From vertical shantytown to green lung of the city. Can Clos is one of many forgotten neighborhoods in Barcelona. Born in 1952 to accommodate in buildings where to take the shanty-dwellers displaced from the Diagonal, the neighborhood of Can Clos was hidden for years behind Montjuïc. Now it is inaugurating a park of 14,400 m2 of green area that puts it on the map and makes it one of the green lungs of the city.
The new large urban park of the Marina de Port has transformed the upper part of Can Clos, in the Sants-Montjuïc district. The intervention has created a new green area that has modified the topography of the area, incorporating a pedestrian route that improves the connection of Can Clos with the rest of the Marina and with the mountain of Montjuïc.
What does the new Can Clos park look like?
The new park is intended to be a connecting space between the Marina de Port neighborhood, Can Clos and Montjuïc mountain, adding 14,400 m² of landscaped green areas, framed within the Climate Plan.
A total of 24,700 m² have been developed, with 14,400 m² destined for green spaces and rest and recreation areas, with two main zones. On the one hand,a large space with a central promenade and an urban forest, which extends between the streets Ferrocarrils Catalans, Diligències and Can Clos road.
On the other,a second area of 4,600 m², bounded by Ferrocarrils Catalans, Foneria and Onyar streets. In addition, a new children’s area, measuring 450 m², includes swings, rotating games, rope nets, slides and a climbing wall.
In addition, four new residential buildings are under construction in the park, two of them for subsidized public housing.
The neighborhood is currently participating in the choice of the park’s name through a participatory process, before it is submitted to the Barcelona City Council’s Nomenclature Committee.
Can Clos, the example of vertical shantyism
After shantyism (in neighborhoods such as Somorrostro) in Barcelona there was another phenomenon, that of vertical shantyism. Neighborhoods of buildings constructed in haste and without desire, with poor materials and few services (often without water or electricity) that served to accommodate the neighbors of the shantytowns who were displaced from their precarious homes to end up living in equally precarious buildings.
Can Clos was an example of this. The barracks of the Diagonal, a nucleus at the height of the current Camp Nou, were evicted in 1952 by the arrival of the Pope the celebration of the Equaristic Congress. It was necessary to prevent the Pope from seeing the shanty-dwellers in the street.
They were “hidden” in Can Clos, an improvised neighborhood behind Montjuic with buildings with hardly any services, which for many years had hardly any public transport connecting it with the city. This has been changing over the decades and the construction of the new park is one more step in the recovery of historically forgotten neighborhoods in Barcelona.