“Infinitely expanding the heritage catalog is not a guarantee in a country that is not rich”

There are those who say that the city is already finished. That there is no room to do much more.

— Cities never end. What the city is not, is a blank slate. But just because the page is full doesn’t mean you don’t have room. You can tint, you can erase, you can redraw…

He defends that it is necessary to think of the city beyond its limits.

— I have an administrative limit over which I have a competence, but I will not act the same within this limit if I have in my mental frame and on my table a plan that goes beyond that. What may happen in my environment is also part of the configuration of Barcelona’s decisions. I cannot think of Barcelona without thinking of the metropolitan region.

It seems that the chief architects must always leave a great work. Is there any transformation that makes you excited to lead?

— It’s cheating because it’s not the architects who come to office deciding that the Diagonal or Consell de Cent will be their work. I have no idea what I’m going through. What I do know is that I have some things I’m excited about. I am the first woman in this position, and for me the how is important, not just the what. For me, it is also important that these projects that the mayor requests, that the citizens expect, serve to strengthen, take care of and give visibility to the services of the City Council that do this.

One of the city’s problems is the lack of housing. Should Barcelona consider growing upwards?

— There is not just one thing that must be done. When someone says that the solution to housing is to build towers, I’d tell them to do the numbers. Because when you start going up in height, you have to leave a lot more space. Now, can you go up a notch or two in the city? Surely yes. Everywhere? no In a generalized way? neither The possibility that the population will grow exists and we will have to find the mechanisms. Can they be with new sun? no Therefore, it is clear that we will have to find in certain spaces what I would call intensifications.

Intensificacions?

— Barcelona has an average of 200 homes per hectare built on average. But there are places in the city that have 85. You probably don’t need to go to those that have 300, but it’s clear that 85 might not be a solution either.

In Barcelona, ​​much has been said about the Diagonal and less about the Gran Via.

— It is a metropolitan avenue that will have to be reflected upon. The big change in this type of road is that they no longer have the historical function of being high-capacity roads to reach the center at full speed and become a civic space.

There are those who talk about putting a tram there as well. Would that be an option?

— Answering that would be a bit adventurous. Nor have we solved Diagonal and Meridiana in the same way. There may be a shared goal, but different solutions for each case. In the case of the Gran Via, the solution will have to be found.

And what should be done with Plaça Catalunya?

— Plaça Catalunya is the knee joint of the Rambla with the city that grew outside the walls and its connection with the Rambla Catalunya should be made understandable. It will be necessary to reflect on this space.

Is it convenient to pacify Passeig Maragall or Carrer de Sants?

— Behind the pacifications there is a shared objective, which is to reduce the presence of motor vehicles and speed. Now, is there a single model? no We have not said that we will not expand the pacifications, what we have said is that it behooves us to reflect on how they are carried out. In other words, if this pacification de-pacifies me in other places, I don’t know if I’m interested. Now, if this pacification promotes a positive use of public space, we will not go against that.

How should the staircase of the Sagrada Familia be solved?

— I think my opinion on the subject is not the crux of the matter. Solutions are never everything one wants and nothing the other wants. The city must ensure that the parties feel fairly treated. I don’t want to find myself defending a solution that no one else wants. Now, how big is the staircase? If you want me to tell you the truth, I don’t know yet.

The project convinces her to make one hub audiovisual at the Tres Chimeneies de Sant Adrià?

— I think the best thing that can happen to the Three Chimneys project is for it to be done and to stop arguing about whether this one is better than the other. The beautiful thing about complexity is that when we start to change the conditions of a place, things appear that were not foreseen. Life reinterprets spaces. Many times in the cities, waiting for the prince blue, we lose opportunities. We have to stop this constant running around, the endless debates.

Is the heritage sufficiently protected?

— We have always imagined heritage as something fixed, but it is not. I’ll give you a bit of a strange simile, but it’s like when you lose your parents and have to start emptying the house. What is heritage? What do we keep? What do we preserve? I would like, in this mandate, to help ensure that we can really protect what we want to protect. Keep expanding the catalog to infinity it is not a guarantee in a country that is not rich.

Is it cataloged too much?

— We have to find the balance between what we want to protect, what it means to protect, what resources we have to do it and how we will share responsibility for doing it. Collectively, we must also know how to find more mechanisms apart from exclusively that of preserving. My obsession is to take advantage of the world capital of architecture in 2026 to have a conversation that is less sentimental and with a certain amount of rationality. That we think about heritage in a non-encyclopedic, non-punitive way. Not just catalogues, but a much more constructive, much more useful look at improving the life of these spaces and these things.