Barcelona’s City Council is working on plans to make the city’s famous boulevard, Las Ramblas, into a friendlier place for locals and less of a home for souvenir shops, illegal street vendors and fast-food joints—but not everyone is happy with the plans.
A major stumbling block is resistance by owners of the kiosks that have lined the promenade for over a hundred years. Called ‘Pajareros’ or ‘Antic Ocellaires,’ they originally were a market for birds and small animals, but since the city banned animal sales there a few years ago, they have mostly become tourist shops, ice cream stands and the like.
Now the city has ordered them shut, although an end-of-February deadline was not met; kiosk owners filed an appeal of the eviction notice and a lawsuit. The city says the kiosk owners’ agreement with the city, signed in 1971, expired last June, while the owners claim that their leases are still valid.
The merchants also say that the city’s plan to relandscape Las Ramblas and to reduce traffic from two lanes in each direction to one won’t take effect until 2029, and ask why it is so urgent to remove them now. The city’s plan for the kiosks is to limit them to selling only flowers or newspapers and, oddly, tickets for the Wax Museum.
I have strolled Las Ramblas many times for many years, and purchased street art from artists that I treasure.
A number of years ago, as I walked, I noticed the artists and their work where gone. What a disappointment that they had been dismissed but crappy souvenir sellers remained.