Caterina Borelli The making of an atmosphere: the case of the Raval, Barcelona

INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM CREATING AN ATMOSPHERE

AUTHOR: Caterina Borelli
PhD Student in Social Anthropology
Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology and History of America and Africa,
University of Barcelona (Spain)
Email: cateborel@gmail.com

ABOUT: born in Venice (Italy) in 1980, since 2004 she has been dedicated to urban
anthropology. Graduated in 2005 in Sciences and Techniques of Interculturality (University
of Trieste), in 2008 she gets her MA in Social Anthropology at the University of Barcelona,
with a thesis which investigates the relationship between urban regeneration and social
imaginaries.
TITLE: THE MAKING OF AN ATMOSPHERE: THE CASE OF THE RAVAL,
BARCELONA.
ABSTRACT
Through the analysis of the regeneration process carried out in the centre of Barcelona, this
paper aims to explore the social production of an urban atmosphere. From an anthropological
point of view, what we call an atmosphere is to be understood in the sense of the experienced
dimension of the urban space. That means not something just given but, on the contrary,
made through the people s practices and uses, which, in turn, are not necessarily always
spontaneous, but also induced, domesticated, forbidden, etc; in sum, they are a cultural
construction that must be analysed sectioning all the social forces that compose it. The
Raval s case in Barcelona, a slum reconverted in a symbol of the ethnic mix and the cultural
fizz, is emblematic of how an atmosphere can be planned and constructed.
RSUM
travers de l analyse du procs de rgnration excut dans le centre historic de Barcelone,
cet article aspire explorer la production sociale d une ambiance urbaine. D un point de vue
antropologique, ce-qui nous appelons une ambiance doit tre compris dans le sens de la
dimension experimente du space urbain. a ne signifique pas quelque chose seulement
donne mais, au contraire, faite travers des practiques et usages des gens, qui, tour
de rle, ne sont pas ncessairement spontanes, mais aussi induites, domestiques, interdites,
etc ; en somme, ils sont une construction culturelle qui doit tre analyse en sectionnant
toutes les forces sociales qui la composent. Le cas du Raval de Barcelone, un quartier
degrad reconverti en un symbole du mtissage et de l effervescence culturelle, est
emblmatique de la manire dans la quelle une ambiance peut tre planifie et construite.
Caterina Borelli The making of an atmosphere: the case of the Raval, Barcelona
My proposal of communication aims to be an answer to the question who creates an
atmosphere? by resorting to the theoretical and methodological instruments of urban
anthropology.
If we use the term atmosphere in the sense of the experienced dimension of urban
space, this could sound like an atmosphere is given merely by the spontaneous uses of the
place. Then it d be a product of a natural process and it wouldn t require other effort than
living in the place and using it, so it seems to come to life almost by osmosis.
Nevertheless and as it often happens, by the moment we get prepared to unravel the
social forces concurring in its creation, social reality reveals itself as something much more
complex than it originally looked. As the research I m carrying out in the historic downtown
Barcelona shows, there s a plurality of actors that can come into play in the production of the
climate characterizing a place, and their interests do not always meet. On the contrary, cities
are often the scene of tensions and conflicts between different wills and forms of using space,
and those conflicts sometimes come to a solution by negotiation between the parts, sometimes
by imposition of one point of view over the others. Therefore, when we talk about the
conditions that are necessary for the existence of an atmosphere, we must consider both
spontaneous and negotiated uses, as well as those which were imposed from the outside.
The case that I deal with and I want to illustrate here is that of Raval, an old quarter of
the centre of Barcelona, that after experiencing a long phase of abandon and degradation, in
the last two decades has been the object of an ambitious plan of urban regeneration. Founded
at the end of the 10
th
century in the fields outside the second line of walls that surrounded the
old town, it was later protected by a third line. During the Middle Ages and until the
Industrial Revolution it has been characterized by the presence of several religious orders,
most of them dedicated to charitable works. From the 18
th
century, with the installation of the
first industries, a young bourgeoisie rose as well as the presence of the working class
increased exponentially. From 1859, since the walls were crushed and the construction of the
city s enlargement started, industries and the most part of the middle class emigrated towards
the new areas, leaving empty spaces that in the following years were filled by the constant
migratory waves coming from the rest of the country. This phenomenon, along with the
proliferation of several activities related to night-life (cabarets, theatres), prostitution and
crime, contributed to create the image of a quarter that was popular and bohemian at once.
After the golden age of the Barrio Chino (red-light district) during the first post-war era, with
the Civil War and the following dictatorship of general Franco the Raval fell into disgrace,
forgotten by the administration and prone to an inexorable process of degradation and
marginalization that reached its lowest point with the boom of heroin in the 80s .
Things started to change radically when Barcelona was chosen as the venue for the
Olympic Games in 1986. The attention of the young democratic administration was not only
focused on providing the city with the infrastructures necessary to host the event: it was the
chance to start a massive plan to save the centre from the decay and prepare it for the big
jump to the international scene.
The situation in the Raval was extremely severe at that time. The main problems were:
the lack of public space, infrastructures and equipments, the degradation of buildings and
above all of housing (most of them very small, with insufficient basic facilities), a very high
demographic density, noxious streets, crime and poverty. Therefore the politics of urban
transformation have moved along four lines of action:
- the redistribution of public spaces and the creation of new local equipments;
- the demolition of the most damaged buildings in order to create space for new housing
and collective uses;
Caterina Borelli The making of an atmosphere: the case of the Raval, Barcelona
- the rehabilitation of the less degraded areas by supporting private initiative, commerce
