The Cerdà Plan () was an 1860 plan to reform and expand the city of Barcelona beyond its medieval walls. It was created by Ildefons Cerdà, a civil engineer, and designed to be an egalitarian and hygenic expansion of the city, using a Hippodamian grid layout. The plan's approval caused serious controversy for having been imposed by the government of the Kingdom of Spain against the plan of Antoni Rovira i Trias, who had already won a competition for the city's expansion created by the Barcelona City Council.
The widening contemplated in the plan unfolded over an immense area that was free of buildings as it was considered a strategic military zone. It proposed a continuous grid of blocks of 113.3 meters from the Besòs to Montjuïc, with streets of 20, 30, and 60 meters with a maximum building height of 16 meters. The novelty in the application of the Hippodamus plan was that the blocks had 45º chamfers to allow better visibility.
The development of the plan lasted almost a century. Throughout this time, the plan has been transformed and many of its guidelines were not applied. The original Cerdá plan was modified as a result of the interests of the land owners and speculation.
Historical background Barcelona in the 19th century. Unhealthy and oppressed Throughout the 18th century and the first part of the 19th century, the health and social situation of Barcelona's population had become suffocating. The medieval wall that had enabled the city to resist seven sieges between 1641 and 1714 now represented a brake on urban expansion. Population growth raised the population from 115,000 in 1802 to 140,000 in 1821 and reached 187,000 in 1850. The 6 km of walls surrounded an area of just over 2 km2, although 40% of the space was occupied by 7 barracks, 11 hospitals, 40 convents, and 27 churches.
Sanitary conditions worsened as a result of the density and lack of sanitary infrastructures such as sewage systems or running water. Burials in cemeteries in front of churches were sources of infections, groundwater contamination, and epidemics. Despite the decision made by Bishop Pablo de SicharThe cemetery of Poblenou had been built by Bishop Climent in 1719, although it was unsuccessful due to its remoteness from the city and was finally destroyed during the French War. It was after its reconstruction, in 1819, when it began to function with a progressive normality. in 1819 to hold burials in the Poblenou cemetery, its operation was not consolidated until the middle of the 19th century. From that moment on, and forced by military ordinances, cemetery spaces began to be recovered at the doors of churches such as Sant Just, Sant Pere de les Puelles or the Fossar de les Moreres.
In these circumstances, life expectancy was 36 years for the rich and 23 for the poor and day laborers. Barcelona, like Catalonia, had been hit by the plague in the 15th and 16th centuries, and suffered several epidemics throughout the 19th century:
1821: yellow fever with 8,821 deaths (see: Cholera pandemics in Spain). 1834: cholera with 3,344 deaths. 1854: cholera with 6,419. 1865: cholera with 3,765.
The military consideration of Barcelona as a stronghold with the Citadel next to it conditioned urban life. Not only were the problems of the citizens within the walls ignored, but the timid movements to expand outside the walls were repressed with the demolition of the buildings because they "prevented the defense of the city" as occurred in 1813, since the area up to the distance of a cannon shot, which corresponded approximately to the "jardinets de Gràcia", was considered non-aedificanda (unbuilt area).
The voices against it came not only from the citizens but also from the Barcelona City Council itself, which, through the "Junta de Ornato" (Beautification Board) and in harmony with Captain General Baron de Meer, in 1838 requested a modification of the wall between the door of the Studies (the Rambla) and the bastion of Jonqueres (Urquinaona square) to achieve a small extension.
Down with the walls
In 1841 the Barcelona City Council announced a competition to promote the development of the city. On 11 September 1841 the prize was awarded to Dr. Pedro Felipe Monlau, doctor and hygienist, author of the work Abajo las murallas, Memoria acerca de las ventajas que reportaría a Barcelona y especialmente a su industria de la demolición de las murallas que circuyen la ciudad (Report on the advantages that the demolition of the walls surrounding the city would bring to Barcelona and especially to its industry), in which an expansion from the Llobregat River to the Besós is demanded.
The wide diffusion of the project and the popular impulse provoked confrontations such as the one on 26 October 1842, in which the Demolition Board demolished part of the Citadel, which caused General Espartero to bombard Barcelona from the Montjuïc Castle on 3 December, and ordered its reconstruction with an expense of 12 million reales at the expense of the city.
In 1844, Jaime Balmes joined, from the pages of La Sociedad, the protests contradicting the theories of military strategic value defended by General Narváez.
More than ten years passed until the Barcelona City Council approved a project prepared by its secretary Manuel Durán y Bas, which was sent to the Madrid government on 23 May 1853, with the unanimous signature of the consistory with its mayor, Josep Beltran i Ros at the head. The report received the support of the Catalan deputies and especially Pascual Madoz, deputy for Lérida and a key person in the demolition of the walls. Madoz became civil governor of Barcelona for barely seventy-five days when he became Minister of Finance of the progressive government, from where he urged the disentailment and promulgated a royal order that would put an end to the confrontations between the City Council and the Ministry of War. The order to demolish the walls of 9 August 1854, specified that the sea wall, Montjuïc Castle and the Citadel were to be maintained.
