From Barceloneta to L'Hospitalet. From classical art to the new contemporary representation. From the uncertainty that has always surrounded the Hermitage project to the certainty that the same mistakes cannot be made. The fact that the promoters of a franchise of the Petersburg institution have presented the project of an immersive museum in L'Hospitalet – news reported yesterday by La Vanguardia – offers these and other possible readings. One of them is the need to start thinking about culture on a metropolitan scale.
From the outset, one project does not contemplate the disappearance of the other. The promoters are still a personal party in the litigation for the plot of land in the port of Barcelona. The initiative cannot be considered buried in this way, although it is obvious that, if one day they were to consider giving a cultural occupation to those lands, it would hardly be in the orbit of a museum in the country that – for now – is chaired by Vladimir Putin.
The novelty today is that the promoter, the Swiss-Luxembourgish fund Varia Europe (in which there are Catalan investors), has placed the focus on the land of the old Godó i Trias factory in L'Hospitalet, located near the Fair of Barcelona.
In this process, they have been accompanied by those responsible for the culture area of the PSC, which is the party of the mayor of L'Hospitalet, Núria Marín, and partner of Ada Colau's government in the Barcelona City Council.
The PSC was very concerned about the possibility that the promoters would end up accepting the offers of land that came to them from cities such as Madrid or Malaga, which arose when the Hermitage project in the port was considered dead.
For this reason, according to Socialist sources, priority was given to finding a location in a municipality in the metropolitan area other than Barcelona, where the promoters of the project and BComú, Colau's party, maintain insurmountable differences.
According to the same sources, the Ministry of Culture has been aware of the process from the beginning. In this context, Jaume Collboni celebrated yesterday that the project has landed in a metropolitan municipality.
In L'Hospitalet we are confident that the project can be a catalyst that helps develop the city's potential as a cultural hub. After an initial commitment to attract art galleries, which had a very showy but limited effect, L'Hospitalet is consolidating itself as a focus of attraction for artists who live and work in buildings that could hardly be afforded in a city as expensive as Barcelona. .
The proximity of the Godó i Trias factory to the pavilions of the Fira in L'Hospitalet can also become an advantage for the new cultural facility, since the hundreds of thousands of professionals who attend the fairs each year would be a potential audience for the museum, as long as it is possible to offer a suitable environment for the afterwork. The large shopping malls in the area also attract many people who could also become visitors to the museum.
In any case, before materializing, the project must pass several tests. For now, the L'Hospitalet City Council yesterday agreed to open a public bidding process for the space of the old factory. The reason is the presentation of the project that will be called The Factory Museum.
The proposal, which by submitting to public tender can enter into competition with other potential projects, would entail an investment of 50 million euros, according to the documentation presented by the promoter group.
The architectural project would be carried out by the prestigious RCR Arquitectes studio, based in Olot and winner of a Pritzker Prize. According to sources close to the promoters, RCR is already working on solutions that would allow the textile factory, inaugurated in 1903, to be used as a museum. The project contemplates the possibility of incorporating a newly constructed building, where rooms specially adapted for new cultural uses.
The Godó i Trias factory is a modernist building protected as a cultural asset of local interest, with a constructed area of 7,257 square meters. Its first architect was Ferran Junoy.
According to the promoters, The Factory Museum, a center for physical and digital art, would host immersive historical and contemporary exhibitions, as well as a research center and spaces for artist residencies.
The use of the conditional is not trivial when talking about the Godó i Trias factory. As will be recalled, the old industry was to house a center for the promotion and development of traditional Chinese medicine in Europe, with a planned investment of 80 million euros.
The announcement was made in 2017. Three years later, the mayor herself warned that, given the lack of specificity on the part of Chinese investors, the City Council was beginning to study alternative uses for the factory. The chosen one has ended up being the one proposed by the promoters of the failed Hermitage.
Whatever the fate of the project that is now starting, its mere presentation should serve to reactivate the debate on metropolitan construction. The evidence of the extent to which this reality is ignored were the many reactions issued yesterday of the type "L'Hospitalet is left with what Barcelona has failed to retain".
Because, beyond the management of the initial project carried out in Barcelona –none of the parties has reason to presume that they have acted correctly–, it is obvious that the map of Barcelona culture cannot be conceived without counting on the municipalities metropolitan.
In this context, it is such good news that the promoters of the future audiovisual hub of Catalonia have focused on the Tres Xemeneies de Sant Adrià de Besòs and that a private operator has decided to make a relevant museum investment in L'Hospitalet land.
Culture, more than any other sector, can help create a certain metropolitan consciousness. It is something as simple –and in reality as unlikely in the short term– as Barcelona's moviegoers assuming once and for all that their city has a major film festival held in Sitges.
