The odyssey to recover the Escola del Mar

BarcelonaThe reconstruction of the legendary School of the Sea by Josep Goday has fallen into a black hole of municipal politics. After the Barcelona City Council promoted it during Ada Colau's termJaume Collboni ruled out moving it forward. As a result, in July of last year, ERC proposed reviving it in the Committee on Social Rights, Culture, and Sports with the support of all parties except Vox, but the project remains shelved. In this situation, the Association of Architects for the Defense and Intervention in Architectural Heritage (AADIPA) organized a debate this Tuesday at the COAC. Recover the Sea School?, with the participation of architects Mariona Genís and Marc Cuixart Goday (not Josep Goday), who has revealed that the Grífols family put the "4 million euros" on the table to carry out the work, but Jordi Martí, during his time as deputy mayor of Barcelona, ​​​​refused because he wanted to do it with public money.

At that time, there was an agreement with Barcelona Regional to execute the project and 300,000 euros were invested in drafting the executive project. In this project, Cuixart was hired to ensure the "excellence" of the project. "The councilor for the Barris Plan, Education and the Elderly, Lluís Rabell, told me that he would be happy to do it, but that the chief architect [Maria Buhigas] sees it," Goday lamented. ARA had unsuccessfully contacted Barcelona City Council to find out its current position on the matter. However, Cuixart announced that he has a meeting scheduled with Buhigas on October 23 to discuss the issue.

"The Escola del Mar was a beacon, but on January 7, 1938, it went out when a fascist bomb destroyed the building. But the Escola del Mar did not die. It moved to Montjuïc and then to Guinardó, where it still educates generations of boys and girls today," the president recalled. "Its spirit, this project of comprehensive and democratic education, lives on. And that is why we demand that the school return to its place of origin. Because returning it to Barceloneta would only be rebuilding a building. It would be restoring a right," said Boronat.

The Escola del Mar was a pioneering modular and detachable wooden building. Comuns proposed up to six points between Barceloneta and Poblenou to rebuild it and locate a headquarters for the future Museum of Education and Pedagogy in Catalonia. For AADIPA, it would be like carrying out the same operation that was done with the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion and the Pavilion of the Republic. "The reconstruction is not an act of nostalgia; the symbolism of the school is alive," said Mariona Genís, who places the Escuela del Mar at the beginning of a century-long line of pedagogical and architectural innovation in Catalonia. "When architecture dialogues with pedagogy, it becomes a catalyst for learning," Genís emphasized.

In his speech, Goday recalled the school's international success, which led him to decide to rebuild it on the site where it stood after negotiations with the local residents. He also mentioned the support of the Society for the History of Education in Catalan-Speaking Countries and the Catalan Pedagogy Society, which will present their project for a Museum of Education and Pedagogy in Catalonia at the Institute of Catalan Studies on October 23 and 24.