and new cultural structures;
- from the point of view of spatial strategy, the plan was to start from the north-east to
reach afterwards the centre of the district.
Another element that is necessary to point out is that, as the internal migrations
decreased till they ran out in the 1980s, international flows have noticeably risen in the last
two decades in Barcelona, and the Raval received a huge part of these flows. At the present
time 49% of its population is foreign, coming from more than 60 different countries and the
main nationalities after Spanish are Pakistanis, Filipinos, Moroccans and Ecuadorians. This
recent phenomenon, which shows no signs of decreasing, redesigns the social landscapes of
the Raval and poses new challenges to both local administration and citizenry.
This ambitious plan of transformation has reached now the phase of management of
results and formulation of new goals, so maybe it is time to do a short assessment of the
actual situation. This is not the place to analyse every single project carried in the area, but
just to get an idea of the magnitude of the change we have to say that in Ciutat Vella (historic
centre), from 1980 to 2002, about 500 buildings were expropriated and demolished, which
means 4.200 apartments, 800 commercial premises and 100.000 m of free soil. Moreover, in
Raval the City Council built more then 1.200 public housings for the expropriated families
and the 45% of the original buildings were restored by private companies. The total amount
of the public investments in the Raval between 1988 and 2001 was 1.200 million euros.
Even if the plan has been presented as a participative one from the very beginning, with
the inclusion of local associations in the decision-making process, during the phase of
execution some conflicts emerged between the municipality and the neighbours. Those
conflicts are related to, on one side, the destination of the new retail spaces and especially the
new housings, which are insufficient for all the families involved in the expropriations; on the
other side, there were doubts about the design and functionality of the new public spaces and
the new equipments. Finally, the neighbours have been concerned for the increase of housing
prices due to revalorization of the soil; we have to consider that in Raval the vertical property
has been dominating the real estate market, so most of people rent their flats.
Private agents (landlords and estate agents) were the first to allow the extreme density
of population and the degradation of the conditions of the buildings they rent, in order to
stimulate the voluntary exit of the lodgers. Once those houses get cleared, they are renovated
or demolished and the new apartments are sold for prices much higher than before (housing
prices in Raval increased by 240% between 1997 and 2003), taking a considerable advantage
of the proximity to the new public spaces and infrastructures created by the local
administration. These strategies, which are commonly associated to the phenomenon of
gentrification, operate in favour of the rise of property prices and therefore they contribute to
a slow substitution of the working class residents by an upper status population. Anyway it is
important to remark that, though we can appreciate some changes in the social composition
of Raval, with increasing middle-class population, this is occurring in the areas more
involved in the reform, while others still maintain their popular base, since the exodus of the
previous neighbours is balanced by the incoming immigrants. Therefore, considering this
point, it is more prudent to talk about a partial gentrification or mixed areas.
Anyway, we see how the improvement of the physical environment is working as an
engine of the social transformation of the neighbourhood. Compared with the old urban
approaches, based exclusively on the opening of big streets sectioning congested urban
fabrics, what seems new here is the fact that the urban regeneration of Raval goes now along
with the reinvention of its identity, in order to stimulate its social renewal and therefore
generate a positive sensorial experience of the urban scenery. One of the declared aims of the
Caterina Borelli The making of an atmosphere: the case of the Raval, Barcelona
promoters was turning Raval into a new cultural and commercial space, thanks to the
magnetism of flag-projects such as new museums and headquarters of the cultural industry:
actually we ascertain how the creation of the cultural pole formed by the Museum of
Contemporary Art (Macba), the Centre of Contemporary Culture of Barcelona (Cccb), the
Foster of Art and Design (FAD), publishing houses and the new departments of two different
universities, set the stage for the sprouting of new galleries, ateliers and commercial
activities. This helps sweeping away the aura of marginalization that surrounded the area and
attracting new audiences of higher status: they are constituted mainly by a middle-class
population with a high cultural capital, such as students, intellectuals, artists, arts managers,
cultural tourists. With this implicit purpose it becomes necessary to hygienize the
neighbourhood but, at the same time, to maintain and amplify those features of its identity
that can work as key components in its physical and symbolic reconstruction. Its
cosmopolitan, bohemian and vaguely underground atmosphere, which confers its unique
character, is the added cultural value that people search in it: an authentic experience but
purified from any shadow of danger. If in the planning phase a negative judgement on the
spaces and the public life itself of the areas involved was always implicit, as the image of
decadence recurrent in administrators statements and media discourses helped to show the
operations as indispensable to the citizens, now it seems necessary to look back to the past of
the district in order to attribute to it new meanings. It is not just chance that the Tot Raval
Foundation, a platform which comprises several associations of vendors, neighbours and
institutions, coined a brand new verb to promote the new image of the district, ravalejar,
which in English can be translated into to ravalize: the invitation was to go and enjoy the
neighbourhood, its atmosphere, its commercial offering. This promotional campaign fit
perfectly with the official attitude of emphasizing some particular aspects of the district and
presenting it as a new trend: the message is forget the past; Raval is authentic and cool .
When asked about what he understood by ravalejar, some local told me: What they mean
with that? Ravalize? They think they invented something new! We always ravalized, come
here to the Barrio Chino, with whores and junkies, and you ll see what is to ravalize!

