Barcelona will settle its debt with Cerdà with a monument in Plaça Universitat

BarcelonaBarcelona took the first step this Thursday to settle one of its most incomprehensible outstanding debts. The mayor, Jaume Collboni, announced that the Catalan capital will open a competition among three artists in early May to design a monument to one of the most important men in the city's history: the engineer, urban planner, and politician Ildefons Cerdà (Centelles, 1815 - Las Caldas de Besaya, Cantabria, 1876), the architect of the Eixample.

Collboni announced this during the institutional event held this Thursday afternoon in the Saló de Cent of the City Hall to officially inaugurate the Cerdà Year, which commemorates the 150th anniversary of the urban planner's death. "The return of a debt to modern Barcelona begins," acknowledged the mayor, who assured that, taking advantage of the anniversary, the city "will recognize and place in its rightful place" the figure of this engineer.

The first step to settle this debt is the installation of a monument that the city has been demanding for a long time. Collboni revealed one of the best-kept secrets of recent months at the City Hall this Thursday: where it will be located. It will be in Plaça Universitat, the place where, he said, "the Eixample began to be built." "There we will pay homage, so that he can look at the city he dreamed of and that unfolded," argued the mayor, who recalled that it was in the square that the first major public building of the new Eixample began to be built: the central headquarters of the University of Barcelona (UB).

The unknown now is who the three artists "of recognized trajectory" will be who will compete to be in charge of creating this work. Collboni explained that the process – similar, for example, to the one the Sagrada Familia is following to choose the sculptors for the Glory facade – will begin in early May. The objective, Collboni said, is to have a winning proposal during the month of July, and for the monument to be definitively installed in the square during the first half of 2027.

More than half a century without a monument

With the installation of the new monument, Barcelona will repay a debt that has lasted for more than half a century. The Catalan capital had already had a monument during Franco's regime in homage to the creator of the Eixample. It was inaugurated in 1959 in the always controversial Plaça Cerdà by the then mayor, Josep Maria de Porcioles, and was dismantled in 1971 with the construction of the Ronda del Mig.

That sculpture –with supporters and detractors– was the work of Antonio María Riera Clavillé, and it combined concrete blocks with iron bars in a structure that sought to reproduce the grid of the Eixample. At the beginning of 2025, on the initiative of journalists Lluís Permanyer and Carles Cols, the city began to redirect its relationship with the father of the Eixample by installing a plaque at the door of number 69 Bruc street, the house where Cerdà lived.

Beyond the monument, this Thursday both the Minister of Territory, Sílvia Paneque, and the dean of the College of Civil Engineers, Canals and Ports of Catalonia, Pere Calvet, have underlined the importance of maintaining Cerdà's legacy to face current challenges. Calvet highlighted his ability not to choose between "technical knowledge and public action", and remarked that "technique without political and social orientation runs the risk of not responding to the real needs of people".