churches and convents were torn down, including Sant Jaume, one of the finest Romanesque churches in the city.
14.
Hughes, Barcelona.
15.
Influenced by the English market economy, Mendizábal considered that to develop the economy the country needed capital and a land reform.
16.
Hughes, Barcelona.
17.
Following the design of similar urban-growth plans implemented in Europe at that time, this plan had the old medieval city as the central point and organized the future urban expansion through radial networks.
18.
M. Julià, "Barcelona’s Municipal Building Ordinances and Their Impact on the Eixample," in Cerdà, Cities and Territory. Planning Beyond the Urban, ed. (Barcelona: Electa, 1996), 61-66.
19.
Eduardo Moreno and Manuel Vázquez-Montalbán , Barcelona, Cap a On Vas? Dialegs per a una Altre Barcelona (Barcelona: Llibres de l’ Index, 1991).
20.
E. Gimeno, "The Birth of the Barcelona Extension. The 1859 Municipal Competition for Extension Projects," in Cerdà, Cities and Territory . Planning Beyond the Urban, ed. (Barcelona: Electa, 1996 ), 155-66.
21.
Julià, "Barcelona’s Municipal Building Ordinances."
22.
The stock market boom in Barcelona at that time was well captured by the Catalan writer Nacís Oller in his novel La Febra d’Or (The Gold Fever).
23.
Borja de Riquer , "La societat Catalana als anys vuitanta," in Arquitectura i Ciutat a l’Exposició Universal de Barcelona 1888 , ed. P. Hereu-Payet ( Barcelona: Universitat Politécnica de Catalunya , 1988), 15-38.
24.
Roberts Foglesong , Planning the Capitalist City ( Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986).
25.
Hughes, Barcelona.
26.
Ibid.; and Christopher Woodward, The Buildings of Europe. Barcelona (New York: Manchester University Press, 1992). To enhance the waterfront, a statue of Christopher Columbus was built on a 60 meter cast-iron column at the southern end of Las Ramblas. In this location two main streets were constructed: El Passeig de Colon, running along the waterfront north-northeast from Las Ramblas to the Ciutdella Park, and El Paralel, which in the opposite direction opened the port toward the southwest. Another remaining monument constructed during that period is L’Arc de Triomf (Arc de Triumph), next to the Ciutadella Park. The arch marked the southern entrance to the fair. Unfortunately, other buildings commissioned for the fair were demolished soon after the event or in the following decades, among them El Hotel International, a Modernist hotel with 1,600 rooms by Domènech i Montaner.
27.
Hernández-Cardena, Barcelona.
28.
The use of the concept of Modernism to define this period can easily create confusion. The American Heritage Dictionary defines Modernism as "a theory, practice or belief that is peculiar to modern times." American Heritage Dictionary of the English language, Fourth Edition, 2000 by Editors of The American Heritage Dictionaries. Under this meaning, the Catalan Modernism movement could mistakenly be related to modern art movements such Bauhaus in architecture or Cubism or Surrealism in painting. In fact, Catalan Modernism is the local adaptation of the European Art Nouveau.
29.
Barcelona has a long tradition of business entrepreneurs and local politicians who in often adverse political environments have managed to create an economically active city. During the nineteenth century, contrary to Spain’s aristocratic elite, Barcelona’s bourgeoisie elite welcomed Madrid’s liberal governments. One could conclude then that Barcelona’s elite has been historically progressive and secular. Despite the fact that Barcelona’s citizens have traditionally been much more progressive than the Catalan hinterland population, this conclusion would be a great mistake. Gaudí and the Modernist architects constructed buildings that captured their clients’ value system. Different from painting, where the Modernism movement guided by Rosinyol and Casas meant internationalism, secularism, and progressiveness, the architectonic Modernism meant traditionalism, Catholicism, and conservatism.
30.
Hernández-Cardena, Barcelona. La Lliga’s leader Francesc Cambó was the president of the largest power company in Spain and director of a bank, a publishing company, and a hotel. When in 1898 in the Spanish-American War Spain lost its last two overseas colonies, Cuba and the Philippines, the country entered a deep economic crisis that negatively affected the Catalan manufactures. Traditionally, the city’s political and business elite had been unsympathetic to Catalan nationalistic feelings perceived as typical of farmers and the working class. However, in the context of economic crisis, La Lliga became the first Catalan party to use nationalistic arguments in Madrid as a tool to advance the economic interests of its members while trying to create cohesion among Catalan citizens.
31.
Gary W. McDonogh, Good Families of Barcelona. A Social History of Power in the Industrial Era (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986); Hank Johnston, Tales of Nationalism. Catalonia 1939-1979 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1991).
32.
