There is still no date for the Barcelona City Council to carry out the sentence that condemns the impostor building of Montjuïc to disappear, the forty-year-old hangar known as the Italian Pavilion and which from the moment of its birth, back in the eighties of the last century, has supplanted the identity of his predecessors, those Italians through and through.
The Z6 building, the official name of the warehouse that occupies a privileged location in Plaza Carles Buhigas, next to the Font Màgica de Montjuïc, has remained on death row, threatened by the pickaxe, at least for the last few years. 20 years.
Already in 2003, a debate was opened on the survival of this structure that certainly is out of harmony with the environment and that, as Lluís Permanyer has repeatedly explained in the pages of La Vanguardia, has nothing Italian about it despite the fact that even today, in the documentation that used by Barcelona City Council, owner of the facility since March of this year, insists on attributing this name to it.
Last week, during the council of the Font de la Guatlla neighborhood, the councilor of Sants-Montjuïc, Raquel Gil, publicly announced what some residents and entities had already known for a week: the condemnation of the misnamed Italian Pavilion. Apparently, the City Council had realized that the soulless hangar has a “birth defect” – it occupies a space classified as a classic park – and its situation, therefore, is “insurmountable.”
This green area condition was included in the modification of the General Metropolitan Plan for Montjuïc Mountain in force since 2014, during the time of Mayor Xavier Trias. At that time, the Z6 building, also known at some point as pavilion 3, belonged to Fira de Barcelona, which maintained ownership until last March, when its reversion to the City Council was signed. It was then that the previous Urban Planning Councilor, Janet Sanz (BComú), responding to the demand for spaces for sports practice by the Poble Sec entities and pressured by the imminence of the elections, announced the new uses of the hangar, which in its Its last stage as a Fira installation had hosted private events, cultural events such as the SWAB contemporary art fair or stands of participating brands at the Motor Show.
The transfer of the pavilion to the City Council was the first completion of the project to reform the Montjuïc fairgrounds, which will coincide in six years with the centenary of the 1929 International Exhibition. In that exhibition that served to urbanize the mountain, there was a real Italian pavilion, an eclectic sample of fascist taste that combined reminiscences of ancient Rome and the Renaissance.
The second Italian Pavilion was built in 1960 on the occasion of the XXVIII International Trade Fair of Barcelona. According to the General Archive of Fira, this facility, initially intended to last only three years, was demolished in the 1980s when “various structural deficiencies were detected that raised debates about its viability.” The Z6 building was built in its place.
The announcement of the opening of the demolition file has coincided with the tender for works (worth 49,209.02 euros VAT) for the "surface adaptation of the sports courts of the Italian pavilion", basically a non-slip treatment to prevent slipping which are the daily bread of the half dozen sports clubs that train in this place – an occasional shelter for the homeless – but cannot compete because they do not meet the minimum conditions to do so. This is a quick intervention (seven business days) on the 63x36 meter rectangle. Curious paradox: cleaning the condemned while the countdown to his execution begins.
