Apart from great seafood, the century-old Els Pescadors restaurant serves up a neat microcosm of Poble Nou, on Barcelona’s north-eastern flank. Once an unpretentious tavern for the district’s fishermen, factory workers and political activists during the area’s industrial heyday, the eatery has been extended and modernised in recent years to cater for a more international crowd. The original dining room all painted wooden rafters and heavy marble bar and tables – contrasts sharply with the subdued earthy tones and minimalist decor of the new spaces.
Outside, around the picturesque Plaça Prim, the same battle between tradition and gentrification is being waged. A whitewashed picture gallery cuts a lonely figure beside 19th-century workers’ cottages and vacant allotments, while a banner hanging from one dilapidated terrace block deplores the social cost of urban renewal.
Ten years after city planners trained their sights on Poble Nou, Barcelona’s most ambitious urban regeneration project since its makeover for the 1992 Olympic Games is gaining critical mass. Cranes, scaffolding and complex traffic detours attest to city officials’ claims that the once moribund district has become one of Europe’s biggest building sites. The vision of a planned 200-block neighbourhood, combining high-tech business, social housing and private residential space, is starting to take shape.
Stretching north and east from architect Jean Nouvel’s gherkin-shaped Agbar Tower in the Plaça de les Glòries Catalanes, Poble Nou is just beyond the limits of the tourist itineraries and little known by most of Barcelona’s inhabitants. However, its decline over the years is well documented. The area lost more than 25 per cent of its population between 1970 and 1991 and about 1,300 businesses between 1963 and 1990. “Of all the neighbourhoods in Barcelona, Poble Nou has undergone the most dramatic change in the past 50 years,” says Francesc Narváez, a local councillor.
Under a government rezoning scheme called 22@BCN, about 120 hectares of the district have been earmarked for offices, price-controlled housing, parks and communal facilities. Named after a municipal bylaw – 22a – the plan was slow to get off the ground. It was hit first by the slump in corporate investment following the bursting of the technology bubble. Then city and regional planners realised that procuring the massive industrial sites and dealing with protected residential tenants, sub-letters and squatters would be best left to the professionals. Private-sector companies specialising in urban redevelopment were incorporated to chase up owners, buy the properties and then manage their development according to 22@BCN’s strict specifications.
“The result is a textbook example of public-private co-operation,” says Anna Birulés, vice-chairman of Renta Corporación, a Barcelona-based developer. Renta has bought and sold more than 70,000 sq metres of industrial land and installations in the past three years as part of broader surge in 22@BCN activity.
Investment in property acquisition and redevelopment under the programme has climbed from about €15m in 2003 to more than €60m last year, while completed office and residential space has doubled to 2m sq metres.
An area with a concentration of flour and textile mills, foundries, machinery shops and transport yards that invited comparisons with the UK’s Manchester at its peak is undergoing its “second industrial revolution”, according to Miguel Barceló, a member of the 22@BCN governing council. The refitted factories and purpose-built office blocks sprouting up around the district have started to draw trophy tenants.
Indra, a Spanish software group, was one of the zone’s first residents, along with GTD, another technology company serving the aeronautical industry. Work on a media centre, to house broadcasters, producers and a specialist university, is underway and there are hopes that 22@BCN will become a business hub. “There are a lot of cities today that claim to be the next Silicon Valley,” Barceló says. “We wanted to set realistic goals, so opted for established sectors in Catalonia – media, IT, energy and biotechnology.”
House prices in the area have responded to all this activity, climbing from an average of €2,735 per sq metre in 2003 to €4,523 per sw metre now. But the figures have been distorted by upscale residential and commercial development on reclaimed swampland now known as Diagonal Mar, on the district’s north-eastern edge. Standard three-bedroom flats in the final stage of a four-part high-rise development are currently on the market at about €1.3m (£930,000) apiece. With its shopping mall, business hotels, marina and beach developments, conference centre and foreign residents, the area is known as “El Barrio Americano” by some in the district.
