Jordi Borja dies, one of the great modern urban planners of Barcelona

BarcelonaOne of Barcelona's great modern urban planners has died this Friday at the age of 85. He was Jordi Borja Sebastià (Barcelona, 1941), who was euthanized after suffering for years from the neurodegenerative disease of Alzheimer's. He had a long and prolific professional career, which he combined with his political involvement, first with the PSUC and then with Iniciativa. Also a sociologist, geographer, and politician, he always maintained his connection with the trade union movement, where he participated in Comissions Obreres from the times of clandestinity. He stood out as a great theorist of the neighborhood movement in Catalonia and Spain, and was one of the architects of participatory decentralization in ten districts and metropolitan articulation.

Trained in exile at the Sorbonne in Paris, he founded Bandera Vermella with Jordi Solé Tura in 1968 and was a prominent leader of the PSUC between the 1960s and 1974. He was a deputy in the Parliament from 1980 to 1984, and served as a councilor and deputy mayor of Barcelona City Council with Pasqual Maragall between 1983 and 1995, first representing the PSUC and then as an independent for the PSC. Throughout his life, he was a traveling companion of Iniciativa and the political space that succeeded it, Comuns, whose lists he symbolically closed, as well as supporting Ada Colau as mayor of Barcelona.

A disseminator of Barcelona's urban planning model, Borja received last year the Gold Medal for Civic Merit of Barcelona in recognition of his "exemplary career in the field of urban planning, critical thinking, and civic and political commitment to the city". He studied sociology, human geography, and urban planning at the University of the Sorbonne in Paris and is also a doctor in urban geography from the UB.

The president of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, has conveyed his condolences for his death: "Barcelona's urban planning, critical thinking, and civic and political commitment owe a great deal to Jordi Borja. His legacy will continue to be a reference for continuing to make a more livable and just country," he published on X.

Comissions Obreres (CCOO), which also conveyed its condolences for Borja's death, recalls how in his last years of life he defied the Alzheimer's he suffered by participating in many activities of the union and the Cipriano García Foundation. "The afternoon before the dignified death he had requested, he was still interested in the life of the union, just the day CCOO celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Barcelona Assembly," he emphasizes.