The city is a million things, the majestic radio host Luis Arribas Castro said many years ago from the airwaves of Barcelona. And it's true. And it is also true that the image that a city gives off is shaped by a diversity of spaces and enclaves. These days we have been able to glimpse what one of Barcelona's gateways to the sea will look like, how the renovated Port Olímpic will look after a long restructuring. The reform looks very good and we will see if the union of leisure and business in the area is combined with taste and grace. The first images of what the space will look like in the future allow us to think that the reform will be a success and, moreover, will satisfy a need that the previous infrastructure could not satisfy. It will be a more open space, more integrated and better assimilated by the rest of the city. We hope that in the future all urban planning efforts will not be marred by misguided leisure bets that remind us of the serious problems that came to be experienced in the Olympic Port for a long time.
Another scene that gives an image – and not a very good one – of the city is Sants station. La Vanguardia has explained in a report the difficulties that the liberalization of the high-speed train service is causing to the infrastructure and I could not agree more with the feeling of a sardine can that is permanently felt in Sants-Estació. The liberalization of the service has brought in an additional amount of passengers, 3,100 per hour is the maximum, according to the information, and this is causing considerable stress on the infrastructure, which has been outdated for a long time. For years, Barcelona has been living in the hope that high speed will have a modern station (the Sagrera), but this station has been under construction for longer than any of the towers of the Sagrada Família. And meanwhile the Sants station has barely been touched up. Constant queues to access the high-speed control, which often threatens one of the advantages of the service, which is being able to board just a few minutes before the train departs.
And then there is the adventure of being able to take a taxi. Two places to access the service, without anyone to control it, with disorganized queues, commotion, etc. Also, these problems happen when there are enough taxis, which is not always the case. When someone arrives in Barcelona via Sants, it seems that they do so in third-rate territory, and this is another element that the bodies involved must resolve. Once one is mounted in a taxi to leave the station, another movie adventure comes: the traffic jam to get out of an absurd square, that of Països Catalans, which does not allow for fluid circulation and instead it has hundreds of wasted square meters that are only useful for skateboarders in the area. Finally, we advocate for positive bets such as the Olympic Port and demand more affection in other places.