This campaign is an example of how the market has interest in re-interpreting and
amplifying those local specificities which assure the monopole of a unique and non-
reproducible product, which in this case is the city itself. As David Harvey suggested in his
studies on the relationship between culture and capital
1
, it is the pursuit of monopolistic
incomes that leads economical agents to want to preserve or even revive those features that
make a local reality incomparable. However no product, even the most exceptional, can
remain completely outside the market. It always must respond to the principle of trading. The
problem is that the more commercial is a good, the more its exceptionality decreases and so
does its market value; as a result, it is necessary to seek the hard balance between a
homologation which would sweep away all the benefits of monopole (in cities this is known
as disneyfication) and a hardly sellable uniqueness.
From the second half of the 80 s, the regeneration strategies in Barcelona s Ciutat Vella
have been based on heritage, culture and leisure as tools for social change and spatial control,
on one hand, and as key elements to generate what Levi-Strauss called the symbolic added
value, on the other. This surplus of meaning is nothing but the atmosphere of the place itself:
the shapes, colours, sounds, faces and a whole iconography immediately recognizable as
belonging to that particular place. That s how we can recognize that the proposals of
revitalization of places, literally speaking, those that instil them new life, act not only in the
design of streets and buildings, but also on the symbolic dimension of the form in which they
are captured and perceived by their users and by potential new publics who normally would


1
D. Harvey y N. Smith (2005), Capital financiero, propiedad inmobiliaria y cultura, Bellaterra: Museu d Art
Contemporani de Barcelona - Servei de Publicacions de la Universitat Autnoma de Barcelona.
Caterina Borelli The making of an atmosphere: the case of the Raval, Barcelona
keep their distance and need to be enticed. Tourism, consumption and urban ways of life
must be captured and connected with the new cultural space. Thus, art and culture become
fundamental tools for the development, as long as they are used to change the social and
spatial practices of places. The collective symbolic capital grants big benefits: for this
emphasis on culture as an economic engine and for this resort to the visual to dissolve the
halo of marginality that hovers over the public spaces (as in the case of the Macba), it seems
correct to speak of a process of aestheticization of urban politics
2
. The city is first consumed
visually and what is consumed afterwards is the experience of being in a place and enjoying
its sociability. We just have to think about tourists, who come to Barcelona attracted not only
by its monuments, but also by its vibrant life, its colourful and cosmopolitan landscape, its
atmosphere. For the same reason we are not talking about mere physical betterments but
atmospherical improvements, since from this point of view we can include in our analysis
those sociabilities, practices and uses of public and semi-public spaces which inform the
perception, the sensitive experience of the place.
The regeneration plan of Ciutat Vella, that bets on culture in order to modify dynamics
of urban degradation, has been greeted as a great example of participation and good practices
in urban politics. But at the same time it raised several objections, mostly from local
associations, which have been reporting how the installation of big cultural equipments was
not addressed to the neighbours and furthermore it contributed to the rise of housing prices,
so it had an indirect effect of expulsion on the population of lowest income. However, the
defenders of the plan point out that these strong interventions helped to regenerate the
economy of Raval, which now is no more considered as a wretched, decrepit and dangerous
quarter, but as one of the spaces with the higher cultural dynamism in town.
Basically, both are right: the situation of the neighbourhood is much better than it was
twenty years ago, but it also shows some uncertainties that had not been shown before. The
social reality had always been complex and nowadays it is possibly more complex, because in
its interior coexist different dynamics which head to different developments. In words of
Subirats and Rius, there are lots of Ravals
3
: that of the intercultural mix that of the ethnic
enclaves; that of underground culture and that of institutional culture; night-life Raval and the
one of design and fashion. For the moment we are not able to predict which trend will prevail
over the others: whether it will become a theme park for tourists, an ethnic ghetto or a
gentrified district for the middle-classes. Complexity and diversity are its main features and
every policy

urban, social or cultural

that aims to be integrative and participative must take
it into account.


2
See also M. Degen (2002), Sensing regenerated public life in Castlefield, Manchester and El Raval, Barcelona

A comparison , in Actas del IX Congreso de Antropologa de la Federacin de Asociaciones de Antropologa
del Estado Espaol (FAAEE), Barcelona 2002.
3
J. Subirats and J. Rius (dir) (2006), Del Chino al Raval. Cultura y transformacin social en la Barcelona
central. Barcelona: CCCB

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