The memory of Poblenou

“The Poblenou Park is one of the Olympic green spaces, as it was inaugurated in 1992. This public space of 11.92 hectares acts as a bridge connecting the old center of the Poblenou neighborhood with the sea. Along its route, it transitions from an urban park located next to the built-up area to a dune area, less populated with trees and shrubs as it nears the sea. It features a small pine grove around the playground area. Its uniqueness is further complemented by the sports areas nearby, at a lower level, and a small garden where olive trees, carob trees, and a fig tree grow, all unmistakably Mediterranean trees.”

This brief but eloquent explanation can be found on one of those green park signs, which few people read, when we cross the blurry boundaries of Poblenou Park, located between Bilbao and Llacuna streets and between the Litoral Ring Road and the sea.

I have always liked this place. It is one of the few spots in Barcelona where you can hear birds despite the cars and the noise of the city. It always smells of pine, toasted by the relentless sun, or damp after the rain. The atmosphere, indeed, is unmistakably Mediterranean, and it brings back memories of childhood, when I spent the summer with my family in Blanes. I remember some afternoons when we would sneak off to Cala Sant Francesc and cook sardines over the fire until late into the night.

This Mediterranean, the one of the Costa Brava, with the streaked pines climbing from the sea up the steep cliffs, is part of the collective imagination of all Barcelonans and Catalans. And also that of the streams of the Maresme, with masses of reeds moving gently with the wind. And that of the dunes, river wetlands, and the campsites along the Llobregat River, fighting for space near the planes and control towers.

Every time I pass by the Poblenou Park, I get a fleeting sense of happiness. It’s the pines. The pines that create a shadow with a carpet of pine needles, that tint the air with resin, and that connect me with the earth and the Mediterranean for a brief moment.

The sign at the entrance to the park is an excerpt from the written documentation that usually accompanies architectural and urban planning projects, called ‘Memoria’ (Memory). It is a part of the project to which the public usually has no access, and to which architects often don’t give the importance it deserves. It justifies the intervention on a regulatory level but contains an important part that motivates the strategic decisions made throughout the project, whether they are technical, heritage-related, or cultural. We could say it explains why we did it this way.

Our coastal cities need more parks like Poblenou to transition to a new climate reality

What is remarkable is that it’s called ‘Memoria,’ precisely that which the lived space manages to stir every time we are there. The memory of a place, the common ground of all our memories and the events that have left a trace, is the main idea that drives the project and which the authors wanted to preserve. Preserving the memory of a place is reading the traces that explain its genesis and allow us to understand its reality today and leave a legacy for tomorrow. Above regulations and restrictions of all kinds, which have surely conditioned many decisions, memory continues to hold a predominant value in the narrative of the project, the place, the landscape.

The Poblenou Park has been able to create an atmosphere of urban park and coastal protection system. It is symptomatic that, behind the large dune rising in front of the sea, protected by a large reed bed, is the only nudist beach in the entire city, as if its users found a corner protected by nature, away from curious gazes.

It is also a necessary space along the coast in a climate that, inevitably, we must accept is changing. A space of prudence, of negotiation with the sea that, at times, will claim it as its own and, at times, will allow us to use it. It is also an opportunity to reconcile with the rhythm of nature, with the permanent change of things and with seasonality. To recover a life that is more peaceful and less artificial.

Our French neighbors from Brittany and Normandy, or the Galician and Basque sailors, know this well. Life there follows the rhythm of the tides, marking the rhythms and rituals of human activities. Our Mediterranean, however, has given us, for centuries, lasting stability that we have taken as eternal, placing cities, roads, and railways just a few meters from the shores, and which today tend to disappear.

The Poblenou Park, stretching back in memory, occupies the space of large train track beaches from pre-Olympic Barcelona. It restores a memory of the place, prior to this occupation, recreating the natural landscape of Barcelonès, Maresme, or Baix Llobregat, which is so useful against the sea’s assaults. A place of sedimentation of streams, dunes, reeds, and mud that we all easily recognize as something that belongs to us. A landscape that recovers and preserves the unmistakably Mediterranean character of the city.

Our coastal cities need more parks like Poblenou to transition to a new climate reality, but also to facilitate an unavoidable social change, more in tune with the rhythm of our planet. A necessary step back, to restore a relationship with the sea that has been forgotten somewhere in our memory.