“The older residents are not exactly taken with it,” says Teresa Fradera, a sales executive with Espais, the property group marketing Diagonal Mar. “They say it looks more like Miami than Barcelona.”
A few blocks away, in Poble Nou proper, there are no such reservations. But, with renovators’ bargains cropping up amid the cheap-rent workshops, building sites and transport yards, change is inevitable.
Architect Raimon Ollé is one of a growing band of small investors driving the transformation. Three years ago he and his wife clubbed together with another young couple to buy a three-storey workshop in the heart of Poble Nou, paying €500,000 for the property and spending the same again on refitting and dividing the space into three roughly equal parts. Ollé installed his business on the ground floor and, with his partners, created a pair of open-plan residential loft spaces above, which today could fetch about €600,000 apiece.
But he wouldn’t dream of selling now. “This is still largely a commercial area but it’s gradually changing,” he says. “Within a few years there will be a thousand new residents living within a few blocks of here.”
Many will be like him – young professionals with children looking to escape the cramped, noisy environs of more central neighbourhoods. “Barcelona hasn’t seen urban development on this scale since the creation of the Eixample,” the 19th-century extramural extension, says Eduard Andreu from property search website Idealista.com. “It’s one of the few parts of metropolitan area with space to spread out.”
Changing demographics are already being noted. An annual street party that was abandoned for several years due to lack of organisers has returned and older residents report that this year’s was the most energetic for some time.
Four blocks north of Ollé’s loft conversion is Las Ramblas de Poble Nou, a pedestrianised avenue running 14 blocks inland from beachside parkland. Long the focus of commercial and social activity, it provides a faithful snapshot of the changing face of the area.
“There’s been a big surge in the number of nannies and prams out and about,” says Antoni Oliva Quesada, a freelance consultant who helps run a local network of 22@BCN businesses. “It also feels a bit more cosmopolitan than just a few years ago.”
Still, many older Barcelona residents still perceive Poble Nou as remote, in spite of easy tram, bus and underground connections to the heart of the Catalan capital. “You still hear shopkeepers saying: ‘Oh, no, you’ll have to go up to Barcelona to buy that,’ ” says Oliva Quesada.
He and his wife were among the first wave of newcomers in 1998, when the area’s future was still uncertain. They paid €180,000 for a remodelled ground floor garden flat, including a 100 sq metre patio, and the property is now worth nearly three times that, reflecting national price inflation as much as local factors.
Most experts agree that Spain’s property boom has ended, with price growth this year expected to be below 6 per cent, compared with more than 20 per cent at the height of the cycle. But transitional zones, such as Poble Nou, will be among the first to recover from what could be a prolonged period of correction.
Andreu acknowledges that the district is “very much a work in progress”, still lacking the atmosphere and amenities of a fully-fledged neighbourhood. And the well-heeled residents of Diagonal Mar seem to agree. “What you’ve got are basically Chinese restaurants and chain stores. I suppose this will change with time but it could be quite a few years,” says one who asked not to be named.
Still, progress is evident. And, in spite of early resistance, even many of Poble Nou’s older residents now welcome the 22@BCN plan thanks in part to the preservation of more than 100 landmarks – among them 19th-century water towers and chimney stacks – which has helped assuage fears about lost industrial heritage. Developers are also obliged to build new schools, hospitals and other public amenities as part of an offset programme.
“There are those who complain that the district is losing its identity but [it] was dying [before],” says Josep Maria Alós, a Poble Nou resident for more than 50 years and head of a local neighbourhood association. “Now there are kids everywhere. At our last Christmas parade there were people spilling out all over the place.”
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Local agents
Espais, tel: +34 93292 0002; www.espais.es
Simurba, tel: +34 93238 8899; www.simurba.com
JP Sica, tel: +34 91419 425; www.jpsica.com
