BON PASTOR

Emigrating is resetting the status quo, being reborn in another dimension, and trusting it will be a long, prosperous stay. In the once-young republic, provincial immigrants arrived en masse to Barcelona in the 1920s, drawn by industrialization and the Universal Exposition. This overflowing growth led the City Council to build its first public housing. The Patronato de Barcelona and the Comissariat de la Casa Obrera were born, tasked with acquiring land and urbanizing it. An avant-garde boom then began, featuring canonical works like the Casa Bloc.

Almost a century later, migration continues, now globalized. When I arrived in 2017, riding my bike, I stumbled upon the enderrocs (demolitions) of the cases barates of Bon Pastor. That domestic urbanism, with its small and fragile houses, seemed torn from La Pastora or some Caribbean corner. What a joy it was to learn that the neighborhood was being renewed, raising new social buildings for the families. They even museumified an entire block (illa), where it is possible to walk through four stages of popular living since 1929. The recovered objects place us in scenes of daily life: large families in a single house, followed by the arrival of electricity, refrigerators, or television.

Everything evoked the film El 47, that attempt at self-construction in Torre i Baró, seeking a dignified life connected to the rest of the city. These houses remain as the foundation stone of the neighborhood and, along with fifteen other spaces, are part of the MUHBA, which narrates the evolution of Barcelona from its Roman roots to its currently urbanized edges. Happy that these successful cases of architecture exist in the world, I wonder: what would happen if we created a museum of dwelling in Petare or Catia? Modern symbols, criollo objects, and tropical stories would undoubtedly surface.