The expansion project
The need for an expansion
The need to grow outside the walls was obvious, but we must also bear in mind the speculative effect that the urbanization of 1,100 hectares of land would have. With the competition opened by the city council in December 1840 and won by Monlau's "Abajo las Murallas" project, the period of transformation of the city began. In 1844 Miquel Garriga i Roca offered himself to the Barcelona City Council as municipal architect for the planning of the expansion, with a proposal focused on ornamental beautification operations. In 1846 Antoni Rovira i Trias published in the Boletín Enciclopédico de Nobles Artes a proposal for the formation of a geometric plan of Barcelona.
The preparation of the Expansion Project In 1853, a year before the demolition of the walls, the city council began to prepare for the next stage by creating the Commission of the Corporations of Barcelona. It later became the Commission of the Eixample; it included representatives of the industry, the architects , Francesc Daniel Molina i Casamajó, , , , and representatives of the press: Jaume Badia, Antonio Brusi y Ferrer, Tomás Barraquer and Antonio Gayolá.
In 1855, the Ministry of Public Works commissioned Cerdá to draw up the topographical plan of the Llano de Barcelona, which was the extensive area between Barcelona and Gracia and from Sants to Sant Andreu de Palomar that had not been urbanized for military reasons. Cerdá was a person very sensitive to the hygienist currents, he applied his knowledge to develop, on his own, a Monograph of the working class (1856), a complete and deep statistical analysis of the living conditions within the city walls based on social, and economic, and nutritional aspects. The diagnosis was clear: the city was not suitable for "the new civilization, characterized by the application of steam energy in industry and the improvement of mobility and communication" (the optical telegraph was the other relevant invention).
Aware of this deficiency, Cerdà began without any commission to structure his thinking, systematically exposed many years later (1867) in his great work: Teoría General de la Urbanización (General Theory of Urbanization). One of the most important features of Cerdà's proposal, what makes him stand out in the history of urban planning, is the search for coherence to account for the contradictory requirements of a complex agglomeration. He overcomes partial visions (utopian, cultural, monumental, rationalist city...) and goes in search of an integral city.
The year 1859 was a crucial year for the expansion. On 2 February Cerdà received an order from the central government to verify the study for the expansion within twelve months. The city council reacted immediately by calling on 15 April a public competition on plans for the widening with a deadline of 31 July, although it was postponed to 15 August. Meanwhile, Cerdá wasted no time, finished his project, and showed it -to gain support in Madrid- to Madoz, Laureano Figuerola, and the general director of Public Works, the Marquis of Corvera. But 9 June 1859 is the date on which the central government finally approved the widening plan designed by Cerdà using a royal order. From that moment on, there were technical, political, and economic disputes between the central and municipal governments. Concerning the municipal competition, thirteen projects were presented, the unanimous winner was Antoni Rovira y Trías on 10 October 1859. Following a royal order of 17 December, all of them plus that of Cerdá were exposed indicating the deserved qualification, the City Council refraining from evaluating that of Cerdá.
The issue was finally resolved on 8 July 1860, when the Ministry ordered the execution of the Cerdá Plan.
Municipal contest The projects submitted to the Barcelona City Council competition to design an expansion for the city focused, in most cases, its solution in the "road from Barcelona to Gracia" that for some time was being consolidated urbanistically as Passeig de Gracia and that conditioned the possible solutions. These plans, unlike the one proposed by Cerdá, occupied a smaller area and were intended to accommodate fewer people, which is logical if we think that they obeyed the objectives of the bourgeoisie to reinforce social segregation. Thus, the winning plan of the widening competition, presented by Rovira i Trias, corresponds to the slogan that headed it: "The layout of a city is more the work of time than of the architect"; and Rovira himself stated that the proletarians could not live in what "will have to be properly called the city of Barcelona".
The projects were submitted under pseudonyms and the plaques of the non-awarded projects were destroyed, so part of the documentation has been lost.
Major Projects
Soler y Gloria Project: Francisco Soler Gloria's project, which won the first runner-up prize, proposed a grid development based on two axes: one following a line towards France parallel to the sea and the other towards Madrid along the old Sarriá road. The two converged in the walled city. He proposed an industrial district on the other side of the Montjuïc mountain, a precursor idea of today's Zona Franca. The connection of the old city with Gracia was proposed by making a new avenue starting from the current Plaza de la Universidad. Daniel Molina Project: No documentation of this project is preserved, except for the proposed solution for the Plaça de Catalunya. His motto was: "Hygiene, comfort, and beauty". Josep Fontserè Project: Josep Fontserè was a young architect, son of the municipal architect José Fontseré Doménech, and won the third runner-up prize with a project that enhanced the centrality of Passeig de Gràcia and linked the neighboring centers with a set of diagonals that respected their original plots. His motto was: "Do not destroy to build, but conserve to rectify and build to enlarge".