Regarding
Bellvitge 2065
, and after Adolfo Allue sent us these images that you can see above, we started thinking about the past futures, that is, how the city of the future that we inhabit today, in the present, was imagined and projected —in the past—.
The image corresponds to an urban planning manual published by CEAC in 1963, written by the urban planner and art critic Josep Boix i Gené, in which he speaks of the future industrial estate of Bellvitge in these terms: «Magnificent neighborhood unit, where technique and artistic taste are combined».
The image accompanying the phrase corresponds to the project of ‘Partial plan for the organization of an urban industrial estate in Hospitalet de Llobregat‘ conceived by the technicians of the Management of theRegional Plan, Antonio Perpiñà Sebrià (architect), Aurelio González Isla (civil engineer) and José María Puchades Benito (industrial engineer). The partial planning plans were drafted and approved by the Urban Planning Commission created as a result of the Urban Planning Law of Barcelona of December 3, 1953, which aimed to carry out the Francoist National Housing Plan.
On October 31, 1959, Ciudad Condal SA requests that the Partial Plan be redrafted, a request that is accepted by the Barcelona Urban Planning Commission a few weeks later. In the summer of 1964, the real estate company begins construction of the first blocks of the industrial estate. The urban planning of Bellvitge will then go from being marked by ‘technique and artistic taste’ to being marked by real estate speculation.
It is important to remember that in July 1960 the Horizontal Property Law was enacted, which favored access to home ownership, displacing the rental system prevailing in previous times. In this way, the growth and densification of the urban peripheries was promoted, in parallel with the creation and maintenance of a strong construction sector. These operations on land and real estate were accompanied by the production of a new subjectivity of the working classes in which property was part of a story and an imaginary of success —just remember the slogan ‘We live in Bellvitge, in a privately owned apartment‘ from the advertising campaign—.
Bellvitge is an example, like so many others, of how the economic interests of the oligarchies and the subsidiary role of the state in the capitalist system perverted the city project of modern architecture. Only the action of neighborhood movements, in collaboration with some progressive technicians, could later serve as a form of counter-urbanism that compensated for some of the excesses committed. In this video, Paco Pareja talks about the protest actions against the Partial Plan of Ciudad Condal SA, actions that we also reconstruct in one of the scenes of Bellvitge live role-playing.