Barcelona Palace

Something makes clear Fabulous landscapesBarcelona now needs a living art center. It's a sustained demand from artists, curators, cultural professionals, and their audiences for three decades: a stable, public, and flexible space to create and exhibit the present. We're not talking about just another tourist showcase, but rather an infrastructure that places the production and access to artistic production at the center. In all this time, despite the early warning from the Association of Visual Artists of Catalonia (AAVC), the city has had a series of failed attempts: the brief period of the Santa Mònica as a programming center in the style of Kunsthalle, the attempt at the Canódromo, biennials and fairs that fade away. The balance is clear: structural precariousness, discontinuous programs, and brilliant seasons followed by long silences.

The label matters little. Whether it's said or not. KunsthalleThe city needs an intensive programming center without a permanent collection, with lean and cooperative management, capable of structuring the ecosystem between artists, creative factories (Hangar, Fabra y Coats, La Escocesa, etc.), alternative spaces, and public spaces. A place where production is visible, where the exhibition takes place as a dialogue, and where mediation and education are an integral part of the process, not an add-on. In short, a real bridge between creation, research, rehearsal, and public presentation.

The urgency isn't aesthetic; it's economic and structural. When there are institutions that can barely allocate 10% of their budget to exhibitions and activities, the imbalance between content and content emerges. If we aspire to different results, it's vital to reorder priorities: less fixed spending on infrastructure; more resources for residencies, productions, decent fees, mediation, and technical assistance. Less showcase, more meaning. A center with these characteristics can operate on a sustainable budget and multiply the cultural and social impact per euro invested, while also improving the working conditions of those who sustain the city's artistic life.

In this context, the Palau Victoria Eugenia appears as material evidence and a historical opportunity. I participate, along with other colleagues, in Fabulous landscapes, an ongoing episode of Museu Habitat, and I can affirm that the activation of the space demonstrates, in practice, that with sustainable investment it can operate as the center of contemporary creation that Barcelona needs. That this institutional renewal is articulated precisely in a building born for a colonial-industrial exhibition underlines its symbolic power: the Palau, inhabited in a critical, creative, and collective way, reveals its function in the city.

The exhibition, as could not be otherwise, has been much debated. This was already the point, to generate debate and to discuss the meaning of our artistic institutions. But, beyond the comfortable immobility of those who believe that everything is fine, that Catalonia has great institutions that just need more resources, and that's it, I am surprised that someone has argued that the Palau is, and I quote, "a very ugly building." The Palau –initially called the Palace of Modern Art– brings together unique conditions: a monumental and versatile nave (around 14,000 m² usable area), great height, zenithal light and flexible spatial configuration that allows for installations, performance, audiovisual, a living archive, and a work in progress. The key is that it already exists and can be activated quickly, without major works or cost overruns, and in a sustainable manner, to become a metropolitan-scale living art center.

For this to work, form matters as much as content. I propose a tripartite and inclusive governance—administrations, the artistic community, and civil society—with a real presence of historically excluded groups (migrants, racialized groups, LGBTQ+ groups, and people with disabilities). A curatorial direction chosen through an international competition and held accountable; defined programmatic lines with effective contextual participation; and a building understood as a process-space: visible production, dialogic exhibition, constant mediation. Regarding accessibility: multilingual mediation, visual literacy in neighborhoods, and free admission zones. Regarding evaluation: indicators that measure audience diversity, projects produced, artist and audience satisfaction, and social return, not just visitor counts.

This proposal does not compete with the MNAC nor diminish its functions: it complements it. The great cultural capitals are strengthened by the tension between heritage memory and critical production. In Barcelona, ​​Montjuïc can establish itself as a cultural district where a collection museum coexists with a living art center. This coexistence doesn't need to rely on tourism: it promotes complex narratives, diverse audiences, and local economies. The dialogue it opens today Fabulous landscapes It shows how rereading the past activates new ways of producing the future.

It is also time—precisely now, with controversies and open debate—for artists to raise their voices and establish a position in the public conversation. To defend historical demands: activity-oriented budgets and decent fees; decent production and presentation spaces; and participatory and transparent governance. The discussion about cultural models is not noise: it is a question of cultural rights and a city project.

Barcelona's artistic community has been demanding space for years. Today, there is a suitable building, a favorable context, and a pent-up will. We need a political decision to settle this debt to artists and citizens. The Palau is ready. Less icon, more process; less spectacle, more fabric.