Barcelona retires the cobblestones on Pi i Margall street a year and a half after their debut.

BarcelonaGoodbye to the cobblestones on the pavement of Pi i Margall Street in Barcelona. A year and a half after its inauguration, the City Council has decided to invest one million euros in modifying the surface and replacing the granite stones with an asphalt agglomerate base. The reason? Visible cracks and potholes, as well as the rapid wear of the paint, which means that the bike lane and pedestrian crossings are half-erased in many places.

concluded that the unevenness of the street—with a steep slope that connects the districts of Gràcia and Horta-Guinardó—coupled with the heavy vehicles—buses, trucks, and vans that supply the Estrella market or the supermarkets on the street—are incompatible with the current cobblestones. The modification – which the City Council defines as "surgical" – will involve replacing the current pavement with an asphalt agglomerate, but the street will maintain its current layout, with a single uphill lane and one downhill lane for traffic, limited to 30 km/h.

Regarding the type of pavement that will be laid, Bonet and Buhigas have emphasized that it will not be the usual asphalt found on Barcelona's busy streets—like what has been done, for example, on a section of the Sant Antoni ring road—but rather an asphalt agglomerate that, with the asphalt agglomerate, will end up resembling the light color of the current pavement. To try to explain the new pavement, which has more visible aggregate components than usual asphalt, Bonet and Buhigas explained that it will be similar to white boil.

The works—which will cost one million euros—will begin in mid-July and will last a month and a half. Traffic closures will be done in sections, and the idea is for the lower part of the street—closest to Plaça Joanic—to be ready by the time the Gràcia Festival begins in mid-August. The street-calming process cost 13.6 million euros.

Criticism from the Commons

The leader of Barcelona en Común at the City Council and former head of Urban Planning in the city, Janet Sanz, has attacked the municipal government's decision to "re-asphalt an already pacified street." "It has only been done in cities in the State governed by the right and by the extreme right," said Sanz, who has argued that if the paving has caused problems, what the City Council should do is require the companies that carried out the work to take charge of its restoration, as was done in the San Antonio roundabout.

Bonet responded to criticism from the Comuneros (Uruguayan People's Party) by claiming that "if Pi i Margall is in poor condition today, it's because Mrs. Sanz, when she was in charge of urban planning, allowed it to be paved with a material that was incompatible with bus service." A decision that, she emphasized, will now cost the City Council one million euros and "impact further construction work on the residents."