‘Tourists also want an authentic city, not a theme park’: The redevelopment plan that seeks to give La Rambla back to Barcelona residents The project, which is expected to be completed in 2027, seeks to rescue the Catalan capital’s most emblematic promenade from excessive tourism and gentrification. But it seems easier said than done Whatever happens to La Rambla happens to all of Barcelona. Both the city’s greatness and its misery are concentrated within its three-quarter mile length.
What was originally a narrow stream is today, to the unprejudiced eye, a beautiful boulevard dotted with landmark buildings. However, Barcelona residents tend to see it only as an obligatory boundary between the Raval and Gòtic neighborhoods. Only tourists make use of its original function as a promenade that links the central Plaça Catalunya with the old port.
“Locals walk along it transversally, and tourists longitudinally,” summarizes the architect Lola Domènec, a member of the cross-disciplinary Km-ZERO team that won the competition for the transformation of La Rambla in 2017. A task that is now finally being resumed and is expected to be completed in 2027. The redevelopment of the thoroughfare has been going on for a long time, starting two decades ago.
Another architect, Itziar González, was a city councilor for the Ciutat Vella district in 2007, when she declared at a news conference that the city should do something about a street that was already taken over by touri.