The Asociación de Vecinos de Can Sant Joan de Montcada i Reixac, in the Vallès Occidental (Barcelona) opposes the tourist use of Rec Comtal, the canal that between the 10th and 19th centuries supplied water to the city of Barcelona.
The capital's City Council announced an investment of 2.9 million euros from Next Generation funds to create a green route between the neighborhoods of Vallbona and Trinitat Vella to deconcentrate the city's tourist offer, creating new attractions that are committed to sustainability and the renaturalization of spaces. The neighbors consider that this contradicts the Rec Master Plan, which planned to recover the irrigation canal based on community, educational, cultural, historical and environmental logics.
The Barcelona City Council's forecast is to allocate the 2.9 million euros to the Besòs Consortium to undertake the recovery works, an action that is expected to begin soon and is included in the Master Plan agreed upon a year ago with the Montcada town council. .
The initiative is highly valued by the neighborhood association because it will involve improvements in an environment where action must be taken to preserve it and make its historical capital shine, and they demand that it be expanded to the 12 kilometers of the Rec Comtal and not only on the marked route.
"We know that the recovery carried out in the Vallbona neighborhood directly affects the social and economic dynamics of Can Sant Joan, we have needed investments and improvements in the neighborhoods for a long time," highlights the association's spokesperson, Antonio Alcántara.
However, they do not share the spirit linked to the tourist exploitation of the irrigation canal, given that the Master Plan plans to propose recovering it around community, educational, cultural, historical and environmental logics. "We think that the actions carried out around the dignity, recovery and dissemination of the Rec Comtal should be linked to public-community logic, which are situated in a community management model rooted in the territory and in an economic framework. social and solidarity and, therefore, that the actions come from the neighborhood and revert to the neighborhood," highlights the neighborhood spokesperson.
"We do not share that the main reason for improving the Rec Comtal is tourist decentralization, and we are concerned that the recovery of this heritage is linked to extractive management logic that places the economic benefit of a few above the needs of the neighborhoods and neighborhood that lives there," concludes Alcántara.
