It is said that a monument will be erected to Ildefons Cerdà, in Plaça Universitat, which is the place where the monument to Doctor Robert would be most fitting to return (because it is where it was located before the dictatorships). Cerdà would live better in Plaça Tetuan, with an absurd name but perfect confluence amidst his grids. Or in Plaça de les Glòries, his failed new Barcelona centrality, where they have now made a “park” that, as is customary in this “green” conscious city, only has 30% grass. And marking centralities cannot be done from planning artificiality, nor can well-being be imposed by decree, and therefore, Cerdà's genius always ends up failing somewhere. This year we celebrate the 150th anniversary of his death, but also the centenary of Gaudí's, and in fact this coincidence coincides with my growing conviction that it would have been reckless to leave Cerdà alone.His contribution to the city is more than remarkable: hygiene, the foresight of the automobile and the train, the 45-degree cut of the chamfers, the scalability of the grid. And yet, I perfectly understand that the Barcelona council (which had to comply with Madrid's decision) would have wanted to opt for other proposals: that large expanse of uniform squares, between the demolished walls and the surrounding villages, ignored the layout of paths and rivers pre-existing for centuries and, when it did, it gave them the robotic name of Diagonal, Paral·lel or Meridiana. If we had left Barcelona in Cerdà's hands, we would basically be a correct and orderly city. More rational and rationalist than modern or modernist, indeed eliminating inequalities and exceptions, but at the evident price of foregoing exceptionalities. Everyone with their little garden inside, which in the end we haven't ended up having either: New York, like Cerdà, also names (so to speak) its streets with numbers and letters, but they, at least, have skyscrapers and a large central park. We, at most, have superblock concrete and large extensions of dog parks.

The brilliant figure of Ildefons Cerdà has often served as a scapegoat. The trend was initiated by a prominent figure of conservative Catalanism and modernist architecture, Josep Puig i Cadafalch. His obsession still lingers. The Barcelona City Council finally wants to dedicate a sculpture to Cerdà in Universitat square, one of the initial spaces where the Eixample began to be built. Surely someone will still pull from the drawer of bad ideological fixes the tired clichés about the engineer who shaped modern Barcelona: that he was a utopian socialist (false), that he was a unimaginative rationalist (false), that Madrid imposed his project on us (in this case, it was a stroke of luck). For too long, he has been absurdly and simplistically despised as a centralist stain.

The engineer, urban planner, and politician Ildefons Cerdà (Centelles, 1815 - Las Caldas de Besaya, Cantabria, 1876), the architect of the Eixample district, is considered the father of modern urban planning. His legacy remains relevant today when proposing solutions to the major challenges of the modern world, as will be evident in the activities of the Ildefons Cerdà Year, which was presented this Monday at the headquarters of the College of Civil Engineers. "The first idea that stands out about Cerdà is his vision for the future. He was able to envision the city of Barcelona not as it was, but as it should be, and that it was necessary to imagine a completely new urban model," states Pere Calvet, the dean of the College of Civil Engineers. "The second idea is the city at the service of its people," he adds. "Cerdà didn't just design streets and blocks; he studied the living conditions of the population, the lack of ventilation, the density, public health. His project sought a healthier and fairer city."