Cerdà's Eixample: From garden city to concrete hive

Cerdà's designed Eixample and the concrete it found

A type arrives in Barcelona for the first time as a teenager, unaware of separatism or having attended a rally, and leaves with a fixed idea: it is 'the ugliest, most vulgar, dirty, shabby and dangerous city' he has ever seen. Years later, he repeats it with fewer embellishments: a nightmare for the soul, all identical blocks, all cement.

Because the Eixample de Cerdà is at the center of the fight. And not precisely for its aesthetics.

The Eixample: from garden city to concrete hive

The technical diagnosis is far more interesting than the outburst. The interior of the blocks were supposed to be gardened spaces for neighborhood leisure; practice turned them into warehouses, commercial premises, and private terraces. Today, those who live in one of these blocks do not know what is worse: the street, with its noise and pollution, or the inner courtyard, a concrete hole to which light does not reach. Someone summarizes it with irony: if you are a vampire and do not like the sun, living there must be wonderful.

The criticism, in reality, is not against the plan. It is against its execution. Some argue that it was a good urban planning idea ruined by speculation and that the crane should pass without mercy inside all the blocks. The counter-argument is equally forceful: these blocks are today the poshest area of the city, and density is not an error, it is the only way to fit many people in a small space when skyscrapers are prohibited by regulation.

And a defense that is almost never heard: the Eixample functions as a vertebrating center. It has hospitals, commerce, and integrated services; it is walked from end to end; there are no desolate stretches nor, with one exception, unbearable crowds. Walking it, they say, is a pleasure.

Why were the Cerdà plan blocks closed?

Because every free space was an opportunity to gain meters. According to one of the participants, the project enjoyed the support of the central government from the very beginning, and it was local and provincial interests that stood in its way. Having won the tug-of-war, construction did the rest: the inner courtyards disappeared one after another.

The detail that hurts the most to defenders of the original is the pyramid. The blocks gained penthouses and stepped terraces to grow in height without blocking the street's sun. In other words: the garden could have been preserved and it was not. There, they argue, the fifteen-minute city was lost long before anyone had thought to call it that.

On paper, the plan still looks futuristic: the density of housing planned was much lower than the current one. Paper and asphalt, as they say.

"Madrid is worse": the comparison that never fails

Shifting the focus to the capital is the quickest way to ignite the conversation. One part responds that Madrid is no exception, with premium neighborhoods just as bland as the Eixample and narrower streets. The other answers that Madrid does not fall short: its west area is saved, but the south and east are a wasteland and also drag poor quality of life in many neighborhoods. And they agree on one thing: Barcelona is compressed and congested, with too many millions of people in a small space.

The comparison by neighborhoods yields curious headlines. Against the Salamanca District, accused of being bland, Genovés, Alonso Martínez, or Santa Engracia are vindicated. And the repeated conclusion: in almost all large cities, except for two streets and a few singular buildings, the rest is an abomination. Barcelona would not be the exception; it would be the example.

The Sagrada Familia: masterpiece or tacky rocket tower

Few people agree on Gaudí. The basilica generates explicit rejection outside —those spires, they say, look like rockets— and approval inside. "Tacky is an understatement," summarizes someone who would rather have Santa Maria del Mar. For another, it is directly the stain of the pie.

Opposite are those who vindicate Catalan Romanesque as the best of the community's heritage and consider Gaudí a magnificent, albeit debatable, architect. The dispute, in the end, is not about architecture. It is about what is sold as the symbol of an entire city.

Barcelona, Europe's third urban destination: the paradox

The data cited by the city's defenders arrives. According to a participant, it is the third urban tourist destination in Europe, behind London and Paris, and the first in Spain by a wide margin. And it is not the country's capital. There are visitors who pay to see what some residents describe as a concrete pavor.

The contrast admits two readings. One: the tourist sees the neighborhood as beautiful, not the rest of the city. Another: the discontent is not with the building, but with life inside. Pollution, sticky heat for several months a year, bikes and scooters in pedestrian zones, crime that emerges within hours of being arrested, according to the complaints cited. The complaint stops being urbanistic and becomes one of coexistence.

From urbanistic anger to identity noise

As almost any Spanish conversation that lasts, this one also diverges. The framework of rejection of Catalonia appears —some admit without circumlocution that their animosity toward the city comes from there— and the backlash appears: those who accuse of being provincial those who criticize. Underlying this is a current that maintains that all large cities carry the same political problem, whoever governs.

And beyond, a couple of interventions cross the line. One claims to resolve discontent through violence, presenting it as the only real engine of historical change. Another fantasizes about leveling the city with aerial bombings. They remain what they are, digital bar counter-remarks, without anyone else seconding them.

In the end, the surprising data has nothing architectural about it. Someone confesses to having endured three months living there before running away. Someone else has spent years defending the opposite: perfect grid, ordered center, work of engineering. The two speak of exactly the same city.