The pardon that the defenders of the railway heritage requested has not arrived and the Sant Feliu de Llobregat station has been condemned to the pickaxe. The trains have stopped stopping this weekend and the doors of the historic building that has been in service since 1854 have been closed for good.
Its disappearance is due to the works to bury the train tracks, which began two years ago and are advancing at a good pace at the ends. Now they face the central section and the time has come to start excavating to build the future station just below the current one, which has witnessed the urban and economic transformation of the capital of Baix Llobregat for 169 years.
In the coming weeks, the heritage elements will be dismantled and the rest will collapse. One of the three oldest passenger railway buildings in service in Spain will then go down in history. The other two are Cornellà and Molins de Rei stations, which hold the title of deans and, for the moment, are not in danger of collapse. Until recently it was Sant Andreu Comtal, retired at the end of last year, in that case with better luck than Sant Feliu since it will remain standing with uses that the Barcelona City Council has yet to define.
The railway infrastructure manager (Adif) prefers in this case to look the other way and tiptoes over the controversy, leaving the issue to be resolved locally even though both the old and new stations are owned by it.
The intention of the Sant Feliu City Council is to incorporate some symbolic element that recalls the historic building in the lobby of the future station. It was the option endorsed by 72% of the participants in the popular consultation held in 2021 to choose the urban model that will be carried out in the space now occupied by the train tracks and where the tram tracks are expected to pass. Said consultation confirmed the station's death sentence by imposing the option of creating a small memorial space over the option of making a replica in another location, supported by 26% of voters. "The municipal government gave the opportunity to save it and the result was clear, so the debate is closed", settles the mayor of the city, Oriol Bossa.
The fact that the proposals for voting were accompanied by the cost that they would have and the winning option had a budget of 30,000 euros compared to the 825,000 that it would cost to build a replica could have had a decisive influence. "It was a totally trick question," criticizes Jaume Solé, spokesman for the Salvem l'estació platform, which has fought since 2010 for the preservation of the building. He enthusiastically remembers the fight and the large number of local, national and international endorsements he has obtained over the last few years but has already assumed that the battle is lost.
All in all, the City Council has signed an agreement with the Barcelona Heritage Department to carry out a controlled deconstruction of the building, conserving as many elements as possible. "The latticework, the ceramic pieces, the balustrades, the lintel... are materials that will be preserved," Solé consoles herself. This leaves the door open for the municipal government that comes out of the next elections (if it changes color) or someone in the more distant future to reconsider the idea and build the now discarded replica. "Its reproduction is feasible because all the elements and the structure have been documented", highlights Esther Hachuel, archaeologist and director of the Center for Regional Studies of Baix Llobregat, who is against "putting the station in a showcase" and is committed to "rebuild it only when there is a clear project that gives a specific and relevant use to the building."
