The Government opens the door to building more protected housing at the Three Chimneys

BarcelonaThree and a half years and many setbacks later, the Government, local councils, and residents gave a new boost this Wednesday to the commitment to transform the Besòs and stop it from being Barcelona's "backyard." In a meeting driven by the Besòs Consortium, all parties have laid the groundwork for a new document with 28 actions —some specific and others generic— to be carried out in the coming years, including two that will modify the current plan for the Tres Xemeneies in Sant Adrià in one of its most significant chapters: housing.

The Government, the city councils of Barcelona, Badalona, Sant Adrià del Besòs, Santa Coloma de Gramenet, and Montcada i Reixac, and the residents have adopted a document —which will need to be ratified at the meeting of the General Council of the Besòs Consortium in May— formally requesting "an increase in the density of protected housing" in the new neighborhood to be created around the Tres Xemeneies project. An increase that, as the Minister of Territory, Sílvia Paneque, explained in statements to journalists, will not require modifications to urban planning.

The details on how this densification will be implemented will be finalized later, but the objective of administrations and residents is to gain over a hundred additional protected housing units without needing to alter the planned ceiling for this type of housing. How? By dividing the planned housing units into smaller apartments. Until now, it was foreseen that the new neighborhood to be built in this area would accommodate 1,783 new homes, 40% of which would be protected. Furthermore, it has also been agreed that 2% of these protected units will be allocated to the Vesta project, which provides support to single mothers with dependent children experiencing homelessness.

The approved document also emphasizes the need to promote the rehabilitation of aging housing or continue with the plan to eradicate informal settlements in the area. It also advocates for the development of a study on plots designated for community facilities but which have not been developed, a survey that should serve to evaluate possible modifications to the Metropolitan General Plan to allow these lands to be used for social housing.

Resident satisfaction

The agreement also includes some measures that were already in the document of 28 agreements signed in 2022 and which the residents denounced had been kept in a drawer for months. Among these measures are urging the State to decontaminate the beaches of Sant Adrià and Badalona, demanding the closure of the Lafarge cement factory, in Montcada i Reixac, and preserving the Marina mountain range with a new plan for the defense of natural heritage. Among the new developments, there is a request for the future linear park of La Sagrera to extend to Can Zam and the creation of an asbestos management table in Baix Besòs.

After the meeting, the president of the neighborhood coordinator of Baix Besòs, Pepe Sánchez, celebrated the new commitment, but warned that the entities will ensure that the agreements are fulfilled. "We agree with all the paperwork, but now we need to push it forward with budgets to make the project possible," he defended.