See Francisco Javier Monclús, "Barcelona’s Planning Strategies: From ‘Paris of the South’ to the ‘Capital of West Mediterranean,’" GeoJournal 51, no. 1-2 (May 2000).
33.
See Jaume Fabre and Joseph Maria Huertas, La Barcelona del Segle XX. Burguesa i Revolucionària (Barcelona: Flor del Vent, 2000).
34.
Chris Ealham, La lucha por Barcelona, clase, cultura y conflicto 1898-1937 ( Alianza Ensayo, 2002).
35.
Angel Smith, ed., Red Barcelona : Social Protest and Labour Mobilization in the Twentieth Century (Routledge: London, 2002).
36.
Temma Kaplan, Red City, Blue Period. Social Movements in Picasso’s Barcelona (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992); Pedro Voltes, La Semana Trágica (Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 1995).
37.
Kaplan, Red City, Blue Period; Pedro Voltes, La Semana Trágica.
38.
Fabre and Huertas, La Barcelona del Segle XX.
39.
Voltes, La Semana Trágica.
40.
Joan Connolly Ullman, The Tragic Week. A Study of Anticlericalism in Spain, 1875-1912 (Cambridge: MA: Harvard University Press, 1968).
41.
J. Harrison, "The Catalan Industrial Elite, 1898-1923," in Elites and Power in Twentieth-century Spain, ed. F. Lannon and P. Preston ( Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1990), 45-70.
42.
Fernández-Armesto, Barcelona.
43.
Smith, Red Barcelona.
44.
Fernández-Armesto, Barcelona.
45.
Hughes, Barcelona.
46.
Ferrer, "Barcelona."
47.
Fabre and Huertas, La Barcelona del Segle XX.
48.
Fernández-Armesto, Barcelona.
49.
Fabre and Huertas, La Barcelona del Segle XX.
50.
Ibid.
51.
Ferrer, "Barcelona"; Meyer, City and Port.
52.
Franco’s dictatorship began in 1939 when his troops won the Spanish Civil War that had started three years earlier and ended the day of his death, November 20, 1975. Barcelona and Catalonia were the last bastions of resistance to Franco, for which the city was punished. In 1939 La Generalitat or Govern Autonòmic Català (Catalan Autonomous Government) was abolished and the Catalan language was forbidden. The freedoms of thought, publication, and teaching were suppressed. During the Franco regime Barcelona suffered a huge demographic, economic, and urban transformation.
53.
Sima Lieberman , Growth and Crisis in the Spanish Economy, 1940-93 (London: Routledge, 1995).
54.
Ferrer, "Barcelona."
55.
Carme Molinero and Pere Ysàs, "Workers and Dictatorship. Industrial Growth, Social Control and Labour Protest under the Franco Regime, 1939-76," in Red Barcelona: Social Protest and Labour Mobilization in the Twentieth Century, ed. Angel Smith ( Routledge: London, 2002), 185-205.
56.
Lieberman, Growth and Crisis.
57.
T. Lawlor, "The Spanish Economy: From Autarky to Integration," in Contemporary Spain, ed. T. Lawlor and M. Rigby (London: Longman, 1998), 99-140.
58.
Statistical Yearbook of Barcelona City, 2001, http://www.bcn.es.
59.
Fabre and Huertas, La Barcelona del Segle XX.
60.
Ferrer, "Barcelona"; Meyer, City and Port.
61.
Fabre and Huertas, La Barcelona del Segle XX.
62.
Ibid.
63.
R. Gomà and N. Rosetti, "Ciutat Vella: Degradació, crisis i regeneració," in Revista d’Informació i Estudis Socials Barcelona Societat ( Barcelona: Ajuntament de Barcelona, 1999), 94-124.
64.
Julià, "Barcelona’s Municipal Building Ordinances."
65.
Fabre and Huertas, La Barcelona del Segle XX.
66.
Meyer, City and Port.
67.
Lieberman, Growth and Crisis.
68.
W. Wu, "Economic Competition and Resource Mobilization," in Preparing for the Urban Future. Global Pressures and Local Forces, ed. M. A. Cohen, B. A. Ruble, J. S. Tulcin, and A. M. Garland (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1996), 123-45.
69.
Ferrer, "Barcelona."
70.
Nico Calavita and Amador Ferrer, "Behind Barcelona’s Success Story: Citizen Movements and Planners’ Power,"Journal of Urban History26 (September 2000): 793-807.
71.
Manuel Castells, The City and the Grassroots (London: Edward Arnold, 1983).
72.
Gilles Deleuze y Felix Guattari, Mil mesetas: Capitalismo y esquizofrenia (Valencia: Pre-Textos, 2002).
