I’m sure you have a very clear answer to this question. And it is very easy if you are from Barcelona or have lived here long enough to know that there is one that wins by a landslide. Or maybe not. Because when asked which is the longest street in Barcelona, many would answer without thinking twice that the Diagonal. But the truth is that Tram Street does not top this ranking, and is only the fifth longest street in the city.
The podium is, as you probably already suspected, from the Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes. Its 13 kilometers long and 689 portals (with an enumeration that goes up to 1.198) make it the longest street in Barcelona and also in Spain.
That is, in terms of portals and inhabitants, of course, because the longest street in kilometers is the Gran Via de La Manga in La Manga del Mar Menor, an avenue that crosses the entire sleeve and is 19 kilometers long.
In fact, we are a city with very long streets. Extremely long. Just one piece of information: 14 of the 20 longest streets in the country are in Barcelona. And we shouldn’t be surprised either, since the design of the Eixample by Ildelfons Cerdà not only made the city of Barcelona one of the most gridded of all the metropolises in the world, but also created streets that stretched as far as the eye could see.
In addition to the aforementioned, the other longest streets in Barcelona are – in order from longest to shortest – Carrer de València, Carrer d’Aragó, Carrer de Mallorca, Carrer del Consell de Cent, Avinguda Diagonal, Carrer de Provença, Carrer de Muntaner, Carrer del Rosselló, Carrer de la Diputació, Carrer de Balmes, Avinguda Meridiana and Travessera de Gràcia.
A street with a changing name
When Gran Via was originally projected in the original plan of the Cerdá Plan, the name that appeared was “Letter N, Number 11”. It’s a good thing it hasn’t stayed that way until now, otherwise imagine every time you had to name it. In the end we would surely end up shortening it and calling it “la ene”.
Fortunately all that was not necessary, in 1900 the name was changed to Cortes and in 1931 the nickname was extended to “Avenue of the Catalan Cortes“. The arrival of the dictatorship was also noticeable, as in all of Spain, in the name of the streets. Así Fue como le llegó su nuevo nombre,“Avenida de José Antonio Primo de Rivera“. With the end of the dictatorship it was rechristened with the name by which we all know it now.
Cover photo: Flickr from Jorge Láscar