The Cerdá Plan was a plan to reform and expand the city of Barcelona created in 1860 that followed the criteria of the Hippodamus plan, with a grid structure, open and egalitarian. It was created by the civil engineer Ildefonso Cerdá and its approval was followed by a strong controversy for having been imposed by the government of the Kingdom of Spain against the plan of Antonio Rovira y Trías who had won a competition of the Barcelona City Council.
The widening contemplated in the plan unfolded over an immense area that was free of buildings as it was considered a strategic military zone. It proposed a continuous grid of blocks of 113.3 meters from the Besós to Montjuic, with streets of 20, 30, and 60 meters with a maximum building height of 16 meters. The novelty in the application of the Hippodamus plan was that the blocks had 45º chamfers to allow better visibility.
The development of the plan lasted almost a century. Throughout this time, the plan has been transformed and many of its guidelines were not applied. The original Cerdá plan was modified as a result of the interests of the land owners and speculation.
Historical background
Barcelona in the 19th century. Unhealthy and oppressed
Throughout the 18th century and the first part of the 19th century, the health and social situation of Barcelona's population had become suffocating. The medieval wall that had enabled the city to resist seven sieges between 1641 and 1714 now represented a brake on urban expansion. Population growth raised the population from 115,000 in 1802 to 140,000 in 1821 and reached 187,000 in 1850. The 6 km of walls surrounded an area of just over 2 km2, although 40% of the space was occupied by 7 barracks, 11 hospitals, 40 convents, and 27 churches.
Sanitary conditions worsened as a result of the density and lack of sanitary infrastructures such as sewage systems or running water. Burials in cemeteries in front of churches were sources of infections, groundwater contamination , and epidemics. Despite the decision made by Bishop Pablo de Sichar in 1819 to hold burials in the Pueblo Nuevo cemetery, its operation was not consolidated until the middle of the 19th century. From that moment on, and forced by military ordinances, cemetery spaces began to be recovered at the doors of churches such as San Justo, San Pedro de las Puellas or the Fossar de les Moreres.
In these circumstances, life expectancy was 36 years for the rich and 23 for the poor and day laborers. Barcelona, like Catalonia, had been hit by the plague in the 15th and 16th centuries, and suffered several epidemics throughout the 19th century:
1821: yellow fever with 8,821 deaths (see: Cholera pandemics in Spain). 1834: cholera with 3,344 deaths. 1854: cholera with 6,419. 1865: cholera with 3,765.
The military consideration of Barcelona as a stronghold with the Citadel next to it conditioned urban life. Not only were the problems of the citizens within the walls ignored, but the timid movements to expand outside the walls were repressed with the demolition of the buildings because they "prevented the defense of the city" as occurred in 1813, since the area up to the distance of a cannon shot, which corresponded approximately to the "jardinets de Gràcia", was considered non-aedificanda (unbuilt area).
The voices against it came not only from the citizens but also from the Barcelona City Council itself, which, through the "Junta de Ornato" (Beautification Board) and in harmony with Captain General Baron de Meer, in 1838 requested a modification of the wall between the door of the Studies (the Rambla) and the bastion of Jonqueres (Urquinaona square) to achieve a small extension.
Down with the walls
In 1841 the Barcelona City Council announced a competition to promote the development of the city. On September 11, 1841, the prize was awarded to Dr. Pedro Felipe Monlau, doctor and hygienist, author of the work Abajo las murallas, Memoria acerca de las ventajas que reportaría a Barcelona y especialmente a su industria de la demolición de las murallas que circuyen la ciudad (Report on the advantages that the demolition of the walls surrounding the city would bring to Barcelona and especially to its industry), in which an expansion from the Llobregat River to the Besós is demanded.
The wide diffusion of the project and the popular impulse provoked confrontations such as the one on October 26, 1842, in which the Demolition Board demolished part of the Citadel, which caused General Espartero to bombard Barcelona from the castle of Montjuic on December 3, and ordered its reconstruction with an expense of 12 million reales at the expense of the city.