This is one of those municipal projects that generate a certain sense of déjà vu in anyone who follows urban planning information in Barcelona with some interest. The City Council announced this Thursday the award to the Landskrona project of the ideas competition to define the Magòria complex, in Sants-Montjuïc, on the mountain side bank of Gran Via. The works, which include sports facilities, a new garden, and the underground work and cleaning center of Parc i Jardins, should start in January 2028. The fact is that something similar happened in the previous decade, with the expectation of being able to cut the ribbon in 2022.
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All this happens on the border of the neighborhoods of La Bordeta, Hostafrancs, and La Font de la Guatlla, in the Sant-Montjuïc district, in a place that housed a Ferrocarrils station from 1912 to 1974, which still stands converted into a civic center. Around it, a disused wasteland that has been waiting for a public purpose for years. There, between 1984 and 2009, there was a football field that the Unió Esportiva Sants has been claiming for years to return to what they consider their home. In addition to an 11-a-side football field with stands, which will have 12 petanque courts and the Parcs i Jardins center underneath, another 7-a-side football field will be built that will serve as the roof of a pavilion with four multi-sport courts.
All this will have an estimated cost of about 36 million euros, but another huge piece of this forgotten space attached to the Magòria that corresponds to the Govern remains to be resolved and which, for a similar amount, contemplates social-health facilities and subsidized housing. A municipal spokesperson indicates that the City Council’s part can progress independently of the Generalitat’s roadmap, which has not yet been finalized. What the Catalan Executive did raise and inaugurate in 2014 was the promised primary care center, which is the only piece placed in this immense puzzle.
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Volatile schedule
The project was presented in 2018 and over these years works have been promised for 2019, 2023, 2026, and now 2028
The Ada Colau government announced in 2018 its intention to revitalize this enclave of Sants-Montjuïc. At that time, it was said it would be finished in 2022. In March 2020, that is, six years ago, the City Council presented the Magòria Campus project, with an architectural proposal that already had a winning architect’s office. The City Council then corrected the initial forecast and advanced that the works would start in 2023. But the bureaucratic and urban modification process took longer than expected and the urban improvement plan was not approved until the municipal plenary session of October 2023, at which time it was said that the works would start in 2026.
The Jaume Collboni government inherited the project and chose to modify it, which has resulted in a new schedule: groundbreaking planned for early 2028. Thus, if there are three years of construction, the inauguration of the municipal part is scheduled almost 10 years after the initial promise. The new design incorporates a central passage that connects Gran Via with Corral street, a backbone axis that should help to better and more closely knit the neighborhoods affected by the Magòria.
