Those who regularly stroll along the northern end of Barcelona’s coastline will know that, right where the Diagonal meets the sea, a gigantic concrete wasteland survives, having been fenced off for years.
This is the Forum’s marine platform, a colossal feat of engineering reclaimed from the sea that was initially designed to house a promised marine zoo that never came to fruition. Since then, this space has remained frozen in time as a gray, inhospitable esplanade, practically inaccessible to the public, except when the city’s major music events take over the space.
This gigantic site of nearly thirteen hectares—an area that far exceeds that of Glòries Park—has its days numbered as we know it. The Barcelona City Council has put forward an ambitious renovation project budgeted at 52 million euros to definitively open the space to the public. According to municipal projections, the main construction work will begin in 2027 with the aim of surrounding the site with walkways and tree-lined areas.
The local government argues that the esplanade will be used primarily by the local community for nearly eleven months a year, and that will entail a key change: saying goodbye to most of the festivals held on the esplanade.
The shield against mega-festivals
One of the hottest topics in this renovation has to do with large-scale music events, an issue that always sparks heated debate in the area. To calm tensions and prevent the space from becoming a sort of permanent nighttime theme park, the city council has taken a drastic decision: to limit large-scale music events on the new esplanade as much as possible.
In this way, the local government has confirmed that Primavera Sound will be the only large-scale festival to retain the right to set up its stages on this waterfront plot. This measure officially rules out the arrival of any other major music event at the venue, in an effort to ensure that noise pollution and crowds in the surrounding neighborhoods do not escalate further.
This restrictive measure leaves the future of other large-scale events that typically set up their infrastructure around the Forum in this area uncertain. Essential names on Barcelona’s music calendar, such as the Cruïlla Festival, Brunch Electronik, the Share Festival, and Festival·B, will have to concentrate all their activities in the park’s already authorized hard-surface areas or, if the space proves insufficient for their growth ambitions, begin scouring the city in search of new alternative locations far from this coveted esplanade reclaimed from the sea.
Between neighborhood mistrust and the first green shoots
Despite this musical shield, neighborhood groups in areas like Maresme or Poblenou remain wary of the project’s fine print. Residents fear that the multifunctional central plaza planned by City Hall will end up acting as a magnet for all kinds of events that prevent free daily access. For this reason, the associations continue to fight to reduce the amount of hard surface and prioritize a genuine wooded urban park, similar to the Ciutadella, that definitively breaks with the dominance of concrete along the waterfront.
To iron out these rough edges, city architects plan to launch a participatory process where residents can propose improvements and ideas for the final design of the large esplanade, which will also house the new facilities for the Agapito Fernández soccer field. While the final plan for the platform is being drawn up, the area’s transformation is already showing its first signs a little further south. In fact, before the end of this year, the new section of the Passeig Marítim connecting Carrer Bac de Roda with the Fòrum is scheduled to open—a project that will add three hectares of public space and some 800 new trees to begin transforming the face of Barcelona’s coastline.
