Barcelona unblocks the most coveted public piece of Glòries

BarcelonaMore than twenty-five years after it was first projected, Barcelona has set a calendar and resources this Friday to move forward with one of the most important pending pieces of the transformation of Plaça de les Glòries. The mayor, Jaume Collboni, and the special delegate of the State to the Consorci de la Zona Franca, Pere Navarro, have signed a protocol that sets a date for the public tower that had been planned next to the Torre Glòries, just on the other side of Diagonal. A tower that will finally not have the 100 meters of height that were initially planned.

Not only the height has been modified. In this quarter of a century of drafts and promises, the building has changed its shape, its uses, and even its name. Popularly known as Edifici Ona – for one of the architectural proposals that were considered –, it has now left this definition behind. To the point that the mayor was no longer talking about a building this Friday, but about an area. In large part, because it will no longer be just the office tower that had been initially drawn, but a complex of buildings that will also include 120 protected homes and pending facilities such as the Clot library, a sports center, and an auditorium.

"It will not be a tower, but a set of facilities," Collboni remarked at a press conference, in which he cited the historic architect and urban planner Manuel de Solà i Morales to emphasize that "we must build a city, not just a shape" and that "it is the urban fabrics of the surroundings that make a center." It remains to be defined exactly what this new area will be like. The forecast is that an international architectural competition will be convened shortly with the aim of awarding it in the autumn, that the project will begin to be drafted in 2027, and that the works will begin at the end of 2028.

Although the details about the project will still have to wait, this Friday the space that each of the uses of the new area will occupy has been specified. The entire complex will have 35,000 square meters of floor space, of which 20,000 will be for offices, 10,000 for protected housing, and 5,000 for the three community facilities already mentioned.

Collboni and Navarro congratulated themselves on managing to unblock a project like this after so many years, and they emphasized the importance of having first secured the financing. "We didn't want to make further announcements about the final destination of this area without first having its financing secured," said the mayor. The agreement between the two institutions establishes that the Consortium will now provide the 90 million euros budget to move forward with the project, and the City Council will gradually repay them over the years through a fee that is yet to be agreed upon.

Step forward for the senior residence

Beyond the scope of the old Ona building, Collboni took advantage of this Friday's press conference to announce news on two more projects in the Plaça de les Glòries area. On the one hand, he explained that they have already reached an agreement with the Generalitat to promote the public residence for the elderly. Specifically, they have agreed that the Government will transfer the money to the City Council so that it will be responsible for promoting the facility and have control over the works. He also explained that the municipal investment of one million euros to rehabilitate the Farinera del Clot has been unblocked.