1992 BARCELONA
THEN
NOT for nothing is Barcelona held up as a shining example of the “Olympic effect”, or the capacity of the Games to bring about positive change in the cities they touch with their five magic rings. Approaching the Olympics, Barcelona was crying out for a makeover. The pavements were full of potholes and the city had definite no-go zones: the Gothic Quarter was filthy and down at heel, while El Raval was a maze of dark, Dickensian alleys. The beach in La Barceloneta, where entire communities lived in shantytowns along the shore, wasn’t the place you’d go to enjoy the fresh smell of sea air.
This primeval Barcelona was chaotic, anarchic and more than a little sleazy. There was no tourism to speak of – incredible though it may sound – beyond a scattering of bohemian types who couldn’t quite believe their luck: rents, restaurants and real estate were all dirt-cheap.
Culturally, the city was probably more genuinely avantgarde than it is today, although most of the exciting stuff was happening underground in offbeat galleries and dive bars that reeked of absinthe and cigarette smoke. At Bar Kentucky, fur-coated women, fishermen and club kids took turns at the jukebox, dancing to the music as the sun came up over the harbour.
NOW
Anyone who has been away for 25 years will barely recognise the place. Barcelona has morphed into a sleek and cosmopolitan European city with a lofty ambition that may be realised sooner than we think: becoming the capital of an independent Catalan Republic.
The fabric of this city is utterly transformed, its quality of life radically improved. There is no better example of the post-Olympic process of urban renewal than the old Raval, with its palm-fringed promenade (created by the wholesale demolition of tenement houses), where Pakistani and Chinese families share the pavements with Catalan locals.
What may surprise old-timers about modern-day Barcelona is the multicultural mélange of inner-city neighbourhoods like Gràcia – once a salt-of-the-earth, working-class district, now home to a shifting population drawn by the city’s fame as a Mediterranean hipster hub.
Far from stagnating, Barcelona has taken the Olympic spirit and run with it. Architect Antoni Gaudí’s masterpiece buildings have all been lovingly restored; his Sagrada Familía basilica inches towards completion. Barceloneta has also been cleaned up and is now populated with happening bars and restaurants. Barcelona’s urban beaches are even awarded Blue Flags of excellence for water quality. The barrio (neighbourhood) of the moment is undoubtedly El Poblenou – rechristened “22@” – a former light-industrial quarter where high-tech start-ups coexist with design studios and food trucks.
One of the unplanned consequences of Barcelona’s reinvention has been the phenomenal growth of its tourist market, which last year accounted for 8.3 million visitors. The city’s hotel scene continues to boom, with new properties such as Cotton House Hotel, Casa Bonay and Hotel Brummell making idiosyncrasy and hominess their priorities.
Yet just beyond the tourist playground, in barrios like Sant Antoni, Sants and El Poble-sec, the city’s demotic heart is still beating.