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A large bronze plaque is embedded into the side of the esplanade along Platja de Somorrostro, one of Barcelona’s most popular stretches of beach, which lies in front of Hospital del Mar. It depicts an aerial view of that same stretch of beach at some time in the Fifties, almost unrecognisable when compared to today’s scene. People of all ages, backgrounds and nationalities pass by, barely noticing its existence as they soak up the unique atmosphere of an afternoon in Barceloneta.

This vibrant and cosmopolitan scene, however, is still relatively new for the neighbourhood. Speak to any Barcelona resident over a certain age and they will tell you about the days when this part of the city was tantamount to a no-go zone. The overcrowded streets of Barceloneta used to spill out onto the shore, where the Somorrostro barraca (shantytown) housed thousands of impoverished households, each with its own struggles and story.

The Olympic Games in 1992 changed the face of Barcelona forever and many of these individual stories have since been lost: the communities that lived in the barracas along the coast were relocated to areas across the city, including Badalona and La Mina, and their struggle all but forgotten.

Although fishermen’s shanties had been documented on the spit of land just outside the Ciutat Vella since the 1500s, no formal housing was built there until the 18th century. During the War of Succession, after the defeat of the city in 1714, part of the Ribera neighbourhood was demolished to make way for the construction of a military citadel, now Parc de la Ciutadella. A plan was drawn up for a new neighbourhood outside the old city walls in which to rehouse displaced residents. The new area developed its own character as something of an independent fishing village, taking the name Barceloneta, meaning ‘Little Barcelona’.

Construction started on the new neighbourhood in 1753. Originally intended to be a modern, urban centre, it was designed with two-storey blocks of houses forming a grid system. However, due to a lack of space and increasing population of the city, these blocks soon grew into four-storey buildings, towering over the narrow streets.

In the mid-19th century, the area between Barceloneta and Poblenou became a centre for heavy industry, as its situation close to the Port of Barcelona and the French railway station provided easy transport of materials and goods. As a result, more and more people settled in Barceloneta; overcrowding became a problem and unsanitary conditions facilitated the spread of disease.

The presence of factories and warehouses in such a densely populated area made Barceloneta a key target for Fascist air raids during the Spanish Civil War. The damage caused by these attacks was never fully repaired and, in the post-war years, further waves of migrants were drawn to the area for its cheap housing.

During the Francoist period, between 1940 and 1970, the metropolitan area of Barcelona welcomed 1.4 million newcomers from other parts of Spain. This migration was principally economic as, despite the damage to the city caused by the civil war, it had remained prosperous and was Spain’s second largest city. Migration was encouraged by the government—partly as a mechanism to dilute Catalan culture—but little thought had been given as to how to cope with such a sharp population increase.

× Expand Photo courtesy of Isabel Cocker

Julia Aceituna, a resident of Somorrostro from 1952 to 1958, underlined that migrants came because there were better opportunities in the city. “There was work, and we were there to do it,” she said in Barraques. La Ciutat Oblidada, a documentary about Barcelona’s shantytowns. “What was missing was proper housing.” According to census data, in 1954 there were 2,400 permanent constructions in Somorrostro and more than 15,000 people living along a stretch of land measuring barely one kilometre.

In an interview with TV3, Aceituno underlined the hardships of living in the area. She moved there at 14 and grew up in a shanty made of disused wooden boxes that had been used to transport fish. “My mother had it hard, very hard,” she described. “When I arrived in Barcelona, I was saying, ‘Oh, how beautiful, how amazing the city is’. But when we entered Sorromostro, I couldn’t believe the poverty and the dirtiness of the streets.”

Life may have been tough, but there was always a lot of “compañerismo” within the neighbourhood itself, and Aceituno described a solidarity and a sense of community that deserves to be remembered. “We moved there to work—not to fight or to cause trouble. We were just honest, hard-working citizens.”

Throughout the Sixties, there was a concerted effort by the municipality to create order in Barceloneta, and the barracas were slowly reduced in size. In 1966, Franco came to Barcelona to celebrate the first Naval Week, a recognition of the strength of the Spanish Navy. In preparation for this event, the remaining 600 homes making up the Somorrostro shantytown were demolished and its citizens relocated. However, even after this time, Barceloneta maintained a thoroughly working-class character and the shoreline was dotted with the area’s famous xiringuitos (beach bars).

“People used to go to Barceloneta but there was never any kind of beach,” Marta, a local 39-year-old, recalled. “I remember going down to the xiringuitos for paella. They were just shacks, but the food was always good because it came straight from the fishing boats.”

In his book Homage to Barcelona (1990), Colm Tóibín described the Barceloneta of the mid-Eighties as an “overcrowded fishing village”, observing that the water along the nearby coast was so filthy with industrial waste that “nobody in his or her right mind would go down there for a swim”. Barcelona had earned itself the reputation of a city that had turned its back to the sea.

But all that changed in 1986, when it was announced that the Catalan capital would host the 1992 Olympic Games. Across the entire city, civil engineering projects on a gargantuan scale were immediately set into motion to modernise Barcelona and to provide the city with outstanding new leisure spaces. One of the key objectives was to open the city to the seafront, and the redevelopment of the coastline, from Barceloneta to what is now the Fòrum, was the jewel in the crown. “When they were awarded the Olympics, they got straight on with it,” remembered Marta.

Today, Rebecca Horn’s metal sculpture ‘l’Estel ferit’ or ‘Homenatge a la Barceloneta’, located on Barceloneta Beach, gives a public nod to the area’s past. Commissioned as part of the revitalisation of the area for the Olympics, the four iron boxes rise out of the sand, bending upwards into a disjointed tower. Some say that it represents the humble shacks that stood there in the past, while others suggest that it evokes the image of an abandoned lighthouse or fishing crates. The inspiration for the work, however, may reach even further back, to the original two-storey dwellings planned for the neighbourhood in the 1700s.

Despite the intended imagery, without knowledge of the area’s history, few citizens or tourists would be able to decipher the meaning of the sculpture. In this way, ‘the other Barcelona’—a working-class, industrial city of barracas and ramshackle xiringuitos—is slowly being forgotten. Somorrostro may live on in the name of that particular stretch of sand and palm trees, but otherwise there is little to indicate that thousands of people lived and dreamed in that very spot.

The plaque was erected in 2014, as a tribute to those who once lived in the cramped and unsanitary beachfront barracas. Former Mayor of Barcelona Xavier Trias unveiled the bronze commemoration, stating at the time that “it is an act of justice and recovery of historical memory not to forget the people who lived in harsh conditions here in Somorrostro”, and added that “personal sacrifice, perseverance and self-improvement have helped build Barcelona”.

For Aceituno, the plaque is the result of years of work to get the neighbourhood, and its people, recognised. “We owe a lot to Barcelona,” she added, “but Barcelona also owes a lot to us.”

SHIFTING SANDS

Creating and maintaining the 17 beaches along Barcelona’s